‘Tena koutou nga iwi o te Ao, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou —’
Her voice soared across the foyer, cutting through the hubbub. People turned to see where the spear of sound was coming from — and that is when we began to chant our way forward.
‘Well,’ I whispered to Roimata, ‘that’s one way to make an entrance.’
We may only have been two, but our people have always said that where there is one, there is a thousand, where there are two, there are two thousand. When we stand, we do not stand alone. We bring our culture with us.
From among the crowd came a familiar face. He smiled at me, and bowed to Roimata.
‘I see that the Maori delegation from New Zealand has arrived,’ Franklin said.
He took us in hand, introducing us to the organising committee and, in particular, its chairman.
There were very few people I’ve taken an instant dislike to, but Bertram Pine Hawk was one of them. He was young, handsome in an arrogant kind of way, and had that sense of well-oiled assurance that would one day make him an ideal candidate for State governor. Franklin went up in my estimation when I noticed that there was no love lost between him and Bertram either.
‘Would you mind,’ Franklin asked me, ‘if I introduce you and Roimata to some of the other delegates? They will look after you.’
Lang, Sterling and Wandisa were all around my age. Having grown up with Western movie images of Indians as tall, muscular and looking as if they could eat six white folks a day, I was surprised to find how small they were in stature and how unassuming in appearance. Certainly, I was not prepared for the sly irony of their wit and banter.
‘I’m Okanagan,’ Lang said.
‘And I’m Dakota,’ Sterling said. ‘Lang’s a mountain Indian, I’m a plains Indian. Plains Indians generally stay clear of those mountain people.’
‘If I was you,’ Wandisa said, eyes twinkling, ‘I would stay clear of them both and just stick with us Inuit.’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Sounds just like home.’
‘So how come you’re all friends?’ Roimata asked politely.
‘Us? Friends?’ Wandisa answered with mock horror. ‘Oh, no, we just happen to be standing together.’
At that moment a drum began to beat. A woman in ceremonial Indian dress appeared at the top of the escalator and began to call us to the First Peoples’ Hall. I saw an old man look across at Lang and frown.
‘That’s my grandfather,’ Lang said. ‘He’s the chief of my tribe. He doesn’t like me consorting with a plains Indian and an Inuit.’
‘The thing is,’ Sterling whispered conspiratorially, ‘the three of us all met at university and Lang’s grandfather thinks Wandisa and I are responsible for having made Lang, well, stray from the beaten track.’
The way Sterling said it made me wonder whether there were other meanings within his words.
‘Oh, Michael, look —’
Roimata was gasping as we went down the escalator.
We seemed to descend into the past. The First Peoples’ Hall opened before us, a spectacular row of totems, carvings, canoes and great houses commemorating the ancestral cultures of Canada’s West Coast: the Tlingit, Nishga, Gitksan, Tsimshian, Haida, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Oowekeno, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuuchahhnulth and Coast Salish. As we descended, the totems and great houses rose above us. I was unprepared for their scale, their sheer size and psychic impact.
‘We used to live in a world that must have looked like this,’ Lang said, taking Roimata under his wing. ‘It was inhabited by Beaver, Thunderbird, Lightning Snake and other supernatural beings, and they supplied us with all our needs. We fished the seas for whales, seals, sea lions, halibut and codfish. The spring rivers gave us shoals of oil-rich eulachon, and salmon returned to spawn in the streams where they were born. Seaweed and shellfish were gathered along the shore. We culled the tall dense forests for the massive cedar and yew to build our villages; we cultivated spruce roots for weaving, and salal, thimbleberry and huckleberry. Then Europeans arrived in the 1770s —’
I lagged behind with Sterling and Wandisa.
‘The reason Lang sounds like a textbook,’ Sterling said, ‘is because he took his degree in Art History. He hasn’t spoken like a real person since.’
We took our seats in the hall. People who had heard Roimata and I make our entrance came to shake our hands and to say hello. Over three hundred delegates were in attendance. The majority were representatives of all the Indian tribes of Turtle Island, the name they gave to North America — for them, the distinction between Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, the United States and Mexico was a colonial fiction. A few delegates, like Roimata and myself, had come from other countries: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Iceland.
The noise in the hall receded. The organising committee took the stage. Roimata was surprised that Franklin was among them.
‘I’m getting a terrible feeling,’ she whispered. ‘Franklin was driving this huge limousine last night and —’
‘Franklin?’ Wandisa answered. ‘He’s one of the sponsors of the conference. He’s a millionaire, probably the richest Indian in this room. Of course, that’s because he’s an Inuit.’
Roimata’s jaw dropped.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I thought he was a chauffeur. We had a photograph taken. I made him put on a cap. Oh, I could die.’
Before Roimata could do that, Bertram Pine Hawk motioned that the opening ceremony should begin. Two elderly women came out and, beating drums in a steady rhythm, offered prayers of thanksgiving and hope. They were joined by Lang’s grandfather, Albert Pentecost, who had similar status as a kaumatua in Maori proceedings.
Bertram Pine Hawk approached the rostrum. As he did so, a small fact stuck in my brain. Bertram, Franklin, Lang’s grandfather Mr Pentecost and the two women elders were First Nation, but they were outnumbered on the stage by European officials of the organising foundation.
‘On behalf of the Canadian Council for the Promotion of First Nation Arts,’ Bertram Pine Hawk began, ‘I am pleased to welcome you all to Survival 2000. The Council is funded by the Canadian Government and some of the members are on stage with me today. The Council wants you to know that they totally support the objectives of this conference and have asked me to announce that a fund of $2 million is to be established to further the arts of our people.’
Bertram Pine Hawk’s words were greeted with a murmur of pleasure, and he himself led the applause. He motioned to the members on the stage to receive the acclamation.
‘I am the First Nation representative on the Council,’ he continued, ‘and I want you to know that without the Council’s support this conference wouldn’t be happening today. Without their funding, we wouldn’t have distinguished guests from around the world to provide insight into how the indigenous arts are supported in their own countries.’
Roimata banged me with an elbow.
‘Hmmn,’ she said. ‘I hope he doesn’t think he’s bought us —’
Delegates from all over the hall were leaping to their feet to acknowledge Bertram Pine Hawk and the Council. With a theatrical flourish he opened his arms:
‘Let the conference begin!’
I looked at Roimata. She nodded to me and we stood to join the applauding crowd. We stood out of respect for our Indian hosts, but not for what had been said. We’d both seen this kind of thing before.
A puppet out front.
Behind, people pulling the strings.