"The most famous clown was a woman who wasn't even one of us. She lived on the other side of the island with the Salish people. Or maybe it was the Cowichan, I guess I'm not too clear about that. Must be gettin' old. Anyway, this woman had been a clown all her life. Ever since she was a girl she'd been able to imitate people, how they walked, how they talked, so she was trained to do it properly for the right reasons, not just to get attention."
"The Christian people were dividin' up the island. This bunch got this part and another bunch got another part, and they built their churches and set about gettin' us into them. There's people say that it used to be the Indians had the land and white man had the Bible, now the Indians got the Bible and the white man's got the land, and when you look at it, that's not far from wrong, except lots of us don't even got the bible. Anyway, the'd built this stone church on a hill, with a ross on top of it pointin' up at the sky, and the preacher, he was gettin' people to come by by givin' out little pictures and mirrors and such, things we didn't have. Might not seem like much now, a mirror, but they were as rare as diamonds, and it's bein' rare makes a thing worth a lot. Like roses are worth more than dandelions because there aren't as many of them, but they're both flowers."
"So the people started goin' to this church, and pretty soon it was just like the same old story. They started gettin' told what to do, and what to wear, and how to live, and this particular preacher, he was big on what they ought to wear. He didn't want the men wearin' kilts, he wanted 'em in pants, and he didn't want the women in anythin' but long dresses that covered'em completely. And he kept tellin' everyone to learn to live like the white man, dress like the white man."
"Well, one Sunday didn't the clown show up. She was wearin' a big black hat, just like a white man, and a black jacket, just like the white man, and old rundown shoes some white man had thrown away. And nothin' else."
"Well, the white preacher, he just about had a fit! Here's this woman more naked than not, walkin' into his church, and what's worse, the people in the church are all lookin' ather real respectful, not mockin' her or laughin' or coverin' their eyes so they wouldn' see her nakedness. And she moved to the very front and sat there and waited for the church service to start."
"Well, that preacher, he ranted and raved about nakedness, and naked women, and sin, and havin' respect for God, and then he came down from that pulpit and he grabbed ahold of that clown to throw her out on her bum."
"The people just about ripped him apart. You don't put violent hands on a clown! But the clown, she stopped them from hurtin' him, and then she went up to the front where he'd been, and she spoke to the people in their own language. She said we were all brothers and sisters because we all had Copper Woman as first mother, and were all descended from the four couples who left after the flood. And she said different people had different ways of doin' things, and that didn't mean any one way was Right or any other way was Wrong, it just meant all ways were different. And she said we ought to think how we'd feel if we were far from home, to put ourselves in the white man's place, how would we feel if there were only a few brown faces and lots of white ones, because maybe the preacher felt that way about bein' almost alone with us. And she said that just because he'd done a forbidden thing and got violent with a clown didn't mean that we ought to get jut as mixed up and do a forbidden thing like get violent with a religious man. And she said we all had to find our own way in the world, we all had to find what was true, and what Meant somethin'. She said there was more than one kind of mirror."
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