Keeper'n Me (14 page)

“Right! Got it! Thanks! Boy, those other guys are sure gonna be surprised when I bless the water with a real sacred traditional Indian thing!” the tourist said, just shivering with delight.

All the way across the lake Gilbert could see the guy mumbling them words over and over and over with his head down, not looking around at the rest of them. Really getting into it. When they got to the little inlet where Gilbert just knew there was gonna be fish, the whole boat got busy rigging up for the first cast, except for Gilbert's student, who sat there looking back at my uncle all nervous and shaky.

“Get … it … right!” Gilbert mouthed real slow to him, and the tourist nodded his head.

“Guys? Guys?” he said finally to the rest of the boat, who all looked at him kinda aggravated on accounta they all wanted to have the first line in the water. “My friend here, our Ojibway Indian guide, has just taught me a very sacred Ojibway Indian blessing that's guaranteed to get us a successful day's fishing. Now, before we get all excited and just start fishing, I'd like to honor this trip, this boat, all of us and of course honor our Ojibway Indian hosts, by offering this blessing now.”

Well, I guess everyone was more than a little surprised and they all held up their casts while the guy leans out over the side of the boat with his hands palms down out over the water and his head leaned back with his eyes all scrunched together tight. Had his hands going in big wide sweeping circles real slow and meaningful for about a minute before he started to talk. His voice was real slow, real deep and real loud.

“O-WAH! TAH-GOO! FYE-AM!”
he said, his voice echoing back off the shoreline and spooking a couple deer a
hundred yards away. “
O-WAH! TAH-GOO! FYE-AM!
o-
WAH! TAH-GOO! FYE-AM!
”

By about the fifth time through, everyone was laughing so hard the boat was rocking and water was sloshing up into it. The guy suddenly realized what he was really saying and looked at his hands still stretched out in front of him palms down over the water, and stared and stared and stared while the rest of them, including Gilbert, just busted up laughing. After a while his shoulders started to shake and tears started rolling down his face as he busted up laughing too. They laughed and laughed for about ten minutes before anyone could breathe well enough to speak.

“Attaboy, Mitchum! Those pickerel are gonna be real hungry after a good laugh like that!” one of the others said through tears of laughter.

All through that day someone would suddenly start to smirking and choking back the laughter and the whole boat would erupt all over again. The guy was real good about it and told Gilbert to keep the fifty and they even tipped him another fifty when they all caught their limit that day. Even threw back lots, Gilbert said.

Needless to say, everyone around Kenny Keewatin's fire that night roared long and loud too.

Great story. You hear lotsa great stories around here. See, one of the things I caught onto real quick was the humor. Reason no one minds the welfare so much, or the government's empty promises, or the lack of lots of things, is on accounta they always find some funny way
of looking at it. They find a way to laugh about it. Keeper says that it's the way they've survived everything and still remained a culture. Lotsa Indian ways changed when the whiteman got here, lotsa people suffered, but they stayed alive on accounta they learned to deal with things by not taking them so damn serious all the time. Go anywhere where there's Indians and chances are you'll find them cracking up laughing over something. Humor's a big thing with Indians.

Another place other than the fires where they get together to tell stories is leaning on the railing down at Big Ed Keewatin's store. It's the very last building down where the hydro is, right across from the Doc's, and people are there night and day. Big Ed's called Big Ed on accounta he's about six foot three and three hundred pounds. Real gentle though and lets everyone have whatever they need on credit until cheque day comes. He's got about five kids and his family's real popular around here because they're all real kind and gentle. Anyway, the store is the big hangout and that's why there was so many people around the day the taxi let me off there. You could almost call it the center of White Dog life, and the Keewatins are pretty much always the first to know things when they happen around here.

So looking around on that rock each morning reconnects me to the life of this place and walking through it all alone helps me see it a whole lot different than I did that first day. Then, I figured I was on another planet. Now, this is the only place that makes sense. It took a
long time though. Keeper says all of us just get to a point where we're ready to really start seeing. For me I guess it started that night I met him at the cabin and my vision's been getting better and better ever since. I would have called the stuff lying around out here clutter and junk on accounta that's the way my eyes worked before I came here. But now I see it all as evidence of people living the way they wanna live. It all spells out home to me now and I'd miss every bit of it if I had to go away. Sure changed me lots. Like those people living down where the hydro is, I acted like parts of the outside world were pasted to me. It took hanging with Keeper and working into the rhythm of the people to peel it off.

According to Keeper there's two kinds of silences us men like to use more than anything sometimes. There's the smoldering, angry kind we use instead of our fists and there's the big, open embarrassed kind we fall into when our mouths can't move through the motions our hearts are going through. Learning how to work through both of them's likely the biggest struggle us men have, Indian or not. Keeper says the real warriors in our circles are the ones who never surrender to silence. Says the only stone-faced Indians doing any good out there are statues. Funny guy, that Keeper.

Anyway, I never gave that kinda thinking much attention until that first summer I was here. Learning how to fit in wasn't just a matter of landing here and being embraced into the community. No, sir. Us Indians
we learned through the years that not everyone that comes along is gonna be real trustworthy. People's history has a good way of teaching you that, especially when your history's full of broken promises and “government fooh-fah” as Chief Isaac puts it. Fooh-fah's not an Ojibway word but it should be, I figure. Anyway, our people can be pretty suspicious at times, especially when it comes to Indians walking around acting white—like me when I got here. Most people who knew about me were kind and good about it all but there were some who really wrestled with wondering whether I really belonged here and if I was still carrying around an Indian heart after all I'd been through.

Having an Indian heart's a pretty important thing. See, because nowadays not everyone's walking around wearing braids and buckskin. Us we got a lotta different looks and lifestyles on accounta the modern world has been creeping into our camps quieter'n your average Cree. So meeting an Indian's not as cut and dried as it used to be. Chief Isaac got a brushcut he's had for years and years. My brother Stanley wears his hair in a ponytail or braids now and again and the women have perms, braids, short hair or whatever. No one dresses a particular way either, from the chief's double-knit leisure suits to the old ladies' shawls and print dresses and gumboots. Go to the city and you'll find lotsa different-looking Indians walking around. We got punk rock Indians now, lawyer-looking brothers and sisters, cowboy Indians and the traditional-looking kind with braids
and beaded hide jackets. See them all at pow-wows when you go. Don't much matter what you look like nowadays but's still important to carry an Indian heart inside you. Lots don't. Lots surrender to the influence of the outside world and get thinking “pretty mainstream” as Stanley says. That's about when he launches into the philosophical rambles he likes to go on and starts explaining that “what you think is how you'll act, how you act is how you'll feel, an' how you feel is what you are” kinda fooh-fah. Not his fault. It's all that social work stuff he had to learn in school. Me, I'd rather listen to Keeper, but I love my brother and listen anyway.

Anyway, lotsa Indians nowadays get swallowed up in the influence of the outside and look like all-around brown but not carrying a brown heart anymore. Our people have a hard time accepting that and so have a hard time accepting those kinda people.

Keeper says there's a bunch of reasons why people go that way. Some, like me, got taken away and put into a whole different world and learned a whole different way. Others were put into the residential schools and learned how to be ashamed of their heritage on accounta the priests and nuns taught them from day one that they were dirty, stupid and helpless as Indians. Still others got kinda beat up around home on accounta their families were getting away from the traditional approach to being family and just walked away hurt and angry. Lots more got caught up in the booze and drugs and it sorta washed away all the Indian from their insides. Others
started out pretty strong as Indians but started gradually easing over to the mainstream by going through school, marrying non-Indians, working in non-Indian places, hanging out with other kindsa people, joining some kinda church and learning how to grab onto things other than smudge, pow-wow and prayer. Lotsa city Indians are like that now and it happens so gradual they aren't even aware it's happening until someone points it out to them. Keeper says the ones like me and the ones that changed gradual are the easiest to bring back, but the others all gotta work through their hurt, shame and anger before they really get back home to themselves. That's what's important really, Keeper says. Learning how to be what the Creator created you to be. Face your truth. Do that he says and three big things happen in your life. First, you learn how to be a good human being. Second, you learn how to be a good person, and in the process of learning that you learn how to be a good Indian. Can't happen the other way around on accounta you'd be so busy trying to be the ultimate Indian you'd kinda miss out on just being happy being a person. Going through the process is what gives you an Indian heart. Your insides in tune with your outside. Get that way and you can pretty much be anything you wanna be, live anywhere you wanna live, look any way you wanna look and you're still gonna have a true heart. An Indian heart. Funny guy, that Keeper.

Anyway, that's what scares people the most I guess. Walking around without a true heart makes you kinda
untrustworthy. On accounta history us Indians don't mix well with untrustworthy people. So I had my share of folks on White Dog and in the area looking at me with a kinda suspicious eye for a while. Some people used the language against me. They'd start talking away in Ojibway whenever I'd come along and be laughing away pretty good together. Me I'd always feel like it was me they were laughing at. Pretty soon though my ma got me to talking bits of Ojibway and that helped. She'd ask me for tea or something in Ojibway and point to what she wanted. Little things like that and it wasn't too long before I could hold small conversations. Jane would walk around with me and drill me on the names of things all the time, so that it wasn't too long either when I knew what people were referring to around me and I'd kinda get the drift of the talk. Soon as I started busting in on conversations people started to change.

Others just used silence and that probably hurt the most. Hard to figure where you stand with people when they won't recognize you in any way. I didn't mind the name calling I'd get every now and then, especially from the younger crowd, on accounta I'd grown up with that and kinda learned to ignore it. And I didn't mind the teasing I got when I didn't know how to do things that even the little tykes knew, like cleaning fish or starting up a fire right off. Once I learned or even showed some desire to ask someone to show me things all the teasing went away.

Got used to all of it and learned how to deal with lotsa different reactions from people. By the time that first summer was over I'd come a long way towards being comfortable with being here and being a White Dog Indian and most folks had gotten comfortable with me. There was a lotta laughing going on about something I'd done or tried to do, something I'd said all wrong or some way of behaving and even now those stories bring a lot of laughter.

That's why the stony silence coming from my brother Jackie was so hard to figure out. While the rest of my family just swallowed me up and took me in, Jackie sat on the edges of it all aloof and distant. He was bigger'n me and Stanley and it made me uneasy having him around on accounta he'd just stare at me most of the time and not say anything. He had a big, brooding silence whenever we were around together. After a while I think we just gave up trying to get through and we settled into that awkward kind of silence that can make strangers outta brothers.

We were sitting around the fire outside Ma's one night, Keeper'n me, Ma, Stanley, Jane, Jackie and my uncle Gilbert and auntie Mavis. Gilbert was showing us the new hand drum he'd made and Keeper decided he should show me how to sing a song with the thing.

“Yeah, Keeper,” Gilbert said with a laugh. “Time he learned our way of singin'. Gotta learn that we got a few good tunes of our own, us Indyuns.”

“I seen him dancin' around to that music he plays all the time an' kinda looks like he's got some Indian rhythm in him, all right,” Jane said, giving my bum a little tweak. “Moves them skinny little buns around pretty good.”

“Hey-yuh,” said Ma. “One of these days gonna teach him how to do a real dance. All boys gotta know how to do a jig, you know. You like fiddle, my boy?”

“I seen him eyeing up the Keewatin girls the other day,” Stanley said. “Kinda looked like he had fiddlin' around on his mind then, all right!”

Keeper laughed. “Wanna win a girl over you gotta know a good love song on the drum. These days our women want a sensitive man around. Drum's good for teachin' sensitive.”