Thomas King's Lessons in History, Humour and Compassion

by: Craig and Marc Kielburger

The black and white photo is an almost cliché depiction of simpler, happier times. Two young boys, dressed up in Roy Rogers-esque cowboy duds. Ironically, both cowboys are actually Indians.

The photo grabbed my attention from the moment I arrived at the Guelph, Ont., home of Thomas King, one of North America's foremost aboriginal authors. King explained it was a childhood picture of himself and his brother. Like so many children, they loved to play cowboys and Indians. But no one--not the half-Cherokee brothers nor any of their native friends--ever wanted to play the part of the Indians.

It's one of the many personal stories King weaves into his award-winning book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America.

At 71, King describes himself as a "curmudgeon." But you can sense the idealist peeking through the gruff façade. A few weeks ago, when his neighbours' pipes froze, King spent days running buckets of water to the other houses on his street and lending out his shower.

I hung out with King for a day to prepare to defend The Inconvenient Indian on CBC's Canada Reads 2015 this coming week. It's my choice for the one book Canadians need to read this year, a book that breaks barriers.

With The Inconvenient Indian, King teaches us a history we thought we knew. (He reminds us that John Smith likely never had a relationship with Pocahontas, let alone sang forest duets with her.) He shows us what he calls the "arcs" of history--how events like the residential schools were not isolated incidents but part of a larger sustained thread of policies consciously designed to strip indigenous peoples of their identity to make it easier to take their land. A thread that continues today.

I know, it sounds like another dry, dusty history text, right? It's not. It's actually a good read, the kind of history book I wish I'd been assigned in school.

"Non-fiction tends to be dull. Non-fiction tends to not have a good sense of story. But it doesn't have to be that way," King said.

King's historical narrative is driven by stories, both light and dark. Some of the stories are his own--playing cowboys and Indians, and being intercepted by police, his car confiscated, when he and friends took a road trip to join an aboriginal protest march.

Some of the stories will make you laugh out loud. Like when King landed a part in a television commercial, tasked (of course) with playing the stereotypical native American, feathered headdress and all. He decided the Latino actor playing a cliché sombrero-clad Mexican looked more "Indian" than he did, while he looked more Mexican than the Latino. So the pair swapped costumes. No one noticed.

It's humour that makes King's history accessible.

He applies the same caustic wit that makes Jon Stewart and Rick Mercer so wildly entertaining. Describing how his years in residential school, while unpleasant, were not as bad as for other aboriginal youth, King writes: "But, all in all, it was minor stuff. Not much worse than you'd expect from a fraternity hazing. Or a mugging."

Over lunch at a Guelph cafe where King is a regular, I asked why he chose humour to deal with such difficult, often tragic, subjects. "You can't open up that wound and drain it with more tragedy. It fills up and then bursts," he explained.

"When you start laughing your defenses go down. You can get closer. I can get past people who put up those walls."

The most thought-provoking moment came when I asked King how we could make a difference for aboriginal peoples. He told me it starts with non-aboriginals being more compassionate--to each other. "Here's the problem in a nutshell: It's not that whites treat us poorly and have for centuries. Whites treat themselves so poorly," King said.

"We can't expect to make a difference until we are a whole lot kinder."

Words of wisdom from an author worth getting to know, and a fresh history worth reading.

Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger founded a platform for social change that includes the international charity, Free The Children, the social enterprise, Me to We, and the youth empowerment movement, We Day.

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