IO #6 -- George Clutesi (Tse-Shaht)

[radiantfracture]

(Imperfect Offering is a series for Indigenous History Month about Indigenous authors and storytellers who have meant a lot to me and to the students I teach.)

George Clutesi
(Tse-shaht)
(1905-1988)
Artist, writer, scholar, actor

Okay, I’m cheating a bit by including George Clutesi, because I haven’t taught his work yet. I’m researching him now because I want to give more focus to authors and storytellers from this and surrounding regions, and because I want the class to follow a thread that starts with Basil Johnston (IO 1) and gets to George Clutesi by way of Kahentinetha Horn (IO 5) and Expo 67.

It’s going to be fun. (The Expo 67 connection came to me via this excellent two-part story from The Secret Life of Canada.)

Born in Port Alberni, Clutesi was a member of the Tseshaht First Nation, which is a part of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

From his youth, he was recognized as a gifted artist, and his art sustained him through residential school. He also wrote essays for The Native Voice, one of the earliest Indigenous newspapers in Canada, was on the CBC, and acted in TV and film (you may have seen him in Dreamspeaker (1976) or Spirit Bay (1982-7) or in an episode of The Beachcombers). He was an eloquent advocate for Indigenous cultures.

Because I am extra interested in the story of Indigenous theatre, I was thrilled to read that Clutesi wrote a play in 1949 -- I wonder if I can find out its production history (tseshaht.com).

Clutesi was key to the preservation and revival of Tse-shaht teachings through songs and dances. And he wrote down versions of traditional Tse-shaht teaching stories in Son of Raven, Son of Deer (1967), and ceremonial practices in Potlatch (1969) -- only eighteen years after the lifting of the Potlatch ban (The People and the Text).

I recently obtained a copy of Son of Raven, Son of Deer (1967).




In the first story, "How the Human People Got the First Fire," Clutesi tells how Son of Deer stole fire from the Wolf people to give to humanity. The story acts on my brain this way: it tells the reader about the power of art and artists to outwit greed and tyranny, and about how being young and seemingly unimportant can be a great cover story. A very good story for students.

As I read the introduction to the collection, I could not help but observe that the messages from Indigenous knowledge keepers and Elders -- about orature and its centrality, about Indigenous education practices and their strength for the whole person -- these have been clear and consistent all along, from contact to 1967 to now.

Clutesi, a residential school survivor himself, writes that in traditional education, "the young were taught through the medium of the tales that there was a place in the sun for all living things" and that because of the imposition of oppressive "education" systems on Indigenous students, "there is, in fact, a broken link in [their] life-growing period” (11-13).

I wish this message had been treated with the respect it deserves. It feels both a little desolate and oddly hopeful to see the same message delivered in 1967 that I see restated in new textbooks and hear in contemporary workshops, classrooms, law courts.

Clutesi actually died in Victoria. According to the Internet, he is buried in the Alberni Valley Memorial Gardens.

{rf}

Comments

[sabotabby]

I'd never heard of him, so thanks for this.

[radiantfracture]

Yeah, I think he's better known out here, and as an artist, than as a writer. I'm really excited about these stories. And I'm interested in *Potlatch*, though I wonder what the protocols would be around discussing that knowledge in class -- I'd probably err on the side of not including it.

[intertext]

Believe it or not, I actually met George Clutesi. He had a house on Sproat Lake, as did my great aunt, not far away from his. In 1963, when my dad moved my mum and me to Canada, we stayed with my g.aunt. She took me to visit him and we had tea. I remember him being very kind and interested in the doings of a terribly English 7-year old child. I had absolutely no idea until much later about the residential schools, nor did it occur to me to ask why, although Sproat Lake road ran through indigenous land, there were no indigenous children at the elementary school I went to for the brief time we stayed there.

[radiantfracture]

Thank younfor for this story! One of the unexpected delights of this series is hearing personal anecdotes about meeting the authors. Did your great aunt know him well?

[intertext]

I believe so, in the way people who live in what was then a fairly isolated area know each-other. If my memory is correct, his house was about two or three lots up the lake to the west from hers. Visiting was accomplished by boat. She had been living there since just after the First World War, when she joined her husband there. (She was an English nurse and he was a Canadian soldier.) So that's a good long time.