Howard Adams

with our people and communities. Collaborator leaders
and associates, government funded elites and main-
stream opportunists cannot contribute to aboriginal
culture and history. They are only tourists and exploiters
in our homeland.

Those of us who have lived in colonized micro-societ-
ies have been subjected to the suppressive weight of
dehumanization and non-intellectual thought imposed
by the colonizer. As a result we hold feelings of discon-
tent and challenge; having sensed the obliteration of
intellectual activity and the forced ‘backwardness’ in our
community. How deeply I felt the eurocentric repression
against our Métis culture and history. I lived only fifteen
miles from the glory of our ancestors’ heroic struggles at
Batoche, but that “glory’ rung in our ears as a hideous
defeat. Anglo superiority stigmatized and smeared us
into muteness. At the sound of the last gun, eurocentric
historians rushed in to write and publish their distorted
myths that flooded the nation. These white supremacy
scribes swelled the flow of aboriginal blood and forced
our people into shameful hiding from the odium of their
weird and distorted descriptions. Such academic myths
are typically used to subjugate the oppressed into deeper
colonization and ghettoization. Myths and falsehoods
not only structured Métis and Indian culture and history,
but at the same time justified brutal military rule. As
historians and authors we must repudiate these fabrica-
tions and write a genuine account of our ancestors’
struggles and victories.

Decolonization and liberation cannot take place
without counter-consciousness and a spirit of devotion to
the cause of self-determination, justice and equality.
There are some excellent aboriginal centric historical and

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