Harold Eustache

Harold Eustache at his home.

Harold Eustache is a Simpcw elder. I spoke with him at his new double-wide trailer that he'd had brought on to his land. His property looks out across the land that he was born and that he's come to retire on.

I spoke with him on many topic and he had some ideas that challenged a lot of what I have been hearing from other people.

Here are some excerpts of what he had to say on a number of different topics:

About band run schools:

“I think the idea’s a good one. I think not necessarily teaching the culture and language, I think they’re getting better formal education because there’s not so many students and they can concentrate a lot on education.”

‘When the Europeans came and the priests and that and they put us on these reservations and so people could be themselves starting way back when and I don’t think evolution hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot towards amalgamation or assimilation. We still, in the back of my mind I’m still who I am because I learned through years of psychiatry so we could be ourselves here, we could laugh and talk and be just be us, be native and so it does become a sanctuary because of the prejudice and that that does go on out there. Some people say, ‘I can’t, I can’t take that. I can’t take the criticism. I can’t take the fact that as long as I’m an Indian, I can’t move up on the ladder of success. I will always be down here, I will always be just piling lumber,’ and regardless of how hard you try, there was even your friends and this was what happened to me like there’s a lot of bigots...so it is sanctuary even now. A lot of young people went out and got professional trades out in the out there away from the reservation, they got educated, and they trades and that and then come out of these trade schools with really really good recommendations, really good grades and everything but they couldn’t handle living out there.”

“Being responsible, that’s where I fell down too”

“People looked after people, the whole community took care of everybody and believe me if you didn’t do any of the work, didn’t do any of the hunting, didn’t do any of the whatever and whatever out there, well they told you, your father or whatever told you, ‘hey look at it, you got to pull your weight around here,” and that was not a problem and then the Indian agents came along and then they looked after the people, they looked after the people...when the Indian agency shut down in Kamloops, they moved it onto the reserve so now we’ve got a band manager, we’ve got chief and council... they’re still being taken care of.”

On the TRU house, The Gathering Place, where he worked as an elder:

“All they’ve done is made another reservation on the campus... and what that house does is it gives them sanctuary. If you have problems with students back here... so they come running back to the house and complain to the elders or complain to someone else...my thoughts are that house down there should be just initiation time for the students of these reservation to go to for the first year. We’re going to initiate you, teach you where the campus is, how to go to your student adviser, how to get your books, how to do this and then do your application on your own instead of having someone do it from the house... figure out what you want and go get the damn thing on your own after the first year.”

On self-government:

“Self-government... we have to learn how to survive outside of the reservation before we can learn to live inside the reservation. Self-government. Do we have the education, the leadership (pause)? I don’t think so. They’re trying to do something here that’s similar to self-government. They’re doing their health program. And they’re going about it in a way that lead to eventually eventually down the road to self-government. They’re taking over their health department and their education department and they’re learning and they’re practicing and I think that’s a good idea but I think a lot of the children should leave, a lot of the children should go out there and join society”

“It’s going to take the stroke of a pen in the next 10-15 year and then there’s going to be a prime minister there that’s going to say, ‘OK, we’re done. We’ve paid you for what we’ve took.” And in a place like this what are we going to do for industry. What in this man’s earth would bring you back here, you go to school for 10 years, five, six years, why would you come back here? There’s nothing here. The survival of the people here ant he people who are surviving here all work at that band office. There’s nothing here. There’s no industry. I can’t even borrow money on my land because it’s Federal land.”