One Story, One Song
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PRAISE FOR One Native Life
“One Native Life is a journey, snapshots of events as Wagamese moves through a life of loneliness, forever searching for that place to belong as he travels to reclaim an identity denied him as a child. Within these vignettes, we see the joyous spirit Wagamese has become.”—Chronicle-Herald
“Delicate and strangely beautiful, each vignette (written in early dawn) seems to radiate from point to luminous point.”—Globe & Mail
“An incredibly inspiring book.”—Calgary Herald
“One Native Life describes the author’s continued emotional healing, a recovery with his Anishnabeg roots at the core.”—Toronto Star
“Grounded as he now appears to be, and secure in his identity, Richard Wagamese in his 50s may be just hitting his stride.”—Saskatoon StarPhoenix
“Reading Wagamese is akin to being invited to sit down and listen to the words of a man who rediscovered his life, a youngish elder who now understands its meaning.”
—Owen Sound Times
“Richard Wagamese has written a book that you do put down—often. And sit there thinking about what he has just said, how he has said it and what it all means. There is such warmth and healing and hope here that you cannot help but smile.”—ROY MACGREGOR, author of Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People
“ ‘Stories are meant to heal,’ Richard Wagamese writes. These stories do that and more. They invite the reader into wonder, into mystery, into the hold of the land on the soul.” —LORNA CROZIER, author of The Blue Hour of the Day
“These gorgeous glimpses into the world of a great Ojibway storyteller—his triumphs and troubles, his discovery of self through friends and the natural world—are some of the finest memoir I’ve had the pleasure to read.”—JOSEPH BOYDEN, author of Through Black Spruce
RICHARD
WAGAMESE
ONE STORY,
ONE SONG
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Wagamese
First U.S. edition 2011
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Douglas & McIntyre
An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7
www.douglas-mcintyre.com
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-55365-506-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-55365-643-2 (ebook)
Editing by Barbara Pulling
Copy editing by Lara Kordic
Jacket design by Jessica Sullivan
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
For Debra, the continuo
in the concerto of my life . . .
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 East—HUMILITY
Living with Bears
Spirit Place
WYSIWYG
On the Wings of Eagles
What We Share
The Path to Healing
The Caribou Teaching
Harmony
Getting to It
What It’s Worth
The Real Experts
New Shoes
Birdman
2 South—TRUST
With This Ring . . .
The Knuckle Curve
The Word
Trusting the Land
A Crow Story
Honouring the Story
Beyond the Page
The Kid
Gathering
The Power of Stories
Street Gangs
How to Change the World
What Marriage Means
Families
3 West—INTROSPECTION
Impossible Blue
The Loon’s Necklace
The Puzzle
Reigniting the Spark
The Never-ending Story
The Emergency
The Power in Silence
A Day of Protest
Now and Then
Writing Space
Making the Clouds Disappear
Heroes
Born to Roam
4 North—WISDOM
Today Is a Good Day to Die
The Roller Coaster
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Mrs. Fricke and the Bullies
Unseen Visitors
What Needs Fixing
Feel the Breeze
Talking the Talk
Wasting It
Healing the Spirit
Truth and Reconciliation
Surviving the Scoop
Dog-Wise
Wolf Tracks
From the Ground
Acknowledgements
THIS BOOK COULD not have been written and, indeed, I would not be on the planet, if not for the loving support of my wife, Debra Powell. That’s the straight truth of it. This book is as much hers as it is mine, and my life has been enriched and empowered immeasurably by virtue of her presence in it. Life is struggle, and my battles have been titanic. But she has stood there in love, compassion, understanding and faith and helped me to my feet whenever I have fallen. She is the great story and the great song of my life.
There are others—Ron and Jennifer Sainte-Marie, Nancy and Peter Mutrie, Tacey Ruffner, Ron and Wanda Tronson, Pam and Bob Lee, Tantoo Cardinal, Joseph Boyden, Lyn Mac-Beath, Tom Northcott, Janet Whitehead, Lee and June Emery, Irene and Jon Buckle, Dawne Taylor, Kent Simmonds and Doug Perry—who have all been there when I needed them. This one is for all of you, too.
Thanks to the editing prowess of Barbara Pulling; to the folks at Douglas & McIntyre; to Westwood Creative Artists, especially my agent, John Pearce; and to all the people at my speaking engagements and storytelling performances who graced me with their praise and their delight at the power of stories to entertain, enlighten and bring us all together. You have only increased my belief in the process.
Oh, and to Molly, the Story Dog, who got to hear all of these before they were written while we walked in the mountains behind our home, a scratch on the ear and a rub of the belly for showing me what unconditional love and complete joy in the moment are all about.
Introduction
HERE IN THE mountains, summer has dwindled slowly. Paul Lake sits placid and calm, like a quicksilver slip of dream. It wasn’t long ago that boats were churning through that water and we could hear the shouts of water skiers and wakeboarders all the way up on our deck. Along the shore there are urgent calls from shorebirds. They feel the change coming, the advancing chill. Soon they’ll take to the air and leave us, and there will be no more loon calls as the sun sets in wild flares of colour behind the reddish jut of Gibraltar Rock. It’s always awesome, the silence the land fades into. It seems to me sometimes that seasons leave us in the way people do, never just gone, but degree by degree, fading like the smell on a loved one’s favourite sweater, until the vanishing one day evolves into memory. Winter arrives far sooner than the first twirl of snow in late October. It comes with alterations to the hue of things, deeper shadow, faded colours, the thinner ragged cry of coyotes on the ridges and the rich, deep mystery of the land itself in the pitch and beautiful da
rk. As the season shifts, you can feel that mystery approaching. Winter has always been the slumbering time, the season of reflection, of rest, of preparation for another season of growth that is always promised, always fulfilled. For me, it means the Story Moons are coming. Legends, teaching tales and oral histories come alive around firelight and candle, and the great rolling voice of my people, sustained for thousands of generations, is heard again across the land.
We are all story. That’s what my people say. From the moment we enter this physical reality to the moment we depart again as spirit, we are energy moving forward to the fullest possible expression of ourselves. All the intrepid spirits who come to this reality make that same journey. In this we are joined. We are one. We are, in the end, one story, one song, one spirit, one soul. This is what my people say.
I think about this as the dog and I walk the timber road up into the skirt of the back country. You can feel the land change when you step away from roads and buildings and noise. You become attuned to another rhythm. It’s odd when it first happens. You stand there looking around expectantly, as if you’d heard a voice from the trees calling your name. The longer you hold to that moment, the more clarity you receive. It’s not a physical voice you hear. It’s a spiritual one. When you break the connection that binds you to money, time, obligations, expectations and concerns, the land enters you. It transports you. It takes you to a common human time in each of our cultural histories when the land was filled with magic and teachings. The land spoke to all of us then. It whispered. It told stories, and those who came to it most often learned to hear that voice through the closed skin of their eyes, the soles of their feet, the palms of their hands as they rested upon stone and tree and earth and water: the storytellers. They brought us the secrets of the world we call our home, taught us to invent, to create, to imagine the space around us. They are the ones who showed us that the earth is alive, and we are joined to her by breath. The storytellers culled teachings from her mysteries. They discerned the truth that the planet we live on is but one small part of a greater, more marvellous creative energy that we are all part of as well. When we touch the earth, we touch ourselves, and the rhythms we discern are those of our own heartbeats, sounding in the context of the whole. Belonging. The articulation of who we are as a human family.
This is what I’ve rediscovered in the time that my wife, Debra, and I have lived here. Our home sits between mountains overlooking Paul Lake, twenty-five kilometres outside Kamloops, British Columbia. Mere steps away from our driveway the bush awaits, and the long upward slope of the land becomes a rolling peak a few miles off. There are fir, pine, birch and aspen amidst clutches of blackberry, wild strawberry, juniper and staunch mountain grasses that plunge suddenly into meadow. Getting out there has become a special part of my days. Morning walks, evening meditations on the deck and time just standing out on our plot of land make me feel properly framed. The longer we are here, the stronger that relationship gets and the deeper the truth sets within me: we are all spirit, all energy. That truth is built into the teaching stories of my people. It is part and parcel of ceremony, ritual and the principles that underlie those stories as their foundation. As with the land, the longer you spend with stories and teachings the more they become a part of you.
When we moved here, we knew it was right. The first time we stood in the middle of this half acre, both of us could feel it, hear it, sense it. We channelled our energies and desires towards making it ours. We bought this place in the late summer of 2005. For a time, we made the three-hour-plus commute from Burnaby, just outside Vancouver, every other weekend. Eventually, we moved here full time. The land called us back. We know that for certain now.
We’ve worked hard to make this our home. We live in a rancher-style house with a deck and a garage that we have turned into an art studio and writing space. It isn’t large or ostentatious. Our place is simple and rustic, and it will always be a cabin to me. There’s an old wringer washer that’s become a planter in the corner of the yard. A wagon wheel leans on a pine. We’ve painted our garden shed and woodshed the same red as the house, and we’re content to let the yard stay the mountainside it is. We drive a rusted twenty-two-year-old Ford pickup truck named Hank. I own a chainsaw. Our water comes from a well. When night falls, we are enveloped in silence that fills us, shapes us and sustains us. The land infuses everything with calm, with truth, with meaning.
I am able to remember here. I remember how the teachings came to me during those years I lived in cities. I recall people. I return to circumstances and events that shaped me. But most importantly, when I walk out onto the land I remember that I am Ojibway. When I murmur a prayer at the shore of the lake in the soft, rolling syllables of that old language, I remember that I am a part of everything, that I belong, that my goal, according to the teachings of my people, is to learn to live a principled life. I remember that, like everything around me, I am part of a larger story.
In the end, we bear away exactly what we bore in: a soul, a spirit, a song. Creator asks us to work at discovering the fullest possible expression of ourselves. When we do that, when we embark on that most definitive of tasks, we become Creator’s experience of life. Regardless of how we make the journey, we grant the idea of life back to its source: the infinite power of the universe. That is also what my people say. Our story becomes part of the great grand story of Creation.
For many years, I travelled unaware of this immense responsibility. Like so many of us, I was preoccupied with the chores of life, the to-and-fro routines of getting, having and becoming. It takes a concentrated spiritual focus to realize why we are here—to live out the best possible story of our time on this earth.
You can’t do that when your focus is on material security. You can’t do that when your desire is to have. You can do it only when you realize that we all carry a common wish, a common hope. Love expresses itself most fully in community. So does spirituality. What binds us together as a human family is our collective yearning to belong, and we need to share our stories to achieve that. Stories build bridges to undiscovered countries—each other. A very wise man once told me, “No one ever pulled up to heaven with a U-Haul.” What matters is what we bear away within us: the story, the song of our living.
The stories and reflections in this book spring from our time at Paul Lake. They are presented in four sections, based on the principles our traditional teachers sought to impart: humility, trust, introspection and wisdom. Those four principles are the cardinal points on the Medicine Wheel, and they represent the essential qualities each person needs to cultivate to live a principled life. These stories were written in the pale light of morning in our little house overlooking the lake. They are about the people, events and circumstances that have shaped the man I’ve become at fifty-four. They are about the magic I’ve found in being a member of this human family. Kin. A part of the one story, the one song we all create together.
EAST
HUMILITY
THE OLD ONES say that humility is the foundation of everything. Nothing can exist without it. Humility is the ability to see yourself as an essential part of something larger. It is the act of living without grandiosity. Humility, in the Ojibway world, means “like the earth.” The planet is the epitome of a humble being, with everything allowed the same opportunity to grow, to become. Without the spirit of humility there can be no unity, only discord. Humility lets us work together to achieve equality. Humility teaches that there are no greater or lesser beings or things. There is only the whole. There is only the great, grand clamour of our voices, our spirits, raised together in song.
Living with Bears
THE BEARS START coming down from the high ground in late summer, when the mountain-ash berries, rosehips, saskatoon berries, blackberries and wild raspberries are ripe and fat. We see them on the roadside or lumbering along the hillocks, and as the days pass they become a fixture in our yard. We don’t find it troubling. When you reside in bear country, you make a soul co
mpact to coexist with them. You learn to be watchful on your morning walks and to make sure your property isn’t bear-attractive. You learn bear time. After all, this is their land. They were here first. If anyone respects that statement, it’s an Indian.
When you’re out in the wild—or what’s left of the wild in the Western world—there is a palpable sense of the unseen. You get the feeling you’re being watched from the trees. That can be eerie at first, but once you’re used to it, it’s rather comforting. This is the original condition of things. Long before our world became the technologically driven, noisy, overpopulated place it is now, many beings found respite in wild places, and people felt a natural connection to the land.
We can opt for the convenience of machinery today, using quads and ATVs and dirt bikes to get us deep into the back country, but nothing connects you to the land as easily as walking. Hiking in the acute silence up here in the mountains, you always sense the possibility of bears. For me, that’s magical. Walking on the land also keeps you alert to things you would ordinarily miss. You hear things you are usually too busy to register, experience yourself as a true part of nature. Alone in the wild, you become keenly aware of who and what you are.
So I’m not troubled by the presence of bears. What does trouble me, though, is news of bears losing their lives after run-ins with those who occupy their territory. Some people think of bears as garbage-raiding pests or as vile predators intent on snatching the cat, the dog or the children. I’m not afraid of bears, but I am respectful of them. At our place, we keep our garbage out of harm’s way until it’s dump day and we can dispose of it. We’re careful with our barbecue. Bears are prowlers and foragers, and we need to understand that.
My people say that the bears are protectors. In our Ojib-way clan system, the Bear Clan is responsible for security and law. As totems, bears symbolize strength, fortitude, justice and wisdom. When my people see a bear in the bush, they always stop and look at it before moving away. In the Ojibway world, a bear is a spirit being, a special teacher. I’ve learned over the years to hold them in the same regard.