Secrets Found in Gimli and City Treaty

Treaty

Treaty is a formal agreement between two or more states in reference to peace, alliance, commerce, or other international relations (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/treaty). Marvin Francis quotes in his book city treaty, a long poem: Treaty Lines “All from actual treaties all emerge into the native / aboriginal first nation last chance Indian status cuz / you went trapping that day universe” (lines 1-3). This quote emphasizes that treaties were the beginning of the natives’ troubles. The first nations had a last chance of retaining their status when asked to sign a treaty with the colonist, who intended to trap them legally with the treaty, knowing that they don’t really understand what treaty really meant.

Cultural Genocide

The term cultural genocide comes from the word “gen” meaning claw or community related to people by common decent. The idea of cultural genocide implies the process of undermining, suppressing, and ultimately eliminating, native culture. The deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political or military reason can also be termed as cultural genocide (http://sociologyindex.com/cultural_genocide.htm). In Diane Alexander Secrets Found in Gimli, Alexander says “The elders of the village whispered of this disease, the source of which was felt to have belonged to the white man. To aid the healing of the survivors’ grieving spirits, all the trading blankets and utensils had been thrown into the fire. Was it a coincidence that many recovered quicker without the blankets” (80)? The colonists had infected the blanket with smallpox and traded it to the aboriginal community. Many people died of smallpox during this period. This shows that the colonists were deliberately destroying the cultural heritage of the aboriginal people by deliberately selling smallpox infected blanket to the aboriginals.

Happy Land

Happy Land was an amusement park in Winnipeg, which the construction started on May 1, 1906. Happy Land was on 13 hectares of land between Aubrey and Dominion streets. Portage Avenue bounded it to the north and the Assiniboine River was to the south. This park was closed in 1922. Currently, this area is part of the Wolseley district of Winnipeg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happyland_Park). In Catherine Hunter’s In The First Early Days Of My Death, Hunter used Happy Land as Irony in her quote, to say Mark wished he had died in Happy Land when she said: “Sometimes, the spirit of Mark appeared to Evelyn wearing a bathing suit, as if Mark had become confused and thought he died by drowning. But he hadn’t died that day at Happy Land. The lifeguard pulled him out and called the ambulance” (40). Hunter emphasises that mark, when he was alive wished to die at “Happy Land” because Mark was not happy with the life he was lived and wished