My name is Chief Robert Joseph. I was born in Alert Bay, a tiny little island off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. I grew up there for the most part. I grew up as well in some small isolated villages close to Alert Bay. And there are really wonderful memories. Time hadn’t really changed yet. All the Aboriginal people were still living in their communities and their first language was Kwakwala and they lived off the land. It was a really abundant life - lots of food choices, good energy, people lived off land, the culture was strong. And so those were my early recollections of my childhood. Eventually though I entered Indian residential school and things took a turn for the worse and my life drastically changed.
My grandfather had a real influence over me. Even though he died when I was 6, I learned lots from him. Every time he went seal hunting or fishing or hunting any other game or fowl, I would go with him and he would tell stories that were fables, teachings from the old days.So he was fairly influential in my life.
As a young person, when I entered residential school, it was really a lonely traumatic experience. I was suddenly taken from my home and community for the first time ever at 6 years old and I was punished very harshly for speaking my own language. Of course, just the loneliness and ending up in a school where there were over 200 kids and there were not that many staff people looking after the kids. It was a challenge to feel safe, comfortable, wanted, loved, nurtured, In my early life, I suffered doubts and reservations about what a little child should be. You found ways to survive and reached out to peers and find ways to protect yourself as much as you could. Those were the ways I responded to some of those difficulties.
I stayed in that school for 11 years and was a young man when I graduated from there. Unfortunately because of all the trauma and challenge, I started drinking very early in my life. My first drink was at 14. By the time I got out of that school, life was a real challenge after that. I got out and stared to work, I fished and logged, I decided to have family because it was something I never had in the residential school and I had 5 children right away. Eventually because of drinking, I lost that family and it was terrible. It was even worse pain than other pain I grew up with as a little child. I lost a family.
One day I had this vision – epiphany as some call it. I was walking around Campbell River in a stupor and just drinking too much because it hurt so much to lose my kids and my wife, almost losing my home because I wasn’t working anymore. One day, this friend of mine said “Come fishing with us. I don’t like what you’re doing to yourself.” We went out on this big boat and there were six of us on the boat. I woke up early and remembered I had become a broken man, a broken drinking-too-much man. I snuck out of my bunk and went to the back end of the boat, and I hid behind a drum (God knows why because there was no one else around) and I broke down and said “God help me.” I wasn’t really talking to God because I hadn’t thought about him for long time, He had sort of abandoned me. I opened my eyes and started to look saw the ocean between the boat and mainland and it was the most beautiful ocean I had ever seen in my life. Energy, green, coral, beautiful! The mountainside was the same, the forest had life, energy, powerful! And I looked above the mountain to the snowcaps and to the heavens and saw the whole universe appear before my eyes! And I heard a voice that said “despite all you have done I love you. You belong and you are part of this.”
We fished for one day and I went back to Campbell River and went straight to the bar. I had forgotten the experience and I started drinking again, the darkest corner I could find. I told the bartended to load up my table (they used to be able to do that) and I drank all that beer and I was dead sober. I ordered some more and drank it all and at closing time, I was still dead sober. Usually I would be in a stupor by this time. I walked back to my home which was not far from where the bar was and I had the most wonderful sleep ever in my entire life. I woke up the next morning and it just didn’t hurt as much anymore. I knew I had to change my life and I had to do certain things and I stopped drinking. That was over 30 years, and I never drank again in my life, and since then I have been spending my time helping others recover from trauma, from addictions. Whatever it is they want to recover, I want to be there to help them, and I want to help anybody in the community, because I want to serve not my own people, not just Aboriginal people, not just people of colour but all of us because we need to create a humanity that is kinder, gentler, softer, caring, nurturing, loving.There is too much conflict going on, too much strife and pain and hurt. So I’ve decided for the rest of my life, I’m 69 years old now, to do whatever I can to change that. And it’s not just for the little while because I’ve thought about those things and they have become really important to me.
After that turning point in my life, that personal vision, I did lots of volunteer work. I was Chair of the United Way in Campbell River , Chairman of the Heart Drive, I was on the credit union board in Alert Bay, the hospital board I tried to find places where I could be useful. And I discovered by being useful, I gave meaning to my own life. I was really learning, growing developing. I think that’s the whole point about our lives. If we all can learn to do that, to think about being of service to others, that would be the key message I would have. That’s how I got involved in community work, just wanting to be helpful after the turning point in my life.
So my dream for my community and for others is to find freedom spiritually. We’re all spiritual beings as well as being merely mortals. We have a spirit that we need to nurture and to develop. The fullness of who we are only manifests if we learn how to be spiritual, to know that there is a great purpose in our lives as well as the little steps we take which all serve our purpose but a great purpose in our lives. .If we could all be inspired to see things at a universal perspective as well, that outward from us everything and everyone else is important as well. And that our well-being depends on the well being of everything moving outward from us. And that’s a real important message in my life. I tell others. We need to see the universe, the big, big picture. Whatever others do affects us and I affect them and if we all spend our energy being kinder, gentler and more loving and caring, we might have a better place to live.
And that’s why we need to turn our attention to multiculturalism. When I was a boy the only other people in my world were so-called white people, Europeans. There were very few other ethnic groups yet coming. There’d be the odd ones in the canneries (Chinese) and Japanese in the fishing camps but it was not as multicultural as it is now. And all of us need to respect each other, to know that wherever we came from, wherever our families are, wherever our roots are, whether we’re immigrants or not, we have to respect the world view of people who come to Canada. Like other people who’ve come here from other places lived somewhere and had a notion of what the world was and had values and principles. We should find ways for all the different world views to work together based on respect and mutual dignity and honor. We haven’t found a way to do that yet. We still have a lot of racism between races, including Aboriginal people. They’re not free or pure from racism. If you’ve been discriminated for a long time, you tend to want to manifest the same thing back.
Another thing that works - for me, I was terribly hurt as young boy, taken away from my family, beaten up when I spoke my language, physically and sexually abused. I look back at those years now and what happened to my life because of it and I in turn, was angry, and hostile and bitter. I don’t want to be that anymore. I want people to know that even if there were others who hurt me that I don’t want to hurt. I know what it’s like to be hurt so why would I want to hurt others. I don’t want to do that anymore.
So I think that in multiculturalism, the first step between all of us is to recognize our differences, absolutely. We’re not the same and we shouldn’t be the same. God didn’t make us the same; the creator didn’t make us the same. We should celebrate our diversity, absolutely celebrate our diversity. But what we have to do is open the open doors a little bit to each other, that’s really important. Sometimes we tend to put a shield around us, a defense against prejudice or whatever we feel is against us. But what we have to do is open the door, especially multi-ethnic groups, open the door to each other and recognize and understand the value in every system, every group. All the other ethnic groups have fundamental values and perspectives and principles that are so important and they are probably similar to each other. So we need to open our doors to them and to honor and respect that and encourage it, so that every child born in Canada, including aboriginal children, feels born free, feels worthy, has pride, dignity. These are the things that matter most to me.
In the past 10 years of my life, I have devoted my time to this residential school issue. I think we have made some tremendous strides and I think that now that Canada has a truth commission on Residential School Issues, it is going to be a real service to all Canadians to know the truth about our collective history. So I’m hoping that all the multi-ethnic Canadians, every Canadian, comes and that we share and hear our stories together and build a new future together.