Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon, he calls it ‘faith’, ‘strength’, ‘truth’.

– Rod Serling, from the opening narration of “He’s Alive”

This post is a continuation of the rumination begun here.

It is conference season in BC. This past week, Indigenous leaders across the Northern Region gathered here in Prince George to have their annual governance caucus. Near the end of the event, space was given for reflection on treatment of Indigenous veterans, as Remembrance Day loomed. A speaker shared some firsthand accounts from Indigenous voices dating back a hundred years – from those who had fought in world wars all the way to more recent conflicts in the early twentieth century. Soldiers who had experienced more equality facing bullets abroad than within systems and structures at home. The speaker imparted stories close to home, of family or community members whose sacrifice had gone unacknowledged or been taken for granted, as their fight for civil rights or against discrimination on Canadian soil continued.

The speaker relayed one tale of Indigenous soldiers being asked to stand aside from their peers during a memorial ceremony, while the Prime Minister and dignitaries walked past. All the veterans present, except for the Indigenous ones, being given a chance to shake hands with the politicians. A gesture congruent with contemporary societal stratification.

I was sitting in the audience and could not help but draw parallels between the true accounts being relayed and all-too similar fictional narratives in Toni Morrison’s Home, in which the protagonist Frank (a black man) returns from the Korean War, the first desegregated conflict in American history, to a country that refuses to acknowledge his humanity. Morrison rushes us through Frank’s encounters with numerous characters as he tries to search for his sibling. She barely mentions race, because she does not have to; the behavior of institutions and the people they envelope make everyone’s ethnicities blatant. A simple run-in with police is jarring enough for the reader, as the passage is as representative of black tribulations in the 1950s as it is today.

The stories conveyed at the caucus came two days after we all learned of the election outcomes in the United States. The world’s second-largest democracy having undergone hundreds of votes for its new leader, its upper and lower houses of congress, numerous state governors, and dozens of binding referenda on issues from healthcare to criminal justice reform. The thread that the stories carry – of the historical and ongoing deployment of discrimination by those in power – lies deeply intertwined with history being written as the results of these elections continue to roll in.

To understand all of this is to not understand it at all. How did we get here?