Brown-John: Pause to honour, reflect on National Indigenous Peoples Day

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By: Lloyd Brown-John

Next Friday, June 21, Canadians will be asked to celebrate or acknowledge National Indigenous Peoples Day.

Originally called National Aboriginal Day in 1996, it has been a day of both reflection and efforts at reconciliation ever since. It is also a day wherein one might reflect upon the history of treatment and abuse of Indigenous peoples in this beautiful country of Canada.

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I do have family in British Columbia who are of mixed heritage, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Personally, I am very proud that within my extended family there are members who qualify proudly as Indigenous peoples.

However, this National Indigenous Peoples Day I’d like to honour the memory of a former colleague in Canada’s foreign service and a person, somewhat like myself, who emerged and succeeded despite both limited economic background and, in my colleague’s case, despite racial discrimination.

James K. Bartleman passed away in London, Ont., last August. For a brief period James and I crossed paths serving Canada in our diplomatic service. James stuck with it and developed a distinguished career.

I fled the foreign service and retreated to the cloistered world of attempting to teach at the University of Windsor. Bartleman would eventually become Ontario Lieutenant-Governor, from 2002 to 2007.

But before that he was a proud member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation. He grew up impoverished in a shack near the garbage dump road in Port Carling in the Muskokas. He was a prolific author and in his first book in 2002 — ‘Out of Muskoka’ — he recounts not only his world of youth but his experience as a visible minority.

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Interspersed throughout the book are accounts of his experiences as a Canadian diplomat, including several ambassadorships and some incidents.

Among the latter was a terrible beating in his hotel room in Cape Town, South Africa. He had arrived as Canadian High Commissioner (equivalent to an ambassador) to attend Nelson Mandela’s final speech in South Africa’s legislature. He was robbed and beaten almost to death by a local thug.

Wishing to forget South Africa and the trauma he endured (he never was able to shake the memory), he was offered the High Commissioner position in Australia by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Thereafter, Bartleman became special foreign policy advisor to Chrétien. He served in many of foreign policy roles, never forgetting, however, the difficulties of growing up poor and growing up as a mixed-race Canadian.

Earlier in life, he worked as groundskeeper for a wealthy American, Robert Clause of Pennsylvania who had a summer home on a Lake Muskoka island. The Clause family covered his costs to complete high school and then attend university in London, Ont.

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Bartleman then planned to teach but took a year to wander Europe, working and surviving along the way.

Later, on a diplomatic posting to Brussels, he met Marie-Jeanne Rosillon. The couple married in 1975 and had three children. Along the way and throughout his career, Bartleman never lost touch with his First Nation roots.

As he noted: “I spent most of my life abroad, living in a time warp, stuck psychologically in post-war small-town Ontario, with discrimination and exclusion fresh in my memory, I had long since identified myself with the Indian rather than the white part of my being.”

Bartleman authored nine books. In 2004 he launched the first Lieutenant Governor’s Book Drive which collected 1.2 million good used books for First Nations schools and Native Friendship Centres throughout Ontario.

He received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award among other honorary degrees and awards.

From my perspective, Bartleman was a most distinguished Canadian. He also was a most honourable person despite so many early poverty handicaps and despite a world where racism was — and remains — so prevalent.

Racists are with us today, attacking mosques and synagogues. Indigenous Canadians are still endeavouring to make cases for their distinctive contributions to Canada.

It was a privilege to have known the Hon. James K. Bartleman, a person for whom I had the greatest respect.

Lloyd Brown-John is a University of Windsor professor emeritus of political science and director of Canterbury ElderCollege. He can be reached at lbj@uwindsor.ca.

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