April 27, 2011. South Africa’s Freedom Day. My good friend, Her Excellency Ms Mohau Pheko, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Canada, invites me to a modest ceremony to mark the day.
April 27, 2011. South Africa’s Freedom Day. My good friend, Her Excellency Ms Mohau Pheko, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Canada, invites me to a modest ceremony to mark the day.
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Nothing ostentatious. No fanfare. Short speeches by select invitees, flag raising, singing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, poetry recitation, and a short freedom walk. The sort of austere investment in the nuance and deeper symbolism of national occasions that one always wishes our friends in Abuja, who spend billions celebrating such rituals, would learn from. The High Commissioner asks me to read from my poetry at the event. I accept the invitation.
The skies of Ottawa decide to shed tears in homage to Nelson Mandela. The rain ensures that we cannot do the freedom walk part of the ceremony. We converge in the reception wing of the High Commissioner’s residence for the speeches and poetry recitation part of the proceedings. “The Gift of an Error”, a poem from my unpublished collection, ruffles quietly in my pocket, awaiting my podium moment as the sole bard invited for the occasion. Deploying a popular creation motif in Yoruba mythology, I had written that poem years back in Johannesburg in celebration of South Africa’s post-apartheid self-fashioning as the rainbow nation. My poet-persona croons in the last verse of the poem:
Ah, Obatala! Grant me the gift of your error
That my verse may escape the tyranny of uniformity
Grant me the gift of your error
That I may rhyme some, free others
Grant me the gift of your error
That my art may sing the beauty of difference
Grant me the gift of your error
That my art may be rainbow
But before my moment comes the moment of ritual observance. The South Africans, perhaps in recognition of the transnational dimensions of their ideology of the rainbow, settle for a Native American (First Nations in Canada) welcoming and blessing ceremony. The freedom of Zulus Xhosas, Boers, Indians, Coloureds, and the many hues of Azania is going to be blessed in the Americas by the true owners of the American soil. And the man the South Africans invite to perform this most solemn ritual is story.
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Elder Commanda is history puslsatingly alive and in motion. Elder Commanda is legend. Elder Commanda is much more than this Facebook biography says he is:
“Elder William Commanda from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, Maniwaki, Quebec, was born on November 11, 1913 under the bright light of the Morning Star, so his mother named him Ojigkwanong; thus the larger universe figured in his personal story from the very beginning. Today, he is seen by many as the symbol of light emerging from the darkness of the first World War, illuminating a path to a new world with his vision for a Circle of All Nations, A Culture of Peace. He is a respected spokesman and spiritual leader at many conferences, participates in United Nations peace and spiritual vigils, and his work is acknowledged nationally and internationally. Fully trilingual, he shares his words and prayers in Algonquin, and translates them into English and French.
Central to Elder Commanda’s teachings are the concepts of equality, balance, respect and responsibility for Mother Earth, for all life forms and for people of all racial and cultural backgrounds, and he works ceaselessly, alone and entirely without an organization, staff, structure, formal or financial support to animate the Circle of All Nations. A most senior representative of the Algonquins of the Ottawa River Watershed, he is the great, great grandson of the legendry Pakinawatik, the Algonquin chief who in the mid eighteen hundreds, led his people from their lands at Oka on the Lake of Two Mountains to their traditional hunting and trapping grounds at the confluence of the Desert and Gatineau.
He is the carrier of three sacred Wampum Belts of historic and spiritual importance: the ancient Seven Fires Prophecy Belt about choice; the 1700s Welcoming Belt about sharing the grand natural resources and values of the original peoples with the newcomers; and the Jay Treaty Border Crossing Belt which recognized Turtle Island as a coherent entity. His ancestors inscribed their legends, prophecies and agreements in these carefully crafted items over many centuries.
He is seen by many as the carrier of the Seven Fires Prophecy at the time of the unfolding of its final message, and the messages of all these ancient artifacts are as deeply relevant today, as they were in the past. He was acclaimed chief of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg for over nineteen years, though he himself never participated in the elections. He also worked as a guide, trapper and woodsman for much of his life. He is a birch bark canoe maker and craftsman of international renown, and there is a special display dedicated to his work at the Canadian Canoe Museum of Peterborough.
He built a canoe for Queen Margrethe of Denmark, and he helped Pierre Trudeau repair his famous birch bark canoe. At the age of 90, he shared his canoe making skills and philosophy in Valerie Pouyanne’s documentary, Good Enough for Two. He has promoted environmental stewardship and respect for Mother Earth passionately for many decades. He conducted pipe ceremonies for the Pre-Rio Earth Summit Conference hosted by President Mitterand of France in 1991, and his prayers lie behind Agenda 21. He participated in the United Nations first Indigenous Cry of the Earth conference. He served as spiritual guide to the 1995 seven and a half month Sunbow Five Walk from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific, to raise awareness of the growing environmental crisis; received the Bill Mason River Conservation Award in 2004; hosted workshops on water stewardship in 2004 and 2006, and 2009; is honorary chair of the Ottawa Heritage River Designation Committee; and offers interventions on current environmental issues such as the identification of the American Eel as a Species at Risk, the building of a mega dump on Danford Lake and the Navigable Waters Act.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and acknowledgements of his works and talent: the Wolf Project and Harmony Awards for his efforts to foster racial harmony and peace building through the creation of a Circle of All Nations (one very well received example of this commitment is the annual international gathering he hosts at his home during the first weekend of August – the 2001 Gathering is presented in the Circle of All Nations documentary); a Justice Award from the University of Ottawa and a Peace Award from Friends for Peace. He promotes restorative justice, forgiveness and his outreach to prisoners is captured in Lucie Ouimet’s National Film Board Documentary, Encounter with an Algonquin Seer.
Recently, his efforts were acknowledged in Ottawa with two special recognitions: in 2005, with an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Ottawa, shortly after his book, Learning from a Kindergarten Dropout, was published; and in 2006, with the Key to the City of Ottawa, a singular honour for an Aborignal person from a reserve in Quebec. This was presented on Victoria Island, where the tireless ninety five year old continues working on his vision for a National Indigenous Centre, for the restoration and development of the Sacred Chaudière Site as a special national historic centre, and as a think tank for environmental stewardship and peace building of national and global relevance.
Two other books, Learning from a Kindergarten Dropout Book Two, and Passionate Waters–Butterfly Kisses include further reflections on his work and ideology. In December 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, for his leadership as an elder who has promoted intercultural understanding and has raised awareness of the traditions and legacies of Canada’s Aboriginal people. Elder Commanda says he is deeply honoured to witness this recognition of the relevance of Indigenous Wisdom to this country at this time. In November 2009, the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards Foundation announced his selection as 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. In January, 2010 Willis College announced the Dr. William Commanda Scholarship.”
This is the great Native Canadian Elder in whose solemn presence we now gather to mark South Africa’s freedom day. In his elaborate introduction of Elder Commanda, the emcee ensures that we do not forget the man’s friendship with Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. The emcee makes sure that we remember that Elder Commanda represents for Native Canadians what Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama represent for their respective peoples. The room gets smaller as Elder Commanda’s world figure status raced off the emcee’s tongue.
Elder Commanda takes the podium with all his ninety-eight years of history and graciousness. Before solemnizing the room with a ritual beckoning to his ancestors, he gives a short speech, part biographical, part spiritual, about this world; about his earth; about his people; about where and how the rain began to beat them; about love; about forgiveness. He spoke and spoke and spoke. That room, filled with South Africans, white Canadians, and this Nigerian, is silent, eerily silent. Everyone is swallowing his words, deep in thought.
I do not follow Elder Commanda’s speech beyond his very opening sentence. I cannot get beyond this man’s first sentence. That sentence traps me in its awesome power and I surrender myself to a revelry of analysis. From the podium, he takes one sweeping look at us, his audience, and declares with all the power of his love for humanity: “you are welcome to our land”. The student of history in me kicks in. The scholar in me kicks in. The quiet listener to nuance and meaning in me kicks in. I look around casually to see if anyone in the room hears Elder Commanda the way I hear him. Welcome to our land, he says. Not welcome to Canada. Hmmm.
I have been in North America since 1998. In that time, I have studied in Canada, gone on to teach in the United States for four years before returning to Canada in 2006. I have received many a welcome to Canada, welcome to the US, from airport immigration officials and Canadian and American friends. But this singular “welcome to our land”, uttered by Elder Commanda at the beginning of the blessing ceremony, acquires an immediate halo of authenticity, shorn of the whiff of imperium that always comes with welcomes uttered by Europeans who stole this land.
Thirteen years after my feet first kissed the earth of the Americas, I get my first real, official, and genuine welcome from a shon of the shoil, the real owner of the land, singularly authorized to utter that welcome. My mind wanders to another historic moment of enunciation of a welcome powered by authenticity:
The gate of reeds is flung open
There is silence
But only a moment’s silence-
A silence of assessment
The tall black king steps forward,
He towers over the thin bearded white man,
Then grabbing his lean white hand
Manages to whisper
“Mtu Mweupe Karibu”
White man you are welcome
The gate of polished reed closes
behind them
And the West is let in.
“White man you are welcome.” That’s Malawian poet, David Rubadiri, capturing history in one sentence in his famous poem, “Stanley Meets Mutesa”. And here we are the Americas, being “let in” officially by Elder Commanda, a genuine owner of that patch of earth. Only this time, we shall not take the stool from the owner of the house and ask him to sit on the floor. As Elder Commanda speaks about forgiveness and how he used love to transcend hatred, I think of Wole Soyinka’s discussion of Senghor’s forgiveness of the slaving sins and colonial transgressions of France in his book, The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness.
How are the Elder Commandas of this world able to transcend structures and life-worlds that insist on an endless repetition of oppression and insults? A few weeks after Elder Commanda’s message of forgiveness and love in Ottawa, the Americans capture and kill their arch-enemy, Osama Bin Laden, in an operation they were stupid enough to baptise Geronimo! Endless repetition of oppression and insults. Endless infliction of silly violence on the other’s history and heros. It just so happens that nobody in the Pentagon thought it okay to call the battle of Abbottabad operation Abraham Lincoln! How about: “Abe Lincoln EKIA” for a change?
Love. Forgiveness. Transcending difference. The themes float in the room as I mount the podium to read my poem after Elder Commanda’s awe-inspiring speech. Then I think of the differences and faultlines that the nationalities in that room have overcome or are overcoming in the permanently unfinished business of nationhood: South Africans and Canadians with their bloody tales of racial and other differences. These South Africans and Canadians say in unison with Elder Commanda that forgiveness is the first condition of nationhood.
And I stand in the same room with my Nigeria of equally fractious and violent differences. Over there in Nigeria, tribe and tongue do not just differ, they kill. Is forgiveness also the antidote to the deadly invidiousness of our national condition in Nigeria? Could it be that forgiveness comes easier to South Africans and Canadians because no state or political elite is sufficiently arrogant to tell the people that statehood and nationhood are sacrosanct no-go areas that can neither be discussed nor re-negotiated? Could it be that forgiveness comes easy when there is no silly talk of a “corporate existence” cast in the stone of status quo, beyond dialogue? These thoughts crowd my mind but I’ve got a poem to read on the podium just sanctified by Elder Commanda.
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