Dan Smoke’s youth was shaped by a home that had two front doors.
The home was Chiefswood, a stately meeting place between Settler and Haudenosaunee diplomats, during the nineteenth century. At Chiefswood, one front door faces the Grand River, to welcome visitors who came by canoe, while the other faces the road. As a physical place, it embodies the spirit of the Gaswéñdah, or two row wampum, the seventeenth-century diplomatic agreement set out between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch (then English), which still defines diplomacy with the Six Nations today.
This was not Dan’s childhood home but rather the place his mother Joyce worked, serving as the museum’s curator during the 1960s. In many ways, however, the home symbolizes the man who Dan became.
I first met Dan almost exactly eleven years ago. Since that time, we became friends and, as a historian, I learned much from him, especially about this region’s Indigenous histories, London’s history, and his own life. Alongside, Mary Lou, his partner for over 50 years, Dan worked tirelessly to help Canadians better understand Indigenous histories and cultures.
Dan and Mary Lou blazed the pathway towards the reconciliation moment that arrived in the mid-2010s. Though most Londoners will know them through their well-known program Smoke Signals on Radio Western, and its spin-off television spot on CTV London, Dan’s work began much earlier.
Dan came from a long line of Haudenosaunee knowledge keepers. His great, great, grandfather was John Arthur Gibson. Gibson played an important role in maintaining Haudenosaunee traditions at the end of the nineteenth century and has been remembered not only for upholding Haudenosaunee ways (recording the Great Law and other traditions onto wax cylinders) but also as someone who worked to build common ground between peoples.
Dan carried on these traditions. His formal schooling during the 1970s was at St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, and later Princeton University. During those years, a deep education took place, as he travelled extensively with the White Roots for Peace, an Akwesasne-based organization focused on promoting Traditional education, language, and culture. This is where Dan’s spirit was awakened.
Dan met his wife, Mary Lou in 1972 in Toronto, and together they arrived in London in 1977. Drawn here by opportunities at the N’Amerind Friendship Centre, Dan and Mary Lou saw London as a good place to raise their son. Shortly after arriving, Dan enrolled in the Indian Teachers Education Program, beginning a near 50-year relationship with Western University.
Opportunity knocked, however, in 1990. With the Oka Crisis, Dan and Mary Lou were invited onto Radio Western to talk about their experiences as Indigenous people in Canada. After a few interviews, Mario Circelli, the station manager at CHRW, offered the couple their own timeslot. Smoke Signals was born. Their show became Canada’s longest-running Indigenous campus radio program. The radio show led to a television spot in the late-1990s on CTV London and, by the mid-2000s, Dan and Mary Lou were teaching at Western and Fanshawe.
The undercurrent of these years was the tensions that flared up at Oka and Ipperwash. In 1991, Dan and Mary Lou helped plant a White Pine of Peace at the Forks of the Thames to remember what happened at Oka. Each year, they mark July 11 (the day the stand-off began) with ceremony. Continuing his work with the White Roots of Peace, for many decades Dan was at the forefront of ensuring Indigenous perspectives about Canada were shared broadly, and helping Canadians better understand Indigenous cultures, histories, and traditions.
As part of this work in the early 2000s, Dan and Mary Lou were formative in bringing about the Gathering of the Good Minds. This three-day festival brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to celebrate Indigenous Arts, Wisdom, and Culture. To make this idea a reality, Dan invited community organizations such as Wiiche Ke Yig, Museum London, Museum of Archeology, Nokee Kwe, N’Amerind Friendship Centre, and the London Children’s Museum. The Gathering of the Good Minds demonstrates Dan’s mission in life. He was someone who united people, lifting each other up and celebrating their traditions and cultures.
Later in life, Dan took up teaching. That was the context where I first met him, at the university. At that time, Dan and Mary Lou were teaching in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, as well as Brescia University College. By that point, the couple had received an honorary doctorate from Noble International Environmental Peace University; in 2022, they also received similar recognition from Western.
What is clear from all of this is Dan’s longstanding commitment to teaching and learning about his Haudenosaunee roots and their place on a continent dominated by newcomers. At a time when very few people were working to bridge settler Canadian and Indigenous perspectives on the world, Dan was at the microphone, hosting conferences, and teaching courses.
In this work, he served a role not unlike the building with which he grew up. Like Chiefswood itself, Dan served as a conduit for Indigenous and Settler peoples to come and learn from each other. With a year passed since he left us, it is now time for us to continue this work in his honour.
Thomas Peace 