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Aboriginal essays
These are stories that I collected as I talked to the elders and other people on reserves that I visited. What I have tried to do is present a different point of view to accepted aboriginal history and culture.
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| The Doukhobors |
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Tuesday, June 21 2005 @ 12:59 PM CST
By: Jack Funk
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The doukhobors is a group fascinating of people with an interesting history and culture. I was fortunate to have grown up in their communities. It is a trite and condescending to say -- some of my best friends over the years are doukhobors but it is also true.
The doukhobors (Dukhobortsy, Spirit Wrestlers)
Wednesday, June 28, 1939. Finally, school was almost over for the year. School was very boring. There was nothing new or interesting. We were just putting in time. Even the teachers were bored and listless. Like us, they wanted to get away, like us, we wanted to start their holidays. We had to be there until the last second had ticked off. We did endless exercises in spelling, arithmetic and grammar. It was all work that the students could correct themselves, y’know, write the answers to questions as the teacher asked them. When the questions were finished, you passed your work to the person behind you and the last person in the row brought their work to the student at the front. They, at least, got to stand up and move around. The teacher then called out the right answers and each student put down a check mark or an X, counted the number of each and wrote the total at the top in big numbers so the teacher could easily see them as she walked down the row. Then it started all over again. It was a tough routine. We looked forward to Friday which was the last day when we went to school to pick up our report cards and learn of our fate. I wasn't worried because I was pretty good in school, not exceptional like my sisters but good enough.
But that Wednesday, staying in school was exceptionally tough. This was the day when doukhobors from all over came to Blaine Lake. They met on a piece of land (about 2 acres) about 2 miles south east of town. This was a celebration of The Burning of the Arms of June 28, 1895 (explained later). Here they set up a big tent where they worshiped, discussed policy and ate watermelon.
It seemed that there was always trouble of some kind on these days and the police arrived in force. One year, an armed thief, not a doukhobor, was cornered in a haystack and shot -- dead. Another time, a policeman had been badly beaten while he was guarding some important papers in the house of a doukhobor leader. They had to bring in an ambulance plane to get him to a hospital. The plane landed in the field close to town. It was the first one we have ever seen. One day, there was a nudist parade which broke up just as I got there.
All this was exciting stuff! To be cooped up in school doing make-work was more than a growing boy should be asked to endure. But I’m getting too far ahead in my story.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the story of the doukhobors started before 1785. That was the year Archbishop Ambrosias of the Russian Orthodox Church, identified a group of dissident Russian peasants as heretics. He referred to them as Dukhobortsi. The term which literally means spirit wrestlers---the church official intended it as a derogatory label meaning these people were struggling against the Holy Spirit. The main concern of the authorities was the pacifist stand the doukhobors took, their refusal to bear arms and join the Army.
The name stuck and in the late 1800s, under the dynamic leadership of Peter Vasilevich (Lordly) Verigin, the doukhobors continued to resist and make trouble. A decisive statement against militarism and all forms of violence was made on one Easter Sunday when Matvey Lebedev and ten of his officers stationed at Elizavetpol, refused to go on parade, dropped their guns and tore off their military insignia. “War”, they said, “was incompatible with Christianity”. The soldiers were arrested, beaten into submission, threatened with death and sent to Siberia.
This was followed on June 28th, 1895 by the Burning of the Arms. That day the doukhobors took all of their weapons—guns, swords and spears, made a big pile and set it on fire. They gathered in thousands around the fire, singing hymns and praying. The czar heard what they were doing and sent his police (Cossacks) to stop them. When the doukhobors saw the Cossacks coming with their long bull whips, they huddled together. The women and children moved to the center of the group. The men turned their backs to the Cossacks ready to receive the lashing. The Cossacks rode around the group swinging their whips. These whips had metal tips which cut and tore at the flesh. The men rotated from the inside to the outside so that all the men took turns suffering the torment. They refused to meet the czar’s demands or fight back.
Novelist Leo Tolstoy and the Quakers brought international pressure to bear on the czar. He relented and allowed the doukhobors to emigrate. Their leader was Peter (Lordly) Verigin but he was exiled to Siberia. From there, he continued to send messages and instructions to the people living in Canada and elsewhere. Eventually he was released and came to Canada. In 1924 while traveling in British Columbia, a mysterious bomb blast killed him and and six fellow travelers. No one was held responsible for the bomb. The suspects included The Sons of Freedom, the Canadian government and his son, also Peter Verigin.
Son Peter came to Canada from Russia to claim the leadership. He was an autocratic leader. There were rumors of wine, women and song connected to him. He died in 1939. His body was carried by a special train to the various doukhobor communities on the prairies. I remember the day the train arrived in Blaine Lake.
Main street was a sea of people. The coffin was taken off the train, and like the waters of the Red Sea, the multitudes parted as the funeral procession made its way to the doukhobor Hall. There the body lay in state as the people filed past. In Verigin’s will and last statement he recommended that the doukhobors abandon communal life and adjust themselves to Canadian ways. The recommendations became a matter of deep concern within the doukhobor community. Two groups emerged.
On the one side, there were the Sons of Freedom who advocated complete freedom from government which included schools, taxes and anything else that could be construed as coming from government. They advocated keeping their children out of the school system and violent protest including bombing, fire and nudist demonstrations. On the other side, were the Orthodox doukhobors. They wanted private ownership, schools and integration with the existing community. They wanted nothing to do with violence.
The Blaine Lake doukhobors
The doukhobors had immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1898-99 to escape persecution for their beliefs and refusal to serve in the army or even own weapons. 1500 doukhobors from Kars, Russia settled on 324,800 acres reserved for their use. This was known as the Saskatchewan Colony. It was along the North Saskatchewan River between Langham and Blaine Lake. There they cleared the trees, planted grain fields and established 13 communal villages as well as gristmills, blacksmith shops, granaries and barns. By 1918, the reserve was closed down as the doukhobors had relocated to individual homesteads or moved to British Columbia.
Growing up in Blaine Lake meant interaction with doukhobors. The non-doukhobor people in Blaine Lake, especially we younger kids, met them with ridicule and prejudice. We made little or no effort to understand them or learn about them. As a term of derision, we called them “dukes”. We called the Ukrainians "ukes". All the people with a Slavic background were called "garlic eaters" (this was before the rest of society learned about the culinary and health attributes of garlic). The term "duke" was not a reference to nobility. On our social scale the doukhobors were near or at the bottom.
We knew that for most of them, their names ended with —off or —ov, sometimes --ove, that they spoke a Russian dialect, that their women were usually big and fat with long skirts and a babushka on their heads. The men wore black, loose fitting, rumpled outfits. In the winter, they all wore knee high felt boots with slip on rubbers. These were very practical footwear for winter in Saskatchewan but because it was their style none of us would wear them. They wore sweaters knit from wool carded and spun from the fleece of their own sheep. These were very warm and waterproof but they smelled especially when wet.
It was only after I grew up, learned to know them as individuals and did some reading, that I began to realize how wrong we had been. There was a quotation that a reporter recorded as she interviewed a member of the Sons of Freedom serving time in a prison for arson, bombing and manslaughter. As I read this so much of what I had seen and experienced as I grew up made sense. The prisoner said that this was what his grandfather had told him:
“It is my religious belief that we doukhobors came to Canada only for a time, to fulfill our mission, and the day will soon be at hand when we will leave Canada. I did not accept a homestead because I could not swear an oath of allegiance to no king or queen.
“We left Russia proclaiming ourselves citizens of the universe, recognizing Jesus Christ as the only King and his law as the only Law. All other laws are from the devil; throne and government are of the devil.”
These were people whose faith was so profound and unshakable that they were willing to face jail and even death to achieve the kind of world their faith told them was meant to be.
The doukhobors based their religious philosophy on the Law of God which consists of two commandments: "Recognize and love God -- the spiritual Force of Goodness and Creativity with all thy heart, mind and soul"; and secondly, "Love thy neighbour as thyself."
"What is God?" they are asked, to which they respond: "God is a word, God is spirit, God is love." "What is soul?", to which they say: "The soul of a person is the reflection of God's spirit in that person. Where there is love between people, that is where God dwells."
The newspapers told us of the devastation and fear that the Sons of Freedom visited on central British Columbia where they bombed power stations, burnt schools and their homes, held nudist parades and hunger strikes. The authorities reacted, arrested a lot of men and put them in the prison at Agassiz, BC. The children were forcibly rounded up and placed in a residential school where all contact with parents and community was cut off.
Years later, on a trip to British Columbia, our family made a detour to the Agassiz prison. We had heard that doukhobor men were incarcerated there. On the road allowance leading to the prison, the doukhobor women had set up a makeshift village so they could be near their husbands and sons. As we watched, a small group of doukhobor women went up the side of the hill where they had a good view of the prison yard, using white cloths and their own semaphore system sent messages to the prison.
Growing up, we knew nothing of the history of the doukhobors except that these were people who wouldn’t fight, eat meat, looked and acted strange. They were different. We thought it was fun to walk down the sidewalk four or five abreast, daring anyone we met to give way. The non-doukhobors just pushed us aside and told us to smarten up. Sometimes they even got a bit rough. The doukhobors meekly stepped off the sidewalk without a word or protest. This reinforced our perception that they were “dumb dukes”. We felt very superior. We called them names. This was my first encounter with prejudice and stereotypes but peer pressure wouldn't let me change. The experience left me very uncomfortable and uneasy. This didn't conform with the example that my parents set for me.
My parents treated the doukhobors with respect. They spoke their language. My father encouraged me to meet with them and took me to their services in the doukhobor Hall (Sabranya). We went to the pancake suppers where the doukhobor women served borscht, with homemade bread (baked in huge, clay ovens situated in some yards) and butter followed by huge (about 8 inches across), thin pancakes. On the pancakes we put syrup, sugar and cinnamon or homemade jam, rolled them up and ate them like a chocolate bar. The suppers, all you could eat, cost 25 cents. We always got our money’s worth.
When the doukhobors first came to the Blaine Lake district, they lived in caves dug into the banks of the river or ravines leading into the river. In this way a number of villages were established. They farmed communally and worked very hard. In order to break the land, and without horses or oxen, women were sometimes hitched to a walking plow.
Jim Greyeyes, a successful farmer on the nearby Muskeg Indian Reserve, each spring traveled with a couple of his helpers to the mountains to round up wild mustangs. When they had collected enough, they started back home breaking the horses as they traveled. As a result, this farmer had a lot of horses. One day he visited the doukhobor villages and saw the women pulling plows. He didn’t think this was right. He went back to his reserve and sent some horses to the village. Jim Greyeyes and a doukhobor elder became fast friends who visited back-and-forth. They were able to communicate even though the one could speak no Russian and the other could speak no Cree. The friendship continued for years.
The doukhobors had big gardens and many fruit trees. These were very necessary because the doukhobors were strict vegetarians.
Pacifism and nonviolence were the basis of their belief structure. In their religious services there were no hymn books nor Bibles. Everybody spoke or sang from memory. When they sang, one person led off and then the others joined in. They harmonized in that haunting but moving style that is typically Russian with its minor keys. The songs they sang were the Psalms put to music. There was no instrumental accompaniment. At the front of the meeting place, there was a simple table (altar) on which there was a loaf of bread, a pitcher of water and some salt. These were the symbols of life.
To repeat, each June 28, the anniversary of The Burning of The Arms Day, doukhobors from all over met on that small piece of land southeast of Blaine Lake. In this tent, they held religious services, discussed policy and ate watermelon.
I remember the watermelon because Dad brought them in truckloads for sale in the store. The driver and owner of the truck was Paul Dutchak. Paul hauled cattle to Saskatoon and then brought back groceries on his return. He always washed out his truck box before returning. The watermelons were packed in hay but the cattle smell lingered on. When the truck backed up to the front of Dad’s store, bystanders and I formed lines so we could move the watermelon from the truck to a pile in the store. Invariably, someone dropped a watermelon which would split open when it hit the floor. Of course, the work had to stop while we ate the watermelon - so it wouldn’t spoil.
As soon as the unloading was done, the selling started. There was always a customer waiting. The watermelons were priced at one dollar each. They weren’t sold by the pound. I remember one man and his two sons coming into the store. The father went around the pile of watermelon, tapping each one with his knuckle. This was something every customer did. I could never figure out why. It was part of the ritual. When the father heard the sound he was listening for, he pointed to it and one of the sons picked it up. This continued until each son had a watermelon and he had two for himself, one under each arm. Next, he went to the counter, set down his load, paid for the four watermelon and out they marched.
For a while, eating watermelon replaced eating sunflowers as the leisure food of choice in Blaine Lake. We had seed spitting contests both for distance and accuracy. Seed fights took the place of winter snowball fights but they weren’t as much fun. They didn’t have the same sting but you could load up a whole mouthful and make like a machine-gun. Watermelon seeds, when roasted, are very good.
At times, a group of us boys walked out to the meeting ground to see what was going on. We were given a piece of watermelon and told to get lost. But we hung around to see what was going to happen next. But everybody was speaking Russian which we didn't understand.
Policemen converged from all over on Blaine Lake. Usually we had two policemen regularly stationed in town. On St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Days we counted over 30 one year. They were everywhere—with their big guns on their hips. We always wondered how they could make a fast draw because their holsters were buttoned shut. In a shootout with Wild Bill Hitch*censored* or Wyatt Earp they wouldn't have a hope. On St. Peter's and St. Paul's days, there was always something to talk about.
One day the word went out that the doukhobors were holding a parade into town—a nudist parade. There was a crowd gathering at the edge of town and pretty soon, the parade of people could be seen coming down the road. As they got closer, I could see that they were in various stages of undress. The police formed a line across the road. When the parade reached the police, it came to a confused stop. The police handed out blankets and sheets to cover the paraders. Some refused but were forcibly covered. After awhile, the parade broke up and the excitement was over for the day.
Then war broke out. Young men volunteered for military duty. The doukhobor men didn’t. Then the telegrams began to arrive and resentment against the doukhobors grew. Many people couldn’t understand why some young men had to die and others didn’t. When the doukhobor young men came to town, they were called “yellow, chicken, cowards.” There was talk in the beer parlor about “teaching them a lesson,” but beyond a few confrontations on a Saturday night nothing much happened.
The war continued. Conscription became law. The young doukhobor men as conscientious objectors didn’t have to join up. They were told to report for alternative service programs but these orders were ignored. Then one day the police descended on the town and spread out into the countryside, looking for the doukhobor men. Using dogs, houses and barns were searched and by nightfall eight men were lodged in the village jail. The next day they were scheduled to be taken by train to Prince Albert. The streets filled up with people but the police formed a wedge around the prisoners and proceeded to the railway station. The crowd slowly gave way, singing and praying all the time. The train arrived and the prisoners were put on the train. Some women threw themselves in front of the train to prevent it from going. The police had to carry the women to one side. Slowly, the train pulled out of the station as a low moan rose from the crowd.
The young doukhobor men ended up in a work camp north of Prince Albert where they spent the war chopping down “snags” (dead trees) and making roads.
The war and conscription caused a fair amount of consternation in our family because many Mennonite men were in the same position as the doukhobor men. A young man in the church we attended in Laird joined the Army. He was excommunicated from the church. Paul was killed in the war.
In our family, my sister Anne joined the Air Force. She later married a Mennonite man who had joined the Army as a medical orderly. My oldest sister, Frieda, married an Air Force pilot. My sister Katie married a man who chose Alternative Service in a work camp.
The doukhobor culture changed in the years that I lived in Blaine Lake. The first major change took place before I was born when they rejected the communal way of life. They moved out of their villages and took up residence on their own homesteads.
In the beginning, they had been strict vegetarians. When they came to town to buy supplies, they brought their own lunch with them and ate gathered around their wagons or sleighs. Then I noticed that we sold baloney and garlic sausage (kobasa) to them. First, it was bread, sausage and a piece of cheese for lunch when they were in town. They used to eat in the hallway, just above the stairs to the basement, at the back of the store. If there were too many for this space, they moved into the storage shed behind the store. Any food that was left over was carefully wrapped and taken home. We never had to worry about goods being stolen. The doukhobors were very honest people. But we had other problems.
One day two doukhobor women were eating their lunch and visiting in the hallway at the back of the store. Apparently, the conversation became quite animated. Somehow, they both went tumbling down the stairs. We heard the commotion and ran to see what had happened. They were in a tangle of arms, skirts and legs at the bottom. It was at the bottom of the stairs where we kept empty boxes for customer orders. The boxes broke their fall, preventing serious injury. They were more embarrassed than hurt. We got them standing and they left. Dad got worried about liability so we put a bar across the open door. The bar kept getting in the way so it was retired after a few days. At least, our intentions were good. The bar was left standing beside the door as evidence of our good intentions. Our liability was never tested.
Apparently, it was OK for the doukhobors to eat sausage while in town. God's law didn't apply in the land of the unbelievers. But this restriction didn’t last. Soon, a coil of sausage or big chunk of baloney appeared in their order to be taken home. Then it was cans of Spam, Prem or Click, (these weren’t really meat) followed by ham and bacon.
They didn’t eat the chicken they raised because they couldn’t kill them. So they raised them for sale, alive, to the non-pacifist neighbors. But chickens running loose couldn’t compete with the slaughtered, plucked chickens from other producers. So they changed and as long as they were killing them, the next step was to eat them. Cows, pigs and sheep took a bit longer.
We were told that the doukhobors wouldn’t trap or kill gophers, that they live-trapped them and then released them across the river where the Mennonites lived. It was said that they wouldn’t even kill flies. They just shooed them outside. In the store, we sold coils of a sticky ribbon (fly catchers) that could be hung from the ceiling or almost anywhere. These coils came in cartridges about the size of a shotgun shell. And when the coils were pulled out, flies were attracted to them and stuck there where they died. The doukhobors used these and if the flies got stuck then that was God’s will.
The doukhobors in Blaine Lake strongly believed in education. When they had finished grade 8 in the rural school, they moved into town to complete high school. There was a time, in the history of the Blaine Lake school, when a person with a Russian name or accent found it impossible to get a teaching job in town. Steps were taken to discourage doukhobor young people from enrolling in high school. Fees were charged. Students were given lower marks. But in accordance with their belief structure, they didn’t fight. They persevered. Things began to change when doukhobors were elected to the school board.
From high school it was on to university or some other post-secondary form of training. They became teachers, lawyers, artists, politicians, doctors, farmers, merchants, electricians, plumbers, thieves, murderers or any other avocation, profession, career found in our society. They intermarried with other cultural groups. In other words, they became us. This could not be said of the Sons of Freedom in B.C. whose beliefs turned them into fanatics. They went on a crusade which included arson, nudist parades, murder and bombings. These Sons of Freedom are not to be confused with the orthodox doukhobors of Blaine Lake.
In Russia, the doukhobors had maintained their identity in spite of the persecution only to lose it after they had immigrated to tolerant Canada. The doukhobors were pacifists in the tradition of Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. These men would not fight or use violence regardless of the provocation. The power of nonviolent protest has been seen in the Mothers of Argentina patiently protesting the disappearance of their children or the overthrow of power in the Ukraine, Georgia and various other countries. The world needs all the examples it can get. The danger is that the believers become zealots, willing to die for their cause as long as some of the "enemy" die as well. It is the belief that "their book" tells them that they (as martyrs) will go to heaven while the nonbelievers will go to hell. This is the motivation that drives the suicide bombers in Iraq, Afghanistan and the cults in North America.
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