Where Have All the Flowers Gone
by Gilbert Oskaboose

The time was the mid 60's, the place Wreck Bay, a windswept stretch of wind and sand and sea along the west coast of Vancouver Island.

In the blue sky above eagles and osprey turned and tumbled and screamed their defiance to the wind. In the grey seas below killer whales cruised for salmon, their huge glistening dorsal fins rising and falling in rhythmic silence through the offshore chop. A gang of gregarious harbour seals and a diminutive sea otter frolicked in the thundering surf that broke at my feet.

This was Paradise to a boy from the eastern woodlands. Days flew by and I learned to live in peace and harmony with the sea and the good earth. The streams were choked with salmon and when the tide went out the table was set. Evening rains and morning mists washed away the dust and pain of the distant provinces and in time I forgot about too many hard places and too many lonely roads leading nowhere.

But only the mountains live forever, the Grandfathers say.

They came down onto the beach one cold, rainy night, a small evil-smelling band of hippies, like so much flotsam discarded at high tide.

I found them huddled under a huge pile of sodden, storm-tossed sawlogs, trying vainly to ignite one with wet penny matches. Their childish delight, on discovering that I was "a genuine Indian", was matched only by the wonder displayed by jungle savages upon finding their first white man with a Bic lighter.

I was into survivalism at the time and had plenty of food to spare. I got a roaring fire going with cedar shavings and smaller logs, planked and barbecued some salmon, and started a huge pail of Dungeness crabs and razor clams steaming.

Their joy knew no bounds; neither did their appetites and deep appreciation at being rescued from hypothermia and imminent starvation.

They plied me with gifts: a plastic compass, a pocketknife, a strange tobacco they said brought visions and pieces of chocolate they had squirrelled away...apparently just in case their return to the land didn't pan out. They built a throne of driftwood and urged me to tell them scary tales of the deep woods in Ojibway Country and of the mystical and mysterious "Indian goings on" therein.

I came to like the flower children and to love the one their tribe called Windsong. But such things were not meant to be. We were people from two different worlds. To make a long story short I moved on in a few weeks, weary of their insufferable white middle-class mentalities and interminable childhoods [one pencil-marked the level of milk in her jug before she left for the day; others stole the milk and then used water to bring the level back up.] Others wanted me to "make a ceremony and give them "real Indian names." One loony wanted me to slash our wrists and become his blood brother.

They were in the market for some kind of a red messiah, Moses, Davy Crocket and Crazy Horse all rolled into one -- and prepared to lead them into the Promised Land. I told them Custer died for your sins already - and moved on into the mist, away from Paradise.