Noopiming

by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

  Everyone thinks the Ancestors have all the answers, but sometimes, most times, it takes more.

  Sabe

  Sabe keeps their special things wrapped in red cloth safety-pinned to their undershirt:

  tiny piece of flat cedar

  single strand of sweetgrass

  pinch of tobacco

  Akiwenzii

  Akiwenzii lives on the reserve in a cabin they built for themselves. It is beside the dump, but it is a good-sized piece of land with places for ceremony and sugar-making and the trees are friendly. They have another cabin in the northern part of the treaty area for hunting, and this is really where Akiwenzii is at their best. Sometimes we go there to think.

  Mostly Akiwenzii is real quiet when we go there. Just sits there looking bored, and not saying much. They get bored in town and even in the cabin, where basic life chores don’t take up much time. Akiwenzii is better out in the bush in a tent. Get water. Make fire. Boil tea. Get spruce gum. Get ducks. Pluck ducks. Cook ducks. Cut wood. Get water. Make fire. Boil tea.

  They get up real early. At dawn. Start the routine. Make fire. Boil tea. If you get up real early too, they’ll tell you to work hard all day long. Go to bed when it gets dark. Get up when it gets light. They’ll tell you to make sure there is a big pile of wood and kindling beside the cooking fire for the morning. “That’s what the old people say,” they say. Like they aren’t an old person.

  This morning, we’re drinking tea and boiling eggs. Akiwenzii is going on and on about making medicine out of Windex to cure cancer. “Two parts Windex, four parts water, add the mashkiki and let it sit overnight. Drink like tea. One cup a day. Cleans you right out. Right out. That’s it. Cancer over.”

  They are watching my reaction, I suspect to the Windex part. I’m acting like I fully believe them. Of course Windex could cure cancer. Of course. I mean, why not? Who knows the synergistic possibilities of Windex, water and bush medicine? I nod, smiling like a child, absorbing this new knowledge like a sponge, imagining spraying Windex on my bruises, hangnails, and face for a more youthful complexion. I imagine spraying it on my kid’s cuts like a loving parent would spray on Polysporin before the SpongeBob Band-Aid.

  Every afternoon they are out getting spruce gum with their axe and a Ziploc baggie. They must have ten bags full by now and I wonder what they are going to do with all of it. I go out with them too, but I feel bad for the trees. The only trees that have big clumps of spruce gum are injured trees. The new spruce gum is like tears, or maybe blood, and the dried stuff is like a scab. We’re literally picking the scabs off of the tree’s wounds. I tell this to Akiwenzii and they look at me with a smirk, like maybe I’m pulling their leg. Like this cannot possibly be how I really think. Then they shake their head and keep picking.

  Sabe stops by for dinner and the two boil a moose head, teeth and all.

  After I’m done the dinner dishes, Akiwenzii gets their Dr-Ho’s Circulation Promoter out and hooks it up to their bare feet in front of the fire. They keep it in the original box, with the “As Seen on TV” sticker on the front. I see they have thirty-eight AAA batteries in the outside pocket of their duffle bag. Sometimes Sabe takes a turn too.

  Mindimooyenh

  In December of every year, Mindimooyenh wanders through Ikea in North York each day, meditating like it is a labyrinth. They repeat “Gersby,” followed by “Hemnes,” over and over between the hours of 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. every day. They don’t eat or drink except for $1.99 Ikea meatballs at 8:30 p.m., just before closing. Mindimooyenh takes the bus there and the bus home. They smudge in the parking lot before they go in. They put down their semaa in the Ficus elastica plant in the warehouse section.

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh is sitting on a lawn chair on the ice visiting me, talking and talking. It doesn’t matter if you listen or pay attention or respond or talk to them back. And sometimes I like when they come around because it doesn’t matter if I talk, not even one little bit. It doesn’t even matter if I pay attention, because my response is irrelevant. Mindimooyenh is like that. Maybe because all those years in residential school they weren’t allowed to talk, and now their words have just built up and come bursting out.

  They are talking about sleeping in cars because they are scared of bears and it wouldn’t be the first time they slept in a car and it won’t be the last time. They are talking about babysitting three grandbabies and feeding and changing them and getting them all organized in an assembly line so no one is crying. They are talking about Numbnuts and at first I forget who he is, but as they go on I remember and he better hope they never run into him again.

  They are talking about cooking roasts and turkeys for the feast in eight different slow cookers in the basement apartment where they stay and they hope they don’t blow a fuse. They are talking about fans from the dollar store. They are talking about saving $100 worth of petunias from their daughter-in-law’s garden. They are talking about all the bargoons they got at the auction with Akiwenzii.

  Akiwenzii

  Akiwenzii is just back from the auction. Their truck has a life-size plastic Santa Claus in the back, three more cast-iron frying pans and a large spool of “Pioneer Bailer Twine.” I ask what that bailer twine is for and they say it’s for me to make sweat lodges. There is enough for the next seven generations to make sweat lodges and the smell of mould hits me as I take the spool out of the truck. I ask what the five-foot-tall faded Santa is for. They say “target practice” and add “because you have the worst aim of anyone I’ve ever tried to teach.” I do not ask about the frying pans.

  Akiwenzii’s house is bordering on Hoarders. Tobacco pouches and ties overflow birchbark baskets at the door. Water bottles and coffee mugs with various institutional logos; a pile of “Native art” prints in cellophane, each bought for prices ranging from $10 to $50. A mound of reusable tote bags, again with various institutional logos, spills out of a kitchen drawer. I can see these are gifts from speaking engagements and workshops. I can see the problem with institutional gifts.

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh saves things too. Long toothpicks from hors d’oeuvres from the fancy museum reception (for their hair), fishing line for when the arms break off their red dollar-store reading glasses, one-litre milk bags for sandwiches, paper placemats from the diner so their grandkids have something to colour on.

  Ninaatig

  Akiwenzii is sitting at the base bottom of Ninaatig watching the Tour de France on their phone. If you were to ask them, Akiwenzii would tell you that they and the tree are watching it together and maybe that is true. There is a love between these two.

  I ask Akiwenzii why the Tour and why the tree.

  They answer, “Because it is funny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the way the announcer says “cobbles.” Because these are a bunch of white men racing around with metal contraptions between their legs, for no reason. Because Ninaatig wants to know what is going on in the world. Because Ninaatig likes that they get up after the crashes. Trees can’t do that.”

  Akiwenzii says that old trees like Ninaatig can suck the sad out of you and heal you if you hug them. Heal you meaning take the edge off, I think. I ask about consent.

  “I would hate it if I was stuck in the ground and people just came up to me and hugged me without asking, demanding I suck the hurt out of them.”

  Akiwenzii shakes their head.

  “Ninaatig only sucks if they want to. They don’t suck for everyone. And what makes you think Ninaatig is stuck?”

  Ninaatig

  Ninaatig is Akiwenzii’s oldest friend. They have been hanging out long before watching the Tour de France was a thing. Akiwenzii met Ninaatig as a toddler. They were wandering around in the bush one day and Akiwenzii was just drawn to Ninaatig. Every time their parents took them for a walk, the toddler sought out Ninaatig like other kids seek out candy. That’s how it was
for all of Akiwenzii’s life. They just sought Ninaatig out. They just kept on visiting. Through the teen years, the band years, the poet years, the Chief years, the break-up years and now the old-age years. They just keep on visiting. Akiwenzii brings Mindimooyenh to visit Ninaatig more than once, but it never clicks for them. Mindimooyenh can’t relax into the connection, and although Ninaatig tries, these things can’t be forced.

  Mindimooyenh

  Last year, Mindimooyenh had a job at the university advising the big shots on how to appear to change things without changing a single thing. But of course Mindimooyenh advised too much, in an un-reconciliatory tone, and of course they got fired. Not before they got four months’ worth of zhoon though. Not before they got free chiropractor though. Not before they slapped the head of the C-list NDN academic department in the face for “being a sell-out prick” though.

  This year, Mindimooyenh is working for themselves.

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh is on the phone with Indian Affairs because they are paying for Kookum’s goddamn new glasses come hell or high water.

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “You better figure out how to solve problems.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “If you don’t take care of your hurt, it comes out big when the shit hits the fan.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “Stop fiddle-farting around, you’re not building a pig barn.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “Your hair looks like a hen’s ass in a windstorm.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “‘I love you’ is just words.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “Grief is saving yourself over and over again.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh says: “We live in an ecosystem of hurt.”

  Mindimooyenh

  Mindimooyenh is stockpiling. Not just bargoons, either. They are stockpiling the morning-after pill, the abortion pill and regular old condoms. Mindimooyenh buys their drugs online from an abortion pill website in the States and ships them to their postal box in Buffalo. Once a month or so, they shuffle off to Buffalo in their beater van and pick up the orders along with the other shit people want from American Walmart: Rogaine, cooking spray, fake butter. They stay in the van in the parking lot for three days because duty.

  You can go to Mindimooyenh for the pills if you are in need, but there are criteria, unless you are Black, or NDN. Then that’s all the criteria you need.

  They cannot sleep here because every time ICE rips another family apart, their body produces slightly less melatonin because there is slightly less light, even though it is no different north of the medicine line.

  Mindimooyenh dresses and talks and looks you in the eye just like a white lady to get back over the border. Sunglasses and everything.

  Asin

  Asin and I talk about the same things each time: the death of satire, how we didn’t predict things would get so bad, about the race to victimhood, identity politics, trauma-informed everything.

  There are two parts to Asin. The defence and the heart: don’t get tripped up by the defence.

  Lucy

  Lucy and Asin are making this secret thing that no one else knows about. For the past few years, they get together — in restaurants, at each other’s apartments, in Tommy Thompson park at night — and they work on it, one stitch at a time, one stitch after another.

  Lucy is not good at sewing or precision and the project with Asin requires both. That’s why Asin is there. They watched the YouTube video on how to do it, they invested in the correct tools including very expensive scissors that are not for paper, and they keep a careful watch over Lucy. Lucy’s job is to make it happen. To keep the project progressing. To keep Asin on track. That part, they can handle. Lucy may not know how to make shit look good, but they do know how to get shit done.

  Asin is good at making things look nice and so, at the beginning of the project, Lucy made Asin in charge of the materials. Asin spent a lot of time in Fabricland, even though that place is no Nishnaabe’s favourite place to spend time in because it is nearly impossible to get out of there with black, red, yellow and white broadcloth without someone questioning you about your project, and don’t even try with the Status card.

  Asin signed up for the Fabricland Sewciety members’ card to get the discount, and tried to think strategically about colour. If you arrange the colour in a particular way, the star will look like it is pulsing, but that might be placing the blanket bar too high for first-timers. Asin thought maybe they should try to make it so it wasn’t an eyesore, but decided against yellows, oranges and reds and opted for blues, purples and reds.

  Lucy waited outside.

  Lucy

  Lucy has a tendency to disappear and this is the most irritating thing to Asin. It’s more than a tendency. Once a month, sometimes more. Asin gets mad every time. Lucy explains, promises to try harder. To be more open and present and forthcoming. And then, before Asin knows it, Lucy exits again. Lucy tries to explain that they always come back, but that’s not nearly good enough for Asin. Asin always gets depressed and hopeless when Lucy leaves. Always.

  Lucy

  Lucy doesn’t have a lot of time for depressed and hopeless. When they don’t eat or drink like the old days. But they aren’t in a lodge. They aren’t surrounded by singers every night. They aren’t supported by any old ones, except for Mindimooyenh, and I’m not sure you could call Mindimooyenh’s presence support. At least not in the modern sense of the word. They are sometimes present, though — infrequently, but sometimes.

  Lucy is in a tarp, hastily slung over some saplings and held down with rocks. They have a fire and a ring of cedar for protection. They have sweetgrass.

  Lucy goes to the bush like this primarily to sleep and get away from their phone. The mouldy foamy and damp sleeping bag is the only place they can sleep for more than two hours in a row. And sleep means dream.

  Lucy

  When Lucy is trapped in the city they continuously stream episodes of Star Trek on Netflix to get through the night. They work their way through The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise and the new one with all the queers. They go back over The Next Generation and Voyager, watching only the first few minutes of each episode. Lucy researches this practice because everyone knows that screens are bad for sleep. It feels like the sound occupies some part of Lucy’s brain, the one responsible for the hamster wheel of thought, and allows everything else to shut off. This is Lucy’s theory. It’s unproven. Except that it’s the only way they can sleep, even if it’s only incrementally.

  Lucy thinks of Tuvok and Chakotay as their best friends but Lucy keeps this to themselves.

  Asin

  Asin does not disappear. They are constant. They will always answer texts and phone calls. Even in the bush. They believe in showing up.

  Asin

  Asin is watching a YouTube video of a campfire, trying to fall asleep. Their second-floor apartment in the core is apocalyptically hot and this is the fourth day of the third heat emergency of the summer. Asin thinks they should really invest in air conditioning even though the $200 would stay on the credit card indefinitely. It’s the subway ride home from Canadian Tire that would suck.

  Asin

  Lucy spends a lot of time trying to lure Asin out of the city on the GO train or the Greyhound. Asin always sounds interested, excited even, when Lucy brings it up, and the closer the date gets, the more overwhelming the thought of leaving the city is, and even if a physical ailment doesn’t arise to prevent the detachment, an emotional one does and the plan falls through. Asin needs a lot of help to get moving, a lot of help to move outside of themselves. Although Lucy suspects that once in motion, the energy would be huge.

  Akiwenzii

  Akiwenzii tells both Lucy and Asin in
no uncertain terms, “You need to sweat. Every month.” Right now they manage to get their act together twice a year and that’s it. It’s not enough, Akiwenzii thinks. They need more practice. They need to be better at this before I go.

  Lucy at least fasts, or Akiwenzii thinks they do. They come to the back of the property for four days every month and Akiwenzii doesn’t know exactly what goes on back there, but rather than investigate, Akiwenzii makes the set of assumptions that makes them feel best and they don’t dig any further.

  Asin

  Asin is in their thirties and under the impression they have lots of time to learn, and lots of time to change. Neither is true, but the illusion is real. Akiwenzii is trying to teach Lucy and Asin how to do ceremony, but it is going so much slower than they expected and they are having to relax their expectations. Maybe all the praying won’t be in Nishnaabemowin. Maybe they will have to sing the same four songs every single time. Maybe they won’t have much power because fasting the old way every year is too out of reach for this generation. Maybe each generation is just a watered-down version of the last. Akiwenzii stops this kind of thinking when they are in Asin’s presence. It is not their place to think like this. There’s also a small chance it’s not true.