One Native Life (15 page)
Then, as I struggled to maintain my attention, I heard a voice. It said, very softly, “Shh.” That’s all. Shh. Grand-motherly, grandfatherly. Calming. Soothing. Settling. Shh. Be still.
I must have sat under that tree for a few hours, with my eyes closed. When I opened them and went to find Jack I felt rested, filled with energy and a sense of peace. When I told Jack this and asked him what the teaching was, he only smiled and said that it would come to me.
It did.
Jack passed away nearly sixteen years ago. He was leading a sweat lodge ceremony for inmates at a federal prison when he had a fatal heart attack. Even at the end he was giving, teaching, leading. When I heard I went out and listened to the trees.
It may have been only the wind I heard that day, the empty part of me reaching out for contact with my history, my people, my tribal self. But back then I needed to believe that there were voices in the trees, grandmothers and grandfathers with something vital to say. And the truth is that there are.
The web of life is a fragile thing, and every strand is necessary. If we believe that the voices of our ancestors speak to us through the trees, we will fight to protect them. Standing here, watching my friends die, I know that it’s the struggle to protect life that saves us. The beetle trees will stand as a symbol of what we gained through the struggle, not what we lost. Shh. Be quiet. Be still.
. . .
IN THE MOUNTAINS
the night sky is startlingly near. Darkness falls gradually here, and the first poke of stars over the southern ridge is cool as ice against the fading heat of the day. From our deck you feel pressed up against the sky as the rest of the stars emerge.
I love the sky. I always have. Friends sometimes have wondered at my tendency to gaze up at it during gaps in our conversation. “Like you’re waiting for the words to fall,” someone said one time, and he was far more accurate than he realized.
In the summer of 1989 I took a day trip with two friends into the foothills of southern Alberta. The drive out was wonderful. Van Morrison sang on the
CD
player, the windows were down and the coffee was hot and strong.
We drove to an area where the Sheep River tumbles out of the mountains. There’s a small falls, and we picnicked on the flat rocks at the side of it. After a spell of reading, drawing or simply looking at the landscape, we hiked along a trail that meandered beside the river.
Brian was a gifted fingerstyle guitar player who’d once lived in a tree house with a Cajun girl in Louisiana. During the Summer of Love he’d hitchhiked across the country with a cello. He’d been to Spain and France and Greece, and we had long conversations about everything from Dvořák and Son House to Marx and postmodern literature.
Kathy was a Maritimer who’d grown up in Saint John, New Brunswick. She was a small-town girl at heart, old-fashioned and loyal, with an insatiable curiosity about the world. She was an artist, or working hard at becoming one. She was tall, brown-eyed and beautiful, worn down some by the moves of men. She and I had tried to be lovers, but we were better suited as friends.
Each of us was in pursuit of a dream. For Brian it was a life of fulfillment through art and music. Kathy craved a home, a family, stability. Me, I was seeking definition as a native man and had vague hopes of writing, publishing, creating. It was our dreams that brought us together.
When evening came we found a firepit in a campground and prepared supper. None of us wanted to leave. As darkness fell, we began to tell a shared story around the fire. Each of us would tell part of it, then pass the story on to another who continued the thread. The story, about a man who got lost in the jungle, was vivid and wonderful.
It was late by the time we felt motivated to move. When the fire was doused, the darkness was complete, and we could feel the raw power of the land all around us. We walked wordlessly across the parking lot to the car. Driving out of the mountains, we kept the windows down so we could see the stars.
We’d just slid out onto the gentle roll of the grasslands when Brian told me to stop. After I pulled the car over he jumped out and ran a few steps into the field, gazing upwards at the sky. We joined him.
What we saw in that night sky was unforgettable. They were lights, four, maybe five, orange and red and yellow. As they moved across the sky, you could tell that they were closer than the stars. They changed directions. They changed speeds. Their brightness altered, and when they came together suddenly in a tight formation, then disappeared at supersonic speed, we heaved a collective breath. The sky was stiller, emptier, than before.
We sat there for a long time, wanting them to reappear. But they never did. Instead, the sky became a panorama of galaxies, planets and constellations. We watched it until our yawns signalled our need to be home. We didn’t speak for the rest of that drive. There were no words to describe what we’d seen.
Brian eventually disappeared in the direction of Montreal, and Kathy found her man and home and permanence. We haven’t seen each other in years. But somewhere, I know, they both look at the stars and remember that night. We’re all Star People. We’re all part of the cosmos, and the air we share is the first breath of Creation. That means we can never be separate. We’re kin, and sometimes it takes magic to show us that.
. . .
WHEN I WAS
in my late thirties I travelled to Temagami, Ontario, to attend a retreat for native men who had experienced cultural dislocation. We spent ten days reconnecting to traditional ways and teachings, guided by a team of elders and healers. Most of us were city dwellers, used to the pace of urban life. Most of us did not speak our language. None of us had ever directly faced the issues of our displacement.
As soon as we arrived we were paired up in tents. My tent mate, Paul, was a thirty-nine-year-old half-Cree man who’d been born in northern Quebec. He lived in Montreal, worked there as a pastry chef and had hardly been outside the city. Like me, he had been taken away from his people as a toddler. Unlike me, he had been in more than twenty foster homes by the time he was sixteen. He’d come to the camp to begin the journey back to tribal identity.
The first day of sessions we were asked to choose an animal name for the length of our stay. We were to tell the group why we had chosen that animal. I called myself Wandering Bear. I said that I admired the bear for his ability to live alone for great lengths of time, yet still enjoy family and togetherness.
When it came to Paul’s turn, he said that he was a skunk. He sat with his head down, staring at the ground, clasping and unclasping his fingers. He said he’d chosen a skunk because they’re scavengers, rooting around for whatever they can find.
“What’s lower than a skunk?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” one of the guides replied. “Two?”
From that day on Paul was Two Skunks.
In those ten days we learned to build fires without paper or matches. We learned to set gillnets, clean fish, shoot rapids in a canoe, snare rabbits, read animal tracks and make bows and arrows in the traditional manner. We each spent a night alone in the bush, building lean-tos from spruce boughs. We learned about the spiritual way that guided all those practices.
There were sweat lodge ceremonies, prayer and smudging circles, tobacco offerings, drumming circles and a lot of talk. Each of us spoke about growing up without a native identity. We shared stories of awkwardness, the struggle to fit in. We talked of where our trails had taken us and how we felt about where we’d been.
Two Skunks spoke so quietly we had to strain to hear him. Over the course of days he told us about the sexual abuse he’d suffered at the hands of a foster father. He’d never spent a whole year in any one home. When he was sixteen, old enough to be on his own, he went to the streets of Montreal. He sold himself there, to men. He drank and drugged. He stole and went to prison, where he sold himself again to survive.
He talked of hating his skin. He spoke of wanting sometimes to scrape it off. He felt betrayed by it. No one had given him any answers about where he came from, who his people were or who he was supposed to be. He spoke of never feeling honest or deserving or worthy. He spoke of the hole at the centre of his being.
But the elders took him in hand. They held healing ceremonies for him, which we all got to attend. They gave him permission to cry about it all, and he did. In the sweat lodge he prayed hard for the ability to forgive himself. Then he prayed for the forgiveness of those who had hurt him. At nights we talked quietly in our tent, and he spoke of the incredible feeling of light that was beginning to shine in him.
One day, he asked me to come along with him and an elder. We walked deep into the bush where Two Skunks made tobacco offerings and gave thanks for everything that had happened in his life. He thanked the universe for the gifts of those teachings. Then he put those offerings in the ground, returning them to earth, and sang a prayer song. I felt honoured to be there.
When the retreat was over we hugged and went our separate ways. He wrote me sporadically through the years. He joined a drum group in Montreal, started to learn his language and attended Talking Circles and sweat lodges every week. He wrote about feeling happy, about being connected, about finally feeling Indian.
Then one day a letter arrived from a woman who said she was Paul’s wife. She was Cree. They’d been married four years and had a young daughter named Rain. Two Skunks had died of complications from diabetes. He was only forty-four. But he’d become a traditional dancer and singer. He’d helped guide a traditional camp in her community, and he spoke his language fluently. When he died he was buried in the traditional way.
I sat with that letter in my hands for a long time. Then I went deep into the bush, returned it to earth and gave thanks for the teaching.
We heal each other by sharing the stories of our time here. We heal each other through love. In the Indian way, that means you leading me back to who I am. There’s no bigger gift, and all it takes is listening and hearing.
Ahow.
. . .
IN OUR HOME NOW
, the television is hardly ever on. There’s something about having the open land a step away that makes
TV
irrelevant. We watch the news, have our favourite couple of programs and I catch all the baseball games I can. But mainly, our
TV
is the picture window that looks out over the lake.
At night, walking with the dog down the gravel road, we can see many of our neighbours huddled in a ghostly blue glow. We return to our living room to read, talk and listen to music, everything from John Legend to Kitty Wells to Ravel and Buddy Guy. When the lights are low, that’s what we prefer.
In the winter of 1991, I got to meet Johnny Cash. I was an entertainment writer for the
Calgary Herald
then, but it wasn’t because of that I got to speak with him. It was because I was a native person. I wrote cultural columns for native papers. I’d sent the record company reps a handful of them and asked to talk to John when he came to town. He read them and agreed.
Johnny Cash was always concerned with the lives of native people. In 1964 he’d recorded an eight-song album called
Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian).
That ballad was a sad one, John said, and his songs reflected that. The “Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “Drums” and “The Vanishing Race” were powerful songs directing the listener to the plight of the Indian in contemporary North America.
Only country music fans know those songs, except for the Hayes tune. But John was never far from the cause of native rights. When he read my pieces he wanted to talk informally, off the record, to learn more about the native experience in this country.
We met in his hotel room. He was passing through on a tour with the Carter Family, and though I’d review the concert for the paper, we agreed that our conversation was not to be used. As it turned out, I couldn’t have done it justice.
The occasion sits in me like a dream. I was guided into the living room of his suite and he walked in, tall, angular, his hair still black and combed back, his obsidian eyes intelligent and soulful. He shook my hand warmly and said the famous words: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” Then he sat down across from me and we began to talk.
I told him about my life, my family’s tragic history and the joys and pains of reconnecting to my native identity. I told him about land claims, treaty rights, racism, bigotry, the ongoing work that’s required for a people to emancipate themselves. He nodded lots and asked pointed, articulate questions.
Eventually, he made his questions personal. He asked me how I felt about all those issues. He asked me how it felt to be in my skin every day. He asked me what dreams I had for myself and how hard they might be to realize as a native person in Canada. And he asked what I would change about myself if I could.
We talked about ceremony and spirituality. We talked of sweat lodges, sun dances, sacred pipes and prayer songs. We talked about the land and how allowing it to seep inside you is such a transcendent experience it is nearly impossible to express. He was an Indian, Johnny Cash, if not in blood then in sentiment and spirit.
He told me about the early influence of gospel on his music. He talked about the teachings he’d gleaned and how, in the end, returning to them saved his life. He spoke of love, family, loyalty, communication and forgiveness.
We need to bring back the living room, he said. There needs to be a time in every home when families gather to be together, to hear each other, to see each other, to be in community. There needs to be a time when harmony rules and we fill a room with our collective light.
It used to take a guitar to do it, he said. Then a radio made the living room a gathering place. When television came along, we started to look at something other than each other. We began to separate, and it affected every neighbourhood, every community.