Trying not to let our
differences divide us

Life is difficult in a small remote northern community. However, a small First Nation community also has some benefits to offer its members. A tight knit community without much influence from the outside world makes for a life that is set by a few simple rules. One rule was not to give any outright hate to any one member of the group. People are the same everywhere in this world but in a remote community, it is rare to see anyone cast someone in total hate for the sake of simply disliking a person. This reaction is partly based on a matter of survival on the land.

I have witnessed many people up the coast not getting along with each other but then I also recall seeing these same individuals put aside their differences when they met each other on the land. After all, you never know when you are going to need someone’s help in the middle of nowhere. Life is hard in the wilderness and the life on the land is unpredictable. So having enemies around you would mean life could be that much more difficult. This was even more obvious several decades ago when our people still lived a nomadic lifestyle on the land. Life was really hard back then and you had to depend on one another to survive.

As children we were told to turn the other cheek when we were confronted with difficult situations. We were taught to accept the difficulties in life and, in turn, help those who needed our assistance. We lived by simple rules and we knew it had to do with survival of our people. Most of the time these lessons were pointed back to examples through storytelling of families that had held grudges and rivalries with other people and this caused great hardships to everyone involved. Life was hard enough without having to think about why you hated someone or why someone disliked you. It was better to let sleeping dogs lie and let bygones be bygones.

I was surprised to find that I had to draw on this knowledge when I started to live in the non-Native world. There are many more cultures, influences and traditions outside our isolated northern communities and there are just as many differences and difficulties between these groups of people. Dealing with all the differences of our new society was part of the cultural shock we Cree felt as young students attending high school in large city centers like Timmins and North Bay. It was a surprise to discover that people could hate me for my skin colour. Actually it was surprising how much hate there seemed to be circulating in these southern cities.

There are different degrees of hate. I had to deal with subtle dislike on one hand and hard-nosed racism on the other. Thankfully, most people were good to me. My Cree friends and I from up the coast became more or less segregated in many ways merely to survive.

When I think about it now, I guess it is easier to hate someone when your survival does not depend on you being nice to or tolerant of other people. As I looked more into this emotion I found that most of the time hate is based on a deeper emotion of fear of the unknown or unfamiliar. It is a basic instinct to fear the unknown. Most of the time, instead of trying to understand our surroundings, other people or new situations, we become defensive and fearful, which then leads to hatred. Our perception is that it is easier to say you hate something rather than working at learning why we feel this emotion.

Hate is rooted in feelings of low self esteem and low self respect. If your life is full of difficulty, abuse, addiction and chaos, how can you show positive emotions to other people?

However, wouldn’t it be easier to just accept our surroundings and adapt to new situations as they arise rather than submit to fear and hatred? I don’t claim to say that I am not capable of hating or disliking things in life but I have learned to ignore or overlook the things I disagree with or dislike in general. It all boils down to letting people be and allowing them to lead their own lives without judging them. In the long run it makes for a more peaceful life for everyone. You never know what help you might need somewhere down the road.  

Back to Top