Risky business

I have a problem, which will take some time to lay out to you, but I can’t solve it without your help. I’m working on a book, authored by a descendent of Daniel Reynolds who, according to legend, built the stone house that still stands on Wellington Main Street, and is probably the first actual built home in the County. All accounts show that this home was built with the help of local Indians. [The Henry Young house on Ridge Road also makes this claim, though it was brick, which would date it later, after the Loyalists arrived.]

So you see, I kind of dig the ways and means of the past. So here’s the problem. A young relation of the author was horrified by the language that was used in the 1700s. The book stalled, because she wanted to rewrite the original text, replacing ‘Indian’ with ‘indigenous people’ or perhaps ‘First Nations’, and replacing ‘squaw’ with ‘young woman.’

I am torn, because I’m a believer in the context of the time. It may hurt us now, but lessons are not to be learned by what we know NOW— the lesson is what we learned then, and what evolved over time into a greater understanding of every culture on earth, as our vision expanded.

BRACE YOURSELF – THIS WILL HURT
There was a time—wartime—when we fought the Japanese and the Germans. We gave them other names—look it up if you can. Then came the Cold War, and Vietnam, and the Middle East and a whole new plethora of descriptions.

Ugly? Yeah. But that’s history. Our history then changed, for sure. Japan, China and Germany are now international trading partners. All those terms have vanished as a result. That’s a good thing. Even proper history— other than personal accounts of the time— have come to realize that all of those slurs were just used because: War is War. Denigrate your enemy. Make him less human. Hate him, though you don’t know him. Gotta love war for building hate between cultures.

That’s the situation, so let’s explore.

DELETE THE PAST, BRING IT UP TO DATE
You well know by now, I am not a fan of this. Whitewashing the past to protect our modern sensitivities and sensibilities does not teach our new generation about history. It wraps them in a blanket of OUR modern, perfect belief system, so no one ever needs to worry about the stupid past ways we did things, and the awful language we used, because it’s all better

But the words of the past are words we need to hear. Words we need to read. You can go ‘Ouch’ when you read something that hurts your mind. No need to be outraged. Those were words of the time those words were captured.

It should show you, as it does me, how far we have come in the last few centuries toward acknowledgement and acceptance. Closer to embracing other cultures and, here in the County, finally joining with our Indian/native/aboriginal/First Nations/indigenous people/ neighbours/friends to celebrate the land we share.

IS ERASING OUR PAST A GOOD THING?
Let me give you another example: I was reading a history book in which 100 “negro slaves” were captured and delivered across the ocean to America, stuffed in a hold where many died before they arrived. Change “negro slaves” to “Afro-Americans”— it becomes ‘“100 Afro-Americans arrived by ship to America”. Clearly, modernizing the language totally changes what actually happened historically.

If we try to protect our children from the ignorance of our past, are we doing them a favour? Or an injustice?

School kids will say: “This is when our black people arrived, on a cruise ship” Changing the language changes everything. Actual history? Lost.

BEING OFFENSIVE
In the early days of County Magazine, I interviewed a local poet. In the course of the conversation, I realized he was a bigot. He was quite open about it, talking about French Catholics and their plan to take over Canada and, of course the Jews, he wasn’t clear on why. So here we go into: Change what he said, or run with it?

I ran this through my mind for days before I wrote the story. My decision was: He is what he is. He knows what he is. He believes in what he is. I am profiling him, which means, as a writer, I need to capture him for what he is. Not as a bigot of course, but I printed what he said, though that was a small part of our interview. I knew he would not be ashamed of it, because he believed everything he said.

I did what any writer would do: Here’s a profile on this person. This is what he said. He was proud of the story. Readers could make their own minds up, because that’s what writers do. Here it is, for what it is.

HISTORY IS NOT A DRY-ERASE BOARD
Maybe you’re not into history. Maybe you don’t give a damn what was said and done 200 years ago. That’s left to us history nerds, who love to put together the jigsaw puzzle of our past. But picture this. Someone comes along and changes, alters and removes half of the pieces, so they don’t fit anymore. Then you have an unfinished puzzle. Forever.

This is what happens when you don’t leave history alone. You can’t remove puzzle pieces because they don’t suit you.

CLEANUP CREW
For everyone who attacks what was said and done in the past, history does not need a Cleanup Crew. It is what it is. For all of its faults and stumbles, bad decisions, racial undertones, political botch-ups, basic bugger-ups, ignorance, total lack of sensitivity to pretty much everyone in the world, it is still what made us what we are today.

That all made us what we are today. It can’t be cleaned up, altered and sanitized to suit our noble, self-aggrandizing, totally cocky know-it-all view of the world, because someone feels what we did in the past was ‘inappropriate’.

Sure. Anyone around to fix that? Where’s Michael J. Fox and his time machine when you need him?

History may be a car wreck. Hard to deal with, but it happened. Bad things happened. You can go through the 12 steps of denial, grief, etc. In the end, you need to accept that what happened. You can’t change it; you can’t fix it. Changing the wording is not a fix. It’s just a big spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down … in case your kids ever find a real history book, and find the real truth you’ve protected them from.

I know this is a hot topic, but I have asked Corey to print this column, because it is something I deeply believe in. If you have comments, please direct them to me at countymag@bellnet.ca.