At this point in her life,
highly honoured Ottawa-based Dr. Olive Dickason
continues to write ground-breaking material that gives
back to First Nations people the most important thing
they lost: their own history. Her own life has become
a metaphor for the bridge she has created between
First Nations communities and Canada.
Dickason is a Métis, born of French, English and First Nations ancestry. Her parents went broke in the Thirties and wound up living off the land in Northern Manitoba. To fend off starvation, Olive learned to fish, hunt and gather from her Métis mother. Learning was another form of hunger in Olive's life. She learned Greek, Latin and philosophy from a Scottish immigrant who moved into the bush nearby.
She became a protege of Fr. Athol Murray, founder of Notre Dame College in Wilcox, SK.. A Bachelor of Arts degree in hand, she pursued a career in journalism, winding up as the women's editor of The Globe and Mail. At 50, her children grown, (divorced, she had raised them on her own), she returned to her love of academic life, winding up at University of Ottawa where she began work toward her Masters and Doctoral degrees. She started out with an interest in French colonial history. She soon discovered her subject -- European-Amerindian contact history. It was the very stuff of her own genetic heritage.
There had never been a doctoral dissertation based on the premise of First Nations history. There was no specialist in Canada who could direct and adjudicate such a thesis. Olive cleared her way through it all, gathering aboriginal peoples' oral histories as well as unearthing volumes of texts in the archives of the erstwhile European colonizers, learning to read French and Spanish in the process. She published breakthrough books that have become curriculum texts across the country.
Her book The
Myth of the Savage (1984) looked at the
history of early contact between the French
and the aboriginal peoples of North and
South America. Canada's First Nations
(1992) rounded up the entire history pre-and
post-contact of Canadian First Nations
peoples.
Dickason believes that Canadians knowing and claiming this history will constitute a major enrichment of the country's national identity. Canada is much older than the 136 years since Confederation and all Canadians share both the tragic and beneficial results of a cross cultural encounter which began 500 years ago and continues to evolve today.
Dickason has
been honoured many times: the Order of
Canada, numerous honorary doctorates,
the First Nations Lifetime Achievement
Award, Métis woman of the Year
Award, the Sir John A. Macdonald
History Prize. She has an award named
after her: Dr. Olive Dickason Achiever
of the Year (University of Calgary
Native Studies). She is a sought-after
speaker and consultant. Industry
Canada invited her to explain the
current situation of First Nations
Canadians to its community of business
leaders. The CBC, in its recent
Canadian history project Canada: A
People History broadcast in the Fall
of 2000, hired her as aboriginal
peoples history consultant to advise
on the First Nations point of view in
Canadian colonial history.
Dickason is now in her 80s and working on a new book. She is a significant figure in Canadian history; a national treasure whose accomplishments and contribution will be honoured and disseminated in this timely documentary.
