Doukhobors (and one more item about Canuck)

[Mike Cleven]

At 09:30 PM 2/13/99 -0800, Liland Brajant ROS' wrote:
>>
>>>>Footnote 2 mentions the possible connection of "Kanaka" with "Canuck"
>>>>(originally 'an epithet for a dark-skinned French-Canadian of
>>>part->Indian descent on the frontier').  Later the term, as the papers
>>>>notes, became general for all Canadians.

The further item about "Canuck" is that it was borrowed from the public
argot by the government in the creation of a propaganda hero for Canada, I
think around the time of the First World War - "Johnny Canuck", and ever
after the term (in Canada if not in the US) has been increasingly
associated with English Canadians more than French; of late I'd even say it
has somewhat redneck or 'hoser' connotations......

>>>>
>>>>May I note that many people in the Spokane, Washington area at >least,
>>>use the term "Doukhobor" [du*k at bor] in a similar way.  No >time to
>>>define the term now, so I'll apologize, rrun, and point you >to the
>>>encyclopedia.
>>>
>>>You mean they say "Doukhobor" to mean "swarthy Quebecker with Native
>>>forebears" or to mean "any Canadian"?  (Either usage strikes my
>>>Seattle-molded brain as just weird; I would *never* guess either from
>>>*any* imaginable context!)  I thought Doukhobors were nonconformist
>>>Slavic Canadians whose Christianity tended towards nudity.
>>>
>>>huy? (in both the Lushootseed and the English senses!)

Yikes! (in the English sense).......ok here's a "short" history:

The Doukhobors are an extraordinarly unique group of people, and fall into
three factions, the most radical of which - the Sons of Freedom, or
Freedomites - have the thing about nudity that you mention (plus a few
other unique "traditions" that I'll get to in a minute).  I heartily
recommend to all our American friends in this list to look up George
Woodcock's book entitled simply "The Doukhobors" (and to avoid Simma Holt's
sensationalist mid-1960s book on the same subject) for the full background
on this very special community.  All of us up here in BC know at least some
of their story, and they really are uniquely Northwest (in fact, they now
exist nowhere else in the world but here).  According to what I've heard,
the Sinixt (the old Arrow Lakes Salish, now surviving only in the US) and
the Ktunaxa elders regard them as a "real people", another tribe, equally a
victim of the larger society that has sought to overwhelm them, and a
recognizably deeply spiritual people........

Their origins are murky, but they are believed to be an offshoot of the
Bogomil sect of the Medieval Balkans, whose anabaptist fervor of direct
revelation and a Christ-like life also had a western offshoot in the form
of the Cathars (the Albigensian Heresy).  When the Bogomils were crushed by
the power of the Orthodox Church (then controlled by the neo-Byzantine
Bulgarian Empire, IIRC), the refugees fled in several directions, two big
chunks finding their way respectively to southern France (hence the
Cathars) and the Don-Volga region of what was then the Khanate of the
Golden Horde (a Mongol satrap fallen under the domination of the Ottomans
by then, I think).  Once the region they had settled in was annexed by the
Tsar of All the Russias (Catherine II, or one of her immediate
predecessors), the Orthodox authorities of the Russian Empire found they
had a new population of repossessed heretics to persecute, which is what
they immediately set about doing.  Anabaptism is dangerous to centralized
religious authority (and government) because it denounces both hierarchy
and property, and dispenses with the role of the church (or emperor, as in
Orthodoxy) as the intermediary between mankind and salvation; for
anabaptists, the path to salvation is in a holy life and personal contact
with the Divine - heaven now, not later.  The Orthodox Church denounced the
anabaptists as "spirit wrestlers" - doukhobori - a name which was quickly
and bravely adopted and proudly worn by the community ever afterwards
(although their official name is "The Union of Spiritual Communities of
Christ").

They somehow survived the oppression of the Russian state and church long
enough to fall under the patronage of Count Leo Tolstoy, who was impressed
with their pacifism and communal way of life.  With the rise of Russian
nationalism in the last decades of the Tsardom, Tolstoy arranged for them
to emigrate to Canada, sponsoring the travel expenses of the group and
paying the necessary bribes )to get emigration permits from the Russian
state).  The Canadian government gave them several districts in
Saskatchewan and made some promises about religious freedom and education
guarantees and the like, but the conflict between central government and
the reality of the Doukhobor creed quickly set in.  Traditional Doukhobor
communities are heavily communal, with no real concept of property.
Children were raised communally, usually by a quasi-apostolic "family" of
12 fathers and 12 mothers per communal house, and segregation of the adult
sexes in separate houses is another feature of the lifestyle of what came
to be called (ironically enough) Orthodox Doukhobors.  As no money was
earned and land was not held to have value or be owned by anyone, the
Doukhobors wound up in inevitable disagreements with the taxation
authorities, and with the intention of the Canadian government to put their
children through "proper" schools.  The communities began to split into
three factions - the Orthodox, the Reformed, and the Sons of Freedom.  The
Reformed sought to adapt their belief to the ways of the New World, and
softened a lot of the "hard-line" traditions of the Orthodox, abandoning
the "old country" way of dress and giving up the communal lifestyle.  The
radical traditionalists, however, abandoned their pacifism and took the
Doukhobor belief system to its maximum - property was regarded as a sin (of
pride), technology as the devil's work.  Reform Doukhobors in particular
became targets for the activities of the Freedomites, who typically would
show up at someone's house (often a cousin, even a sibling), remove the
people from the house, take off all their clothes, and burn down the house
and all that was in it, to return themselves to the condition they were
born into the world in.  As shocking as this is to other Canadians, to the
Doukhobor this was considered a holy act, nudity itself being holy and
poverty the natural condition of mankind in heaven.  The image of
incredibly fat ladies standing handcuffed (by the police) in front of
burning houses became indelibly impressed on the public imagination in
Canada; especially once the print media began to get good photos....

Needless to say, the authorities were not particularly impressed.  I can't
remember the details, but sometime within a decade or two of arriving in
Canada, the Doukhobors began a "long march" to the then-desolate wilds of
southeastern British Columbia (only just recently depopulated by smallpox
and other diseases), taking up residence in the maze of valleys limning the
American border from Kootenay Lake westwards as far as the rim of the
plateau above the Okanagan Valley (the top of that summit on Highway 3 is
still known as Anarchist Mountain).  It was there that the three-way
division of the community intensified, with the activities of the
Freedomites escalating, but the community as a whole prospering and growing
rapidly in population (Doukhobors tend to have large families, carnal
knowledge not being regarded as a sin but rather as an act of God.....).
The Orthodox found various remote mountain valleys, and to this day
travellers on the backroads in the region between Highway 3 and Highway 6
will come across old Doukhobor farmsteads, with their massive main houses
and plush orchards; there may even still be some Orthodox communes out
there somewhere (where the hippies haven't taken over, perhaps).  By the
late 1950s and early 1960s, the Freedomites had radicalized to a fanatical
degree, with bombings of powerlines and other industrial facilities added
to the regular burning of houses; there was a conspiracy to blow up the
Duncan Dam, IIRC.  Mass arrests were made, including that of one of the
principal leaders of the sect (I think it was Peter "the Lordly" Verigin,
who may have only been Orthodox, and not a Freedomite himself), on charges
of bombing, terrorism, etc.  What is today Kent Institution (BC's toughest
jail) was founded as Agassiz Mountain Prison, miles away from the Kootenay
country, built especially to house the Freedomite terrorists and other
arrested Doukhobors.

A huge encampment grew at the gates of the prison; tens of thousands
(?Terry?Barbara?) of Doukhobors built a tenemant camp of tarpaper and scrap
lumber, holding vigil outside the prison.  I remember going out there; my
Dad had reason to speak to one of the elders in the camp, and it was like
entering something you see on the news from Bosnia or Kosovo; incredible
poverty, what seemed to be filth (but probably wasn't) and hordes of
children and strangely-dressed adults.

In the years since, Doukhobor-dom has settled down, although I believe
there is always the risk of a Freedomite revival.  Most Doukhobors are in
the "Reform" category now, I think, and towns such as Grand Forks,
Christina Lake, Castelgar, and Creston are likely to dish up some of the
best borscht and perogies you'll find this side of the Dniester.  A special
dialect of Russian is spoken widely in the West Kootenay, and I think
Russian is an elective in the local public school system.  Doukhobors are
something like Mennonites in their reputation for charitable acts and
community-mindedness (though nowhere near as puritanical!) as well as their
staunch support for democracy and human rights - and for their own
children, no matter what kind of trouble they get into ('nuff said!).
Needless to say, they tend to vote NDP (socialist) and are hard-core
environmentalists, especially when it comes to battles with the
hydroelectric companies over new dams and powerlines.......still great
farmers and orchardists.......

I suspect that David Robertson has been up to the West Kootenay, but I
recommend that any of the rest of you who haven't consider it for a short
holiday; all the small towns are interesting (there was a huge D.D. - draft
dodger - exile population, meaning lots of hippie-type restaurants, great
music, funky stores and craftspeople) and the scenery of the Boundary
District (Greenwood-Grand Forks), the "Silvery Slocan" and Kootenay Lake is
some of the pretties in the province.......and the borscht at the Yale
Hotel in Grand Forks is utterly phenomenal!

Mike