by Rudy Wiebe
Finally I collapsed on the ground. It was years before I knew again what my name was; after the long waiting and many sweats in P4W when the Elder told me in English, and gave it to me again in Cree. Medicine Bear Woman: Muskeke Muskwa Iskwewos. That was always my name, and I knew it.
I can only pray the Creator will reveal to me why I am what I am.
Both the pictures I have seen of Flora Baptiste Bear are black and white snapshots.
The first shows her standing with a hoe among young potato plants in a weedy garden. Her hoe is planted firmly between her feet; she grips it upright with both hands and is looking away to her left. The four posts of a barbed-wire fence enclose the garden, and directly behind her, against the fence, is an ancient hay rake designed to be pulled by horses; its thin steel wheel intersects with the distant shape of a late forties car parked between a white rectangular tent and a small log cabin with two tin stovepipes. The door of the cabin stands open, and beside its window on the longer cabin side, near the car, stands a man. He is barely discernible against the corner of the stacked logs of the cabin and the tall white poplars lifting their leafy tops all along the upper line of the picture. The man’s hands are behind his back; it seems he is looking at the camera, but he is too small, too grainy in this old photo to be seen clearly. In the flatness of the picture his half-bent left leg—he may be in the act of walking forward—is precisely on the edge of Flora Bear’s black hair in the foreground, level with her ear. She is wearing what is probably a grey blouse buttoned around her neck, its long sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and what seems to be a dark blue skirt that hangs below her knees and is dotted with white strawberry shapes. Her feet are planted in the earth: she looks as if she has grown there with all the other young spring plants, trees, grass, potatoes.
The second picture is head and shoulders only: she is older and seated inside a car with a rounded windshield visor—perhaps it is the same car as in the first picture, the shades of colour seem to be the same—and the rectangle of the car’s right front window frames her exactly. Her heavy hair is parted at the centre, and around her forehead into two broad, doubled braids that lie on her shoulders and slant down her checked dress, down out of sight behind the car door.
Her braids frame her striking face. She stares directly into the camera, expressionless, monolithic. The cleft of her lip seems to begin at the top of her head, where the thin white line of the part in her black hair curves over the crown of her head, and continues in a straight line down between her heavy eyebrows and piercing, intense eyes, widens to the flare of her nose, and then gathers below it, broadly scarred, into the fold of her full upper lip. An indelible face.
Yvonne writes to me in January 1998:
A bear always has a fold in her upper lip. My grandma, I, my eldest child, have the gift and the legacy of the bear so strong, we have the Bear’s Lip.
And she has a final story to tell me, of vision and ceremony. She writes, “I do not know how to put it in words,” but really she does, circling in long phrases as usual, and without much difficulty I compile it:
Memories of my grandma before I lost her. I don’t know if I was in a vision, or vision state, or dream, but I was taken to a place that seemed like a place in the sky. It seemed as if it were happening in the stars, the stars were not above us but with us, and like a full moon, everything was light by itself. I recall suddenly being by my grandmother, she was with a huge circle of women. She stood in the North of the circle and on the ground next to her were baskets filled with food, or possibly medicines. Grandma passed me a basket and moved her left hand, east, as if to tell me, Go this way. I was shy and scared, but I offered each of the women in the circle to take something from the basket. They were all different, ages, dress, even demeanour, some were so intense I shook at the thought of offering them anything, I just stood in front of them, head bowed, offering, and some of them took, some not. One woman’s hair hung down whiter than the purest snow, I didn’t think anyone could ever look that old. A different older woman said something I could not understand, and would not take, and there was a kind and beautiful girl next to her, she told me to place something by her anyway. I had to go around and around until each basket was emptied. I was so tired and drained when I once again stood by Grandma. She seemed proud of me, and then she talked to the women again. The whole area was filled with light, it seemed as if it had no beginning and no end, and had no need for either one either. It seemed as if it was happening on an island floating in light in the sky.
I don’t remember being transported, but the next thing I knew I was out walking with Grandma. As we usually did, it was in the light of ordinary day, it was the real world, not a vision or dream. I watched Grandma go to the centre of the meadow that was encircled by trees, she was talking again to someone, and singing as well. She started to dig in the ground, then she became very excited and called me to her. She pointed to a half-buried rock in the hole she had dug, and spoke Cree again. Then she had me sit on the ground next to the rock and she placed my hand on it, and gestured for me to remain there and stay still. I was scared, and I heard singing, talking, I could not say what I heard, but the rock began to shake. I sat as I was told to do, I was calling for Grandma who had left me in this open field with this quivering rock. So I closed my eyes and waited, and just let things happen.
Soon Grandma came hack, and she laid down chewing tobacco and then ever so delicately she dug around the rock and lifted it up. She placed it in her apron as tenderly as a precious baby. She used this rock for her ceremonies with me; at night it was always in the room with me.
This all happened in spring, when the world is becoming new. Grandma searched for many rocks, it seemed as if she could actually see them hiding in the ground. I understand now they were the grandmother and grandfather rocks she used in the sweat lodge, and when the spirits began to shake them, they were saying, I give myself to you for a sacrifice. And now I believe that the women I saw in the sky circle were the people I saw in the fire. The Grandmothers.
Yvonne: I understand the medicines take care of themselves. Ceremonies are gifts given; they are as sacred tools given us so we can bridge the physical and spiritual worlds.
I was in the Shaking Tent ceremony and I was told that my life was hard, and it would remain so. I was told to keep seeking, I was told you do not give your pain to the spirit world, you must give your pain away. Does that mean share it somehow? I do not know how to do this. I ponder how to give birth to myself, in a spiritual sense.
And I recalled what an Elder told me, once as I screamed out in the sweat lodge. She told us we go to the sweat to suffer, and when you cry out like that it is as a scream of a child being born. That first scream at birth, the coming together of both physical and spiritual in the ultimate merging of the Creator’s act of life. So, could it be that I too, after more than thirty-five years of existence, I can be reborn under the ceremonies?
My spirit name is Medicine Bear Woman. I ponder this greatly and still endlessly, what is a medicine person?
I know that my great-great-grandfather Big Bear’s medicine power bundle rests on a shelf in a museum in New York City. It has been waiting there for sixty-five years. I also remember where my grandmother Flora’s medicine bundle is, but I cannot go to that place now. And I have not spoken to the Elders about it yet.
One thing I can say now is this: a medicine person is meant for the people, and not for themselves. This in itself answered a question which I asked myself many times: why it is that my life never seems to be my own?
I have already learned that, though I am deeply sorry for the grievous pain I have caused, I must also reap what I have sown. So I offer berries to Chuck on the sacred fire, I pray for him. I cannot change what has happened, but I believe he is on a journey—may it be safe and secure—to another place, and I can still help him. I feed him when I can. I sing for him, I dance for him, and I beg he forgives us all.
Another thing is that, as the Elders tel
l me, all that you have experienced you must learn from, and the people who live the hardest lives can have the greatest understandings and teachings to give others. So learn well, for the sake of others.
It seems medicine people suffer in their humanness. They always seem alone, even with everyone as their friends and relatives they have their own existence. They become the unexplainable loner, because of their spiritual challenges. Others see their difference and may call them strange, or try to place a name on the unnameable. Place an earthly name on a spirit.
If this is part of what I am, I must learn how to live. Only the Creator can give destiny and fate.
Epilogue Where People Are
Chantal, James, Susan, and Taylor: Living with their foster parents and going to school. Since Yvonne has moved to Saskatchewan and the Healing Lodge, they can visit her both in summer and during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Dwayne Wenger: One year and three months away from serving his full ten-year prison sentence for second-degree murder: in September 1999, he could be released into lifetime parole. He is working through the various prison programs and post-high-school courses, and plans to become a licensed social worker. He and Yvonne visit each other for three days every three months.
Clarence Johnson: Now seventy-three, he remains in his little house in Butte, Montana, and drives north to visit Yvonne regularly. In October 1997 he drove to the Healing Lodge in the ancient family logging truck, and slept under it overnight to make sure he arrived as early as possible in the morning. “He has never cast me aside,” Yvonne says, “or given up on me, and whatever happened between us in the past has been confronted, and settled. We tell each other stories, and try to laugh as much as we can.”
Perry Johnson: Yvonne’s “Little Brother” lives on the Red Pheasant Reserve, but he is, as she explains it, like so many young Indian men, “caught in the revolving-door syndrome of the legal system. The RCMP see a car full of Indians and they stop them—somebody’s sure to be doing something wrong—so arrest, give them a less than two-year sentence in a provincial jail, release them home to the rez, and in no time they’re arrested again. Jail doesn’t scare any of them: it’s just a part of who you are, where you live. And, I suppose, a continuing way of keeping the money rolling over in the provincial legal system.”
Karen Sinclair: Resides in Winnipeg, but has great difficulties caring for her three children. She has addictions, and “she’s still suffering,” Yvonne explains. “She has lost control of herself and her children, who mean everything to her, and the whole family played headgames on her, so now she feels pressure, guilt, both for sending Leon to jail, and for not taking a stand for me in my trial against him. Her life is really hard.”
Minnie Johnson: In Winnipeg as well, she has adopted two children and, as a licensed child-care worker, also at times provides the foster home for Karen’s three children. “You couldn’t find anyone, anywhere, who loves children more than Minnie,” Yvonne says. “She knows there’s something badly wrong with our family, but for her there’s no talk, just damage control. She wears, and denies, the pain the best of any of us.”
Kathy: Has completed a teacher-training course and lives with her husband and children on a Manitoba reserve. “She wants to remain a shadow,” Yvonne says, “anonymous, go on with her life without getting involved with the endless troubles of our family. She insists she’ll do her healing in her own way, by herself; she’s not responsible for the rest of us.”
Leon Johnson: Completed his three-year sentence at Prince Albert Prison in August 1997, and now lives with his wife and children on the Red Pheasant Reserve. Yvonne says, “He’s still in heavy-duty denial, he hasn’t resolved anything. I want him to say what Dad said to me. Maybe he’s feeling guilty about what he did to me, but he hasn’t been in touch, not a word, since he got out. Mom says Leon forgives me—but what do I need his forgiveness for?”
Cecilia Knight (née Bear): In 1997 she came to the Healing Lodge twice, the first time she visited Yvonne in prison since her sentencing. “Mom lives on Red Pheasant,” Yvonne says, “with Perry’s little boy, whose mom is dead. Otherwise she’s alone, no one helps her; her car is gone, she came here at Christmas with an old clunker she borrowed and she had to pour water into it every few miles. She wants to help me, but she still denies everything. She attends a women’s wellness group on the rez, but she doesn’t know how to help, she never knew how to deal with me. She wants me to be strong, independent, like she’s always been, but I’ve shamed her. She decided at some point she had to choose whom to support, and she rode that choice, but she’s stored me in the back room of her heart. The residential school, I believe, six years of it, damaged her beyond belief.
“She really, really loves me, deeply. At Christmas she was here, and I had music on and was dancing with the kids, all of them, and Mom jumped up and came to me. She lifted up her arms and she danced with me, waltzing around the room.”
Ernest Jensen: Continues to serve his second-degree-murder sentence in the federal Edmonton Institution; like Dwayne Wenger, he could be released on permanent parole by September 1999. He has not contacted Yvonne since March 1994, when he wrote that he was doing his “best to get a perjury charge laid against” Shirley Anne Salmon […]. If we just point out that Shirley lied, we should get a new trial.” Nothing has come of this suggestion.
Shirley Anne Salmon (née Bear): Rumours are she may be in Thunder Bay, or sometimes in Toronto or Wetaskiwin, or Vancouver. Her mother, Auntie Josephine Bear, will say nothing. In seven years Yvonne has not had one contact with her: “She may never face the consequences of her original lies, nor admit she was manipulated by the law to nail me. She must have so much pain, and me, out of my own pitifulness, I have no feelings of revenge. Shirley Anne is her own worst time, she has to put up with herself.
Leonard Charles Skwarok (1953 – 1989): Yvonne continues to pray and lay down tobacco for him.
O Creator, here I am, Medicine Bear Woman. Forgive my pitifulness. I have shared my pain because I know it is also the pain of my people.
I pray you,
remain with my words, I mean no harm;
may the existence you have chosen for me
enlighten all people to a better understanding;
that we learn humility and pitifulness, so that no one needs
to suffer alone, but can find spiritual union
with all humankind.
A–HO
Yvonne Johnson, 1998
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About the Authors
Rudy Wiebe is the author of several short story collections and essays, including River of Stone, and eight novels, including The Temptations of Big Bear and A Discovery of Strangers, both winners of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. He lives in Edmonton.
Yvonne Johnson is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree nation in Saskatchewan, imprisoned for first-degree mur
der in 1991 in Kingston Federal Prison for Women, and transferred to the minimum security Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Native Women, in Saskatchewan in 1995. Thirty-six years old, she is married with three children.