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[myessay-xyz-blog]

My Menno-Canadian Place

Ellaina Brown.

STDO-3680 Place and Placelessness

Sarah Ciurysek

     Yi-Fu Tuan says an arbitrary “space” becomes “place” because we “get to know it better and endow it with value” (6). “Place”, he says, “is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place”. If place is made through our increased familiarity to a space, then as we choose to become acquainted with people, places, and things, those choices create places. On the other hand, place is inherited; there are parts of ourselves that are handed to us. Through the framework of our given home, ethnicity, worldview and cultural context we become familiar with space: never completely independent of that history.

     I love Tuan’s explanation of space; it has stuck with me. As I place myself in history by identifying my ethnic background and the history of my physical locale, I am, in a sense, pausing in a great space to find place. Through this paper I have re-placed myself as a Mennonite person and in a culture shaped by a “Metis civilization” (John Ralston Saul). 

     I’ve known for most of my life that I am three-quarters Mennonite. However, until this year I never embraced this as my ethnicity. Mennonites, a distinct cultural group that came out of the Anabaptist-Christian movement following the Reformation, have a history of being on the move. Persecution scattered the Menno-sect resulting in my ancestors settling in Prussia. They withstood both persecution and assimilation. A “strong social-system” and “precise cultural identity” were understood as the necessary means for surviving as a minority in a strong Western host-society (Toews 120). They maintained a distinct language and segregated themselves for self-preservation. When they could no longer be promised freedom to practice the distinctiveness that defined their faith, particularly their commitment to non-violence and pacifism, they re-located.

     After Prussian government smelled of assimilation and started to impose limits on their freedoms, they moved to Russia. This was the birthplace of many of my great-great-grandparents, and even some great-grandparents. 

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     After resettling the Mennonites gained momentum and had agricultural success. They were called “colonials” because they successfully took from a new land and created a place as a sovereign group. With wealth came the ability to create their own churches, systems of education, even a business school to be completely self-sufficient and free to students. Although, this would not last as the political climate invariably shifted. 

     In 1870, conscription was mandated. Although Mennonites established a compromise, (“for many…such Legislation reflected the increasing government intolerance”) a new migration began, this time to the Americas (Toews 128). Many stayed until World War I, and as a German and Dutch-speaking minority in a country at war with Germany, they began to feel the pains of a country at war. 

     Mennonites who stayed in Russia through the Bolshevik Revolution endured severe persecution. Those who remained, “were totally demoralized in the wake of the violence, disease, and caprice which characterized their everyday lives” (Toews 136).

     Letters were sent back to the Mennonites of the Americas depicting the loss of identity: “without land, machinery…the farmer had no sense of direction”. Another letter, which particularly struck me, said “we hardly understand ourselves, we hardly recognize ourselves: are we this or is it a bad dream…Life appears empty” (ibid). 

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     I have never been in that place. It may even confuse me. But in terms of placing myself, this history shaped the lives of my grandparents, my parents, and ultimately me as well. Religiously, I was raised in a Mennonite Church. Morally, non-violence was valued. I am part evangelist as the Mennonites: I have a heart to cast vision and bring others alongside that vision. I seek community and I believe hard-work and adaptability are key to prosperity and survival. Do I locate these parts of me in this historic place? This ethnic place? What about the parts of me that have no ties with this people-group? 

     In an interview/conversation with my parents, we spoke about the idea of Mennonite Ethnicity. Neither of them fully identified with that statement, because both they and their parents worked, in part, to break-away from the Mennonite Brethren tradition. Specifically, they sought separation from the strictness and rigidity of rules characteristic of the Mennonite Brethren Denomination (a sectarian group that broke off in Russia in the 1800’s). My grandparents and parents took a more liberal stance then their Mennonite-Brethren Communities, most likely seen to many as conformity to the dominant Anglo-Saxon British-Western culture. Low-German ceased with my Grandparents generation along with the majority of Mennonite cuisine and other such cultural identifiers. What remained was the Anabaptist roots; peace, non-violence and voluntary baptism into a faith-based community. These were the foundations of the Anabaptist beliefs, along with values of hard work, adaptability, and a loyal community (Brown, Linda, and Brown, Darryl. Interview). 

     Although my ethnicity gives me a sense of the place of my personhood, my geographic location, the Prairies, (having lived in numerous cities in Saskatchewan and now Winnipeg, Manitoba) is also significant. The relationship my ancestors, the people of my ethnicity, have had with the land is a significant one in the Canadian story today. 

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     The agricultural skills of the Mennonites were well-known to the British empire, who sought to boost the economy of the newly-established Canadian Nation. Agriculture was a “progressive” and productive use of the land, at least so far as the British were concerned. Mennonites would help the nation prosper agriculturally, which conformed to the Western idea of proper development of civilization (Saul, Chapter 6). In this way, Mennonites were the arm of colonialism, as they were in Prussia and Russia.

     Calvin Redekop's study of the Mennonites found their emigration to Canada was also a displacement of Indigenous Peoples. He notes that “it is concluded by Mennonites, by virtue of their belief system and practice, [that they] did not overtly displace natives, but rather followed another form—‘Co-existence of the groups’ with ‘symbiosis as the normal outcome” (Redekop 1). Because they kept to themselves and valued peace, Mennonites didn’t think they were violating anyone. However, even though the Canadian Government gave them the land, they were not seeing the people they displaced to gain access to this new land. 

     In the Southern Manitoba region, Metis farmers filed claims (ex. Charlie Grant, a well-known helpful and welcoming local settler) to keep their farms and their lands. Histories speak about “Indian/Metis resistance to give up lands” and a “block settlement” of the Mennonites which “may have interfered with the allocation of land which had been given to the native Indian and Metis settlers” (Redekop 76). There were racial stigmas toward Indigenous people groups among Mennonite. Mennonite Author Rudy Wiebe (who himself lived in a Mennonite community in rural Saskatchewan in the mid 20th century) writes with historical criticism and invites his readers to understand the racial stigmatization's present at the time through his book Peace Shall Destroy Many (set in 1944). 

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     The Mennonite people have rationalized their right to Canadian lands as supporting the nation to finish what it started (Redekop 83). This was, nonetheless, seen in 1948 as a violation of the UN’s declaration of Human Rights (article 7 and article 17). 

     The space given to the Mennonites was also a dispossession of others’ place. And those who once lived there were rationalized into invisibility. This has certainly been my experience in the communities I’ve found myself in, and was a blindness that I continue to recognize in myself. Indigenous nations were not something we talked about nor who's histories we were educated in, even though the First Nations are the foundational people of this place. My place-making was made without these Nations even on my radar. This is also part of the place I am from, a place I still need to recognize, in all its complexities. 

     Some Mennonites who I encountered in my twenties fought against attitudes that made Indigenous peoples invisible (the food for colonialism). Groups like the Mennonite Central Committee took peace-building and non-violence very practically in relation to the UN’s declaration of human rights and found themselves beginning to empathize with the assimilation, genocide and violence of the government’s actions. They realized the government at the time was attempting to destroy First Nations culture, perhaps because it was something they recognized in their own Mennonite history. Restorative Justice, a non-retributive model of understanding Justice that is characteristic of a more relational and kin-based worldview, became central to the Mennonite understanding of justice. In Manitoba, MCC supported the Church coalition to support the Northern Flood Committee. Peace work and non-violence started to look more like friendship. 

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     It seems that some Mennonites are starting to recognize their ascension to power, no longer seeing themselves as the most vulnerable group, and, at least in my experience, taking the place of a student. The Mennonites I encountered and read about who exemplified this new form of peace-making see their place differently, and I am learning to see my place along with them.

     Being placed as a Mennonite Canadian gives me a greater sense of understanding. Finding connection with my history and people gives me a sense of home. However, there is another history I can’t ignore if I am to place myself as a Canadian in Manitoba; the history of this land. 

     In “A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada”, John Ralston Saul dedicates a quarter of his book to the idea of a Metis Civilization. He attributes the heart of Canadian identity, all that makes us a unique nation, the underpinning of our culture as a nation, as “Metis”. He says; “When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities-how we treat one another…what I find is deeply Aboriginal”. As Canadians we pride ourselves on our ability to be inclusive, to accept immigrants, to be not a melting-pot but a Mosaic; a civilization that expands and adapts to those who come. Where did this idea come from? 

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     When the fur trade began, and contact with the Indigenous people was made, it was unlike any other European colony relationship from the “sixteenth to the ninetieth century” (Saul 10). The host culture welcomed newcomers, not because they were threatened by them, but because the disposition of the Indigenous cultures was that of welcome and sharing. They made friends and helped one-another. We cannot ignore the fact that this trade market was the beginnings of what turned out to be, centuries later, not only a disruption but a harmful colonial force, but from the “seventeenth century on, the Scots from the late seventeenth century…the German religious minorities from the eighteenth century on— all settled here in difficult, isolating circumstances, and made their way, thanks to the First Nations and later the Metis. Their relationships evolved over time, often for the worse. But it was a slow evolution; a matter of centuries. Ways of relating to the other and ways of doing things settled in, became habit, became culture,” (Saul 57). 

     On this land, before colonial power dominated, their was a relationship that made room for the other. A culture that decided to expanded the circle of ones space to include others as we became familiar with newcomers. My people stepped onto something that had already been in motion, a Metis nation. I do not want to appropriate this Metis identity or claim entitlement to it in any way. Blindspots will always be a part of my place, and I need to recognize the vastly distinct context with which we were handed. But I also want to recognize that the birth of a nation out of collaboration and shared interest that was established for centuries is the kind of place that made it possible for the Mennonites to find freedom. Because of a Metis civilization, I feel that my people have come to truly understand peace. The attitude of friendship took root in the nations fabric, even though years of colonialism and government control and blindness of power tried to erase this history from our place. It was resilient. Perhaps there are other reasons to describe our unique response to globalization, but the exchange and widening of the circle, the recognition of kinship in the other, is something I want to continue to familiarize myself with as this space, this treaty land, is where I am placed. 

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Works Cited

Brown, Linda, and Brown, Darryl. Interview by Ellaina Brown. Personal interview. Winnipeg, May 12, 2017.

Hamm, Peter M. Continuity and Change Among Canadian Mennonite Brethren. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006.

Redekop, Calvin. "Mennonite Displacement of Indigenous Peoples: An Historical and Sociological Analysis." Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 14, no. 2 (1982): 71-90.

Saul, John Ralston. A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Penguin Canada, 2009.

Schlichtmann, Hansgeorg. “Ethnic Themes in Geographical Research on Western Canada.” Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 9 (2): 9.

Toews, John B. 1970. "Russian Mennonites in Canada: Some Background Aspects." Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 2 (2): 117.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 1977.

Wiebe, Rudy. Peace Shall Destroy Many. Vintage Canada, 2001.

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