Everyone deserves a Merry Christmas

There’s nothing I’d like better to write about than children being nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugarplums dance in their heads.

But when I made a conscious decision 20 years ago that it was important for me to be a Native journalist – not just a journalist – I did so in the belief that it would be dishonest to write what I knew readers would like, rather than what I felt they needed to hear.

I would love to live in a world where every single child goes to bed with a tummy full of nutritious food and a mind brimming over with dreams of another happy day with family and friends. But millions of children do not get to wear stockings, let alone hang them up to be filled with gifts beyond their wildest dreams.

Every child -- red, yellow, black and white – deserves to have such dreams, and those of us who are affluent owe them that opportunity.

So while I am thinking today of the coming Christmas season, and how lucky I am that my children and grandchildren enjoy comfortable surroundings and want for no material things, my mind is elsewhere.

It’s in places like the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, where 45,000 people are being killed each month in a civil war where soldiers can be children strong enough to lift a rifle.

It’s in Calgary where men wearing cowboy hats and smoking long cigars celebrate immeasurable wealth from the oil fields near a city where 78,000 children live in circumstances described by social workers as “beneath the low-income cut-off.”

It’s in Chengdu Province in China, where you officially escape poverty if your family income is more than the equivalent of $1 a day.

And it’s in the Tsulquate reserve on the northern part of Vancouver Island, where more than 60 children have been placed in the care of the Ministry of Family Development because the community’s 100 mould-infested homes are being blamed for a rash of respiratory illness and pre-natal deaths.

The band manager says reserve residents have a high incidence of asthma, and some houses accommodate as many as 20 people.

It’s hard to believe that such situations exist in a world where people spend $1,000 a month to rent Rolex watches. Organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics are selling tickets to the opening ceremonies in Vancouver for as much as $1100 apiece, and who knows what scalpers will get. The ceremonies will take place about two-hours’ drive from Tsulquate.

This is our planet and these are our problems. If we don’t deal with them, who will?

December marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, but we are living in a country where Dudley George is killed for peacefully protesting a valid land claim, where police forces can’t explain how over 500 Native women can disappear from the face of the earth, and the children of Tsulquate have to spend Christmas with strangers.

I apologize if this makes you choke on your Christmas turkey, but if your chief discomfort in life is a little indigestion, consider yourself among the more privileged.

Merry Christmas -- and please try to make sure that others around you also have something to celebrate.



Maurice Switzer is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation. He serves as director of communications for the Union of Ontario Indians and editor of the Anishinabek News.