Years ago I was living in Alberta and found the writings of Chief Dan George very inspiring. He was a member of the Co-Salish tribe, born in 1899 and raised on the Burrard Reserve in North Vancouver, B.C. As a child, he learned the traditional ways of his people but also attended St. Paul’s Boarding School in North Vancouver where he learned to ‘grab the instruments of the white man’s success’.
Reading more about his life and how it was influenced by his past, his present situations, and his desires for the future makes this prayer of his more poignant.
-Sister Elaine Cole, csj
Oh, Great Spirit! Give me back the courage of the olden Chiefs. Let me wrestle with my surroundings. Let me once again, live in harmony with my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and through it rise up and go on.
Like the thunderbird of old, I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man’s success– his education, his skills. With these new tools, I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society. I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedoms of our great land.
-Chief Dan George–1974
My Heart Soars by Chief Dan George, page 92
Hancock House Publishers, Ltd. 3215 Island View Road Saanichton, B.C.