Dennis was my only friend in class. I wanted to stand up for him. But there were five of them. I sat at my desk and listened to them bragging about the beating. When other kids joined in the laughter, I was incensed.
Sometime that afternoon, Mrs. Fricke called on me to do a problem on the board. As I stood with my back to the room, I heard the bullies grunting and talking like movie Indians. An eraser hit me in the head. I turned, picked it up and looked at it in my palm. Then I walked to Jim’s desk, all the way at the back of the room, where he sat with his four friends around him. No one said a word, not even Mrs. Fricke. Everybody watched me and waited to see what I would do.
I put the eraser down on Jim’s desk. He sneered at me. When he stood up, the rest of the bullies stood, too. As I took in the five of them in the silence of that room, I felt incredible heat in my cheeks and a huge knot in my belly. I was shaking, and my voice wavered when I spoke. “I’m not afraid of you” was what I said. The bullies laughed and catcalled as I walked back to my seat, but they never bothered me or Dennis again.
That day after school, Mrs. Fricke asked me to stay a minute longer. She had something for me, she said. Once all the kids had gone, she handed me a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a man of peace, she explained, and he was guided by a vision of how life could be if people were truly courageous. She said what I had done in class exemplified everything Reverend King stood for. Then she hugged me.
I read everything I could about Martin Luther King, Jr., after that, and I became an even better student. I did extra homework, helped neaten our classroom and showed Mrs. Fricke the stories and poems I was beginning to write. She brought me books to read about my people and my heritage, and we discussed them. My home life was a shambles, filled with incredible friction and pain, but in Mrs. Fricke’s class I felt accepted and understood.
I got A’s and B’s on my first report card. On the bus on the way home, I noticed that Mrs. Fricke had written in the space for the teacher’s comments, “Richard is a very honourable boy.” I never forgot that. When my adopted parents read out this comment at the dinner table that night, they said she must have been referring to some other kid. I never forgot that, either.
Mrs. Fricke left school halfway through that year for health reasons, and I never saw her again. Her replacement was a disciplinarian, aloof and cold, and my marks tailed off sharply. That caused me difficulty at home. My adopted parents considered good marks a direct indicator of worth and a measure of the family itself. They revoked my privileges, including being allowed to go out on the land.
I kept the picture Mrs. Fricke had given me in one of my drawers. Whenever I felt afraid, I’d take it out and look at it, and I always found strength. Two years later, when Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, I was living in a city far away from that farm. I mourned his loss, and I remembered Mrs. Fricke.
The angels in this life arrive when we need them most. They don’t come in resplendent white or shining glory, but in the simple dress of an old-fashioned school teacher or the anonymous face of a stranger. In the realm of the spiritual, we are all angelic if we choose. It is, my people say, the choosing that grants us wings.
Unseen Visitors
I’VE BEEN READING a book on theoretical physics lately. It’s not your usual cuddle-up-in-front-of-the-fire material, but it fascinates me. The ideas the book contains ask me to reconsider things I assumed I knew. I like that. It keeps my thoughts fresh, and it keeps me curious.
I never fared well in science classes at school. I believe it was the teaching methods that discouraged me. Dissecting frogs and making baking soda rockets and exploding volcanoes was fun but not really inventive. My reading during those years was about Ptolemy, Copernicus and Einstein’s early work on special relativity. So science class was drudgery. Some part of me understood implicitly that the universe was a living, growing thing, and I wanted to understand it better. I was a long way then from the traditional teachers and awe-inspiring metaphysics of my people, but I carried that yearning like a hidden gene. Something big out there was calling for my attention.
When I did get the chance to learn about our Native beliefs, I was ready. I never had a problem accepting the presence of unseen worlds or beings. I never struggled with the concept of Great Spirit, of all things existing as energy. The strong connection between Western science and Aboriginal belief systems has become ever more apparent to me over the years. Both have the capacity to evoke wonder. It’s a very human experience to peer off into a web of stars and feel awe descend on you like cosmic dust. Wonder is the place where theories are born. It’s where legends and teachings and ceremonies have their genesis. Wonder connects science to philosophy. It also connects people.
There’s no one among us who hasn’t been floored by something unexpected, new or strange. All of us have been touched by the wondrous in something simple or common: the gleam of a dragonfly wing in the sunshine, the whirr of a hummingbird, the haunting call of a bird in the dark.
The hand drum that hangs on our wall is made of deerskin and wood. Although it’s imperfect, it’s beautiful in the plainness of its construction and the intent of its design. A Cree woman came to Vancouver to give a drum-making workshop when Deb and I were living there. Neither of us had made a drum before, and we were excited at the prospect.
The workshop took place at a local college. I remember it well, because of the laughter and the joy the participants took in learning something new. There were all kinds of people working together that day: First Nations, Asian, South Asian, German, Australian and English. Every face wore a look of pride.
There is a philosophy involved in drum building. From our leader, we learned that all cultural groups have drums. Drums are common to our human experience. There is also a science to the making of a drum, and I appreciated being introduced to the principles of elasticity, geometry and resonance. The day flew by. Deb and I came away with a feeling of fulfillment and a pair of great-sounding drums.
For a while, we played those drums often. Then, when a friend helped us move to our new home in the mountains, I gave him my drum as a gift. That’s the tribal way. You offer things you have created, struggled for, to honour the act of gift-giving. My friend had never owned a drum, and my gift to him strengthened our friendship.
We still have the drum Deb made, and we use it regularly in ceremonies and at gatherings. That drum has been blessed and smudged. I played it during the entry song for Deb at our wedding. It’s a valuable tool for us on our spiritual path. And every now and then, whether in the quiet of the evening or early morning or when the room is full of friends, that drum will make a sound all on its own. Sometimes the sound is like a pluck on the thongs that keep the drum strung tight. Other times, it’s as if someone had tapped softly on its face. Sometimes the drum even shifts a little in its position on the wall.
Friends unfamiliar with drums will stare at our drum uncomprehendingly when that happens. Deb and I just smile in the drum’s direction and say hello. It’s as though an unseen visitor is assuring us that we are not alone, that we are being watched over and protected. That’s a very special feeling, and one we welcome. Drums embody all the love and energy that went into making them, and those sounds are like that energy returning. Some people would attribute them to changes in the air, to dampness or the heat from the woodstove. But for us, the drum sounds indicate the presence of the spiritual.
Magic and mystery exist all around us. I believe that we carry moonbeams and stardust and the whirl of comet tails within, and we will merge into those elements when this physical life has ended. By greeting our universe with wonder, we prepare ourselves to receive its secrets. That’s not scientific, perhaps, but it sure feels better that way.
What Needs Fixing
I GET A lot of letters and emails from people who have read my books, seen my television commentaries or heard my radio segments. It’s gratifying to receive them. So often a writer is lost in those undiscovered territories
from which stories, songs and poems emerge, and it’s good to hear that my work is affecting folks. Most of the correspondence is congratulatory, people let me know how much they’ve appreciated my words and my stories. But sometimes the channel runs deeper. People write to me about the whole gamut of the Native experience in Canada, tell me how much they care about achieving equality and harmony, share their thoughts on the efforts we need to undertake to build a better country. I love to read those messages. They show me that the spiritual impetus to change neighbourhoods, communities and nations is alive and well out there.
Some of the messages I get are darker. People write to me about feeling lost, about feeling cut off from their identities, about the lack of a true cultural linchpin. They tell me how much they crave a respite from the travails of trying to “find” themselves. Some non-Native people write me to say they’ve found something in the spiritual ways of Native people that resonates with them. Sometimes, they feel guilty about appropriating something that’s not their own.
Those letters and emails are all hard to read. They remind us of Thoreau’s words: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and they go to the grave with the song still in them.” None of us is immune to the pain of dislocation. All of us long to make peace with our identities. Perhaps the problem is not so much connecting with our cultural selves as feeling solid in the idea of ourselves as human beings, as men and women. Everybody has a song they want to sing.
My good friend Jack Kakak away always maintained that it is our brokenness that leads us to healing. Each of us, in our own way, lives a fractured life. There would be no need for spirituality if this weren’t so. By the time he was an elder, Jack had learned that the search for spirituality is the great bond that joins us. The problems of the world are not political in nature—they are spiritual. The difficulty comes when we try to solve those problems with our minds alone. Our heads can’t lead us home, though; spiritual matters must be resolved with the heart. The head has no answers, and the heart has no questions, Jack would say.
Following our hearts may sound simple, but it’s incredibly difficult to do. I’ve come to realize that living up here. Some days I do better than others. Some days, I’m able to see teachings in every leaf and rock.
It took a lot of work for Debra and me to get settled in our mountain home. We struggled with confusion and doubt, lack of skills and our initial lack of vision. Renovating this place required a large measure of faith and a bushel of desire. Neither of us is handy with tools, or even comfortable with them, but we were determined to learn.
We decided to start with the deck. The view from there was spectacular, but the stairs were wobbly, and most of the wood had rotted. We bought some home-repair manuals and studied them. We figured out how we wanted that deck to look, and then we set to work. We sawed supports, screwed them into place with our new power drill and cut lattice work to size. We managed to build a new set of stairs. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we were finished.
Next, we tackled the living room. The old bachelor who had built the house wasn’t big on décor. We ripped out musty old carpet and an ugly pair of floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The walls hadn’t seen paint in two decades, the ceiling fan was on its last legs, and the hanging lamp desperately needed replacement. We laid new laminate flooring, installed new patio doors, and replaced the questionable woodstove with one that met current safety standards.
We redid the kitchen the following autumn. There’s a new floor in there now, too, new baseboards and fresh paint. After that, we converted the old garage into an art studio and office space. That was challenging. But I write in there now and Deb crafts fused glass. The confidence and skills we’ve gained will soon go into finishing the master bedroom.
Sure, some of our work looks amateurish. The paint is less than perfect in places, and the joints aren’t always flush. But there’s something special about shaping your own environment. I’d never experienced that before. It’s not the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval we’re after. It’s the good feeling of working together to create a place where our spirits can rest, where our creative energies can flourish, where peace can be found in a cozy chair.
We changed our house from the inside out. That’s the only way it ever really works, and that’s true for spiritual matters, too. It takes perseverance and commitment; no doubt about that. As Jack Kakakaway told me, to change you need a quality that is best expressed through an Ojibway word: yah-gotta-wanna. He was funny, that Jack. And he was right.
Feel the Breeze
AGE IS A funny thing. Some people say it’s all relative, that you’re only a sold as you feel. Others claim we end up childlike again as the circle of years nears completion. I’m never sure which of the many aphorisms to lean on. My personal take is that aging is gravity having its way with you. As you mature, there are moments when you swear you can feel parts of you dropping.
There’s a noticeable sag to the buttocks, for one thing. Somehow you’ve developed a portly droop to the abdomen. Where the firmness of youth once held sway, there is now only sway. Everything eventually heads south on us, and if there are jiggles accompanying our formerly insouciant saunter, we call them “fab flab” or “love handles.” That’s on good days. On bad days, we pinch a couple of fingers full and shake our greying heads.
It’s a harder slog than it used to be getting up the timber road that leads into the mountains behind our house. When Deb and I ski, I have to stop for arest on the longer runs. My talk is peppered with phrases like “you wouldn’t believe it now, but . . . ,” “back in my prime” and “you should have seen me when . . .” Age and gravity are relentless yanks on our lives.
When I turned fifty-three not too long ago, we had a quiet celebration. No big party or dinner, just a calm recognition of time passing and a life fleshing out at the edges. There was no need for extravagance. Here in the mountains, days are merely days. In the relaxed plod of them, we find parts of ourselves that were lost in the frenetic pace of the city. I have become more accustomed to the soft glow of a morning fire than to the roar of traffic on a freeway. I’ve grown more attuned to the symphonic clarity of a sunset than to the raucous clatter of an urban street. But as I settle into my favourite chair, sometimes I find myself longing for the more elastic, more exuberant man I used to be.
My recollections are mostly about sports. Maybe it’s typical guy thinking, but I can’t resist the urge to measure the current me against the nimble, devil-may-care athlete I once was. When I played hockey, I was always the fastest skater on the team. Mind you, I was never more than a rec-league forward, but I loved it. Something in the power and grace of skating has always called to me.
The winter I was fourteen, I happened upon a crater the size of a swimming pool at the construction lot down the street. When the freeze came, it became my own private rink. None of the other neighbourhood kids had discovered it. I would go there at night and skate in the dim glow of distant street lights. I couldn’t see very well, but I didn’t need to.
I left my stick in the snow bank and flashed around that small stretch of ice in circles, figure eights and quick lateral dashes. I practised moves I’d seen in televised games, learning to turn and stop and change direction at top speed. After that, I taught myself to thread the puck between my legs, curlit on the blade of my stick and skate with it through turns and twists, dipsy-doodles and spins. I felt as though I was inventing the game for myself.
I got to be a very good, very fast skater on that construction lot, and the skill stuck with me through the years. I never mastered the other parts of the game, never scored goals by the bushel, but I could skate like the wind and make deft, accurate passes.
As often as I could, I found a team to play on. I’ve played on frigid outdoor rinks where chunks of the boards were missing and the area behind the nets was strung with chicken wire. I’ve played in modern arenas before hundreds of fans. I’ve played in public tournaments and in 2:00 a.m. beer leagues while a yawning att
endant waited to clean the ice. On every team, it was my speed that marked me. On a lumber camp team in the 1980s, they called me Feel the Breeze Wagamese. Someone wanted to put that on the back of my jersey—they said a breeze was all you could feel when I blazed past.
My cousin Fred vanished with my hockey gear one year, and that was it for my playing days. The seven hundred dollars’ worth of equipment was too much of an investment to make all over again. But I still can’t look at a stretch of ice without thinking of the game. I can’t watch more than a few minutes of Hockey Night in Canada without missing it. On cold winter nights when the sky is purple and frost curlicues at the edge of the windows, I’m still Feel the Breeze Wagamese, that jubilant kid waiting to lunge over the boards.
The particular joy of growing older is the pocket treasures you carry with you. Their power transcends the effects of gravity and time. A part of me will always be streaking forward into the fray. Living in the promise of the future, I can only look back and marvel at my incredible journey, the places I’ve been and the names I’ve carried. Feel the breeze. These days it’s fair and warm.
Talking the Talk
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME if I can teach them to swear in Ojibway. Everyone always wants to know the cuss words. When I tell them there really aren’t any swear words in Ojibway, they get all mooky-faced. How on earth can you have an entire language that doesn’t let you sound off that way, they wonder. There are strong words and phrases in Ojibway, largely meant to put disrespectful people in their place, but there’s nothing resembling a good old-fashioned four-letter word.
It might seem strange that Ojibway does not have its share of blistering lingo. The language is verb-based, so you could conceivably tell someone to go do any number of things. The younger generation incorporates English phrases into Ojibway to deliver messages like that. But the elders, teachers and healers speak the language in rolling, gentle tones. That generation is committed to saving the traditional talk. They have experienced firsthand the incredible changes our people have lived through. They’ve seen the movement away from traditional culture and towards the cities, the universities and the corporate world, and they seek to preserve the language before it disappears entirely.
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