Winning the past

Native author, artist and activist Gord Hill’s
The 500 Years of Resistance rewrites history he considers flawed

SOMETIMES, WE WIN: Gord Hill (L)

by HEATHER ROBB

History, we know, is written by the victors. And when it comes to the history of colonization in the Americas, the victors have tended to depict indigenous people as dead or dying—when they mention them at all. This is what motivated Gord Hill, a First Nations activist and graphic artist, to rewrite that history in his comic book The 500 Years of Resistance.

The book doesn’t wince at the brutality visited on Native people throughout history. The scalping, the small pox-infested blankets, the residential schools—it’s all there. But what’s also presented here —and what you won’t find in most history books—is a celebration of successful indigenous resistance.

Take the story of the Northwest coast during the late 18th century. 500 Years explains how Haida and Tlingit warriors held their own against European fur traders—annihilating ships and forts. (The book’s cover portrays a Tlingit warrior in full armour attacking a Russian settler during an assault on a Russian fort.)

“One of my main efforts is to raise the fighting spirit of indigenous peoples and to revitalize the warrior culture that was an important basis of indigenous society,” says Hill.

In more recent history, and on the other side of the country, the Oka Crisis—the 77-day armed standoff by Mohawk people in 1990, protesting the expansion of a golf course onto a Mohawk graveyard—is another event Hill celebrates as a victory because it set off a solidarity movement across the country.

“Altho’ the government and media portrayed the warriors as criminals + terrorists, many saw them as heroes defending their people,” he writes in the book, noting that the golf course was in fact never expanded.

Hill believes the comic format is ideal for this story because it is accessible to everyone, including native youth, whom he cites as his primary target audience for the book, along with other social sectors whom he hopes can learn from this history.

Though he started 500 Years in 2004, prior to that, Hill wrote a ’zine comic series called Zig Zag, which were short stories based on native myths and current struggles. He says he has no formal art training, but has been drawing all his life. He also carves, makes t-shirts and designs logos and banners.

It was indeed the Oka Crisis that originally inspired Hill to get involved in indigenous resistance— though his path there was certainly not a straight line. Born in 1968, Hill, who has Tlingit and Scottish ancestry, grew up in his people’s territory (the Kwakwaka’wakw nation on the northern part of Vancouver Island). He trained as an army cadet and even joined the reserves, but became politicized after moving to East Vancouver in 1986 (where he currently resides) and encountering punk music. He quit the reserves and took up with anarchist groups, eventually finding his way into the indigenous resistance movement—which he’s been devoted to for the last 20 years.

Most recently, Hill was involved in the “No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Land” campaign. He reflects that, while many claim that the concerns about criminalization of the poor and restrictions on civil liberties were exaggerated, it was pressure from the campaign that kept these restrictive measures under control. No 2010, he suggests, though too recent to be featured in 500 Years, should eventually go down in the history books as yet another victory in the resistance movement.

GORD HILL WILL BE SPEAKING ON
FRIDAY, MARCH 12 AT 6:30 P.M. AT
CONCORDIA’S DE SÈVE CINEMA (1400 DE
MAISONNEUVE W.) AS PART OF THE
OPENING PANEL OF THE STUDY IN
ACTION CONFERENCE. FOR MORE
INFORMATION, GO TO
QPIRGCONCORDIA.ORG/ STUDYINACTION.
THE 500 YEARS OF RESISTANCE COMIC
BOOK WILL BE PUBLISHED NEXT
MONTH BY ARSENAL PULP PRESS.