One Story, One Song

by Richard Wagamese

  Not everyone is familiar with the cultural history of Aboriginal peoples. Many folks have no idea that Native people had our languages taken away. The Ojibway I know is minimal at best. But what I do speak is vital to me, because it keeps me connected to my history and my identity. You feel a spiritual link when you speak in your original language. It’s empowering and healing.

  There are many reasons that our languages have faded, from residential schools to outside adoption, from political decisions imposed in the late 1870s to political choices made today. A recent study I read said that only four Aboriginal languages—Ojibway, Cree, Dene and Inuktitut—have a reasonable chance of survival. Out of the hundreds of cultures with active languages that once flourished in Canada, that’s grim news.

  Given this situation, it’s no wonder some Native people go to extreme lengths to hide their limited ability to speak their traditional language. I once did. Because I looked so obviously Native, I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t speak Ojibway. I felt like a fraud, a sham Indian, a less than adequate Aboriginal. So I faked it. Whenever someone asked me how to say something in my language, I came up with a creative but fictitious word or phrase.

  There was theatre involved, too. Back then, Native people were expected to be stoic and guttural. So I would get all stern faced, cross my arms firmly across my chest, nod solemnly. Then I’d hold up one hand, palm out like a Hollywood Indian, and say in a deep voice, “I-owna-Honda” or “Kumbaya-Ojibway-Winnebago.” I don’t know if I ever fooled anyone. Mostly, people laughed. But that was the best I could do until I eventually learned some genuine Ojibway words.

  I discovered when I was very small that you can rebuff hurt with humour. It was a handy tool as I grew older, too. But the underlying shame is toxic. You come to believe that you truly are unworthy. It can take a long time to heal yourself from that.

  Learning the traditional talk brought me forward. When I spoke my first word in my language, I felt reborn. That’s not an overstatement. The word rolled off my tongue, expanded into the air around me, and I was Ojibway. Instead of a shy, scared, adopted kid using theatrics, I was a First Nations man. I’m still far from fluent. Sometimes I go months without uttering an Ojibway word out loud. But the prayer I say at the shore of the lake every morning is always an Anishinabek offering.

  When your language disappears, so does your ability to greet the world in a traditional manner. That’s a huge thing to lose. I was created to be a male, Ojibway human being. Speaking my language allows me to reaffirm that.

  When you lose your original language, your identity is altered. You feel clumsy walking around in your own skin. That’s true not just for Indians but for immigrants, anyone who has sought another shore in pursuit of a dream. Society asks everyone who’s been displaced to surrender parts of themselves in order to be accepted, and language is often the first thing to go. Reclaiming your language is like coming home. You don’t need cuss words to express that.

  Wasting It

  ONE EVENING LAST summer, I stood out on our deck with a group of friends. We had gathered to enjoy some great barbecue, the quiet of our mountain setting and the sublime enjoyment of watching night settle over us. The sky that evening was awesome. It seemed to be full of stars and the incredible variation of light that spoke of planets, nebulae and galaxies.

  We stood there looking up, and none of us had words. The night sky is like that. It silences you with the magnitude of its mystery. Ojibway people have legends of the Star People who came once long ago to deliver the teachings, stories and ceremony meant to direct our lives. For a long while now, looking up at the sky has given me heart. So we stood in rapt silence, and then someone pointed to a speck of light moving eastward across the heavens.

  It was the space station. As we watched it sail across the sky, I pondered how far we’ve come as a species. To see evidence of the human mind’s potential looping around the planet was sublime. To think of that vehicle being launched into the sky to increase our understanding of the universe was wonderful.

  Once the space station was gone, the night became a time for friendship, for conversation. There are entire universes in each of us, and learning about them is endlessly fascinating. As Deb and I watched the last tail lights blink out of sight and the dark reclaim its dominance, I felt grateful that there will always be new and unfamiliar territories to explore.

  When I heard about a Canadian billionaire spending $35 million to become a tourist on the space station, it struck me as outrageous. Here was a man with riches galore, and all he could think to do with it was take a ride. Here on earth, $35 million would change a lot of things. You could fill a lot of hungry bellies. You could put a roof over many people’s heads. You could send deserving kids to university. You could bring water to parched countries. You could help create renewable energy.

  Instead, when Guy Laliberté’s ride was over, he landed on a planet where nothing had changed. The opportunities his money held had vanished. From space, the earth looks placid; it’s only on the ground that you can see the turmoil we live in. From space, we are a shining blue marvel. On the ground, we are growing more and more desperate as time passes. But he had fun, and I guess that’s all he thought about.

  There are sufficient resources right here, right now, to change things. There always have been. That’s been Creator’s vision all along. There’s enough raw material, creativity and money to keep our world safe, productive and nurturing. Billionaires in space change nothing. Wealth comes from other people, and there’s a moral obligation to repay them.

  We’ve allowed the media to fashion our images of success. Some years ago, I watched aghast as Ryan and Trista’s wedding went prime time on a major U.S. network. They were regular people who had been made famous by reality television. When they married, the expense was horrendous— estimated at $3.77 million. Later, Oprah gushed as Trista told her about the half-million dollars she’d spent importing thirty thousand roses. Neither of them seemed to consider the effect that amount of money, if put to earnest work, could have had on the world at large.

  There are those who might say. “Let them have their special day,” or “That amount wouldn’t really change anything.” Those people need to know about Babs.

  Babs was a chronic crack addict. She worked as a street prostitute to support her habit. She got old and broken down, and when Deb and I met her she was looking for a room, somewhere she could find sobriety and a new beginning. Once she’d settled into the rooming house and got some months of drug-free living under her belt, we hired her to do the cleaning there.

  One day, Deb asked Babs, “If you had one dream that could come true for you, what would it be?” Without hesitation, Babs said that she’d always dreamed of going to Africa to work with starving children. She’d had that dream a long time, but she didn’t know how to get started on making it real. All but a few of her teeth had rotted away as a result of her drug use, making it hard for her even to go to a job interview. She carried a lot of shame and hurt, and she was too embarrassed to smile in public.

  We thought that dream was incredible for a person who had been down for such a long time. Babs impressed us with her honesty, and we wanted to find a way to help her. Neither of us had the money to pay for huge dental bills, and the agencies we spoke to had no measures to get those costs covered. Then one day, sitting in our dentist’s chair, Deb mentioned Babs and her dream.

  “I guess we’ll have to get her smile back then, won’t we?” That’s what our dentist said. He offered his services, and we approached the agencies again. But none of them could cover the cost seven with a dentist on board.

  When we got married, Babs was there to help us celebrate. She looked awesome in a mauve sun dress and heels. We’d asked people to give us a donation for Babs’ dental work in lieu of a wedding gift, and by the end of the day we had collected $645.

  Two days later, our dentist called. He said he could cover everything but the lab costs for dentures, $680. If we
could come up with that amount, he said, he could start the work immediately. Deb and I were ecstatic. We paid the lab costs with the donated money, covering the balance out of our own pockets, and a week later Babs was in the chair. Two weeks after that, she greeted us in the hallway of the rooming house. She flashed a beaming, wonderful smile for the first time in decades.

  What’s all that got to do with billionaires in space? Everything. Exorbitant spending hurts. When Canada and British Columbia shelled out billions for the Winter Olympics, nothing changed. After sixteen days of vainglorious hosting, the world was still in the same condition. The potential in those billions of dollars disappeared. There is enough for everyone on this earth. There always was. When you gaze up at the sky on a starry night, that’s what we need to remember.

  Healing the Spirit

  HEARING OF A suicide calls forth only silence at first. There’s nothing you can say. Language vanishes into the void as the heavy punctuation of a life ended prematurely settles on your shoulders. A halt, a full sentence stop. An emptiness invades your spirit, and you understand clearly the nature of powerlessness.

  Indians die at rates five to six times higher than the rest of the population. Among our youth, that translates to mean an incredibly high incidence of suicide. Our mortality rates at birth and from disease, violence and suicide have always been far greater than the norm. In the nation state at large, the prevalence of suicide among First Nations you this a more pressing issue than any land claim, treaty negotiation or rights dilemma. It’s far more important than payments aimed at allaying old hurts, and far more vital to our well-being. Native people don’t need to die in such numbers. We need to live. But for many of us, life brings such soul-eroding despair that it’s an arduous journey to continue.

  I learned something of this as a kid. When I was adopted by a non-Native family and plucked from my northern life, I confronted swift and incomprehensible change. There were no words to adequately frame what I felt. Pain existed at a non-verbal level. But fortunately for me, there was baseball.

  In my northern schoolyard when I was nine, there was no room for a ball field. There was barely room in all that bush and rock for a playground at all. Our games were kickball, tag or hide and seek. So the game my new classmates played at recess and during lunch hour was a mystery to me. When I was picked to play right field one day, I had no idea what to do. I’d never thrown anything as round and perfect as a softball, and my first throw from the outfield missed badly. When I took my first swing at a pitch, I spun around completely and fell on my face. Everyone laughed, even the teacher. I walked back into the school building with my head hung low. In my gut I felt four things: fear, anger, embarrassment and shame.

  I feared I would never fit in or be accepted. I was angry at the laughter, embarrassed at my inability to do what others took for granted and ashamed that I had failed. I couldn’t raise my head in class for fear of the smirking looks that would come my way. No kid wants to let on that they feel like a dumb outsider.

  No one knew the depth of the feelings my encounter with a strange game had engendered in me. But I was inventive and courageous, and I made up my mind to learn what the game was all about. I signed books on baseball out of the library and I studied them every night. In a book called Baseball in Words and Pictures, there was a formula I could follow. From then on, I was determined to implement the science of the game.

  In the pasture beside our house stood a crumbling old sheep barn. On the barn wall, I painted the dimensions of a strike zone, and from here I measured out the eighteen metres to the pitcher’s rubber, which I marked with a scrap of old board. Every day from then on, I threw an India rubber ball at that barn and retrieved the grounders with a borrowed glove. I practised until I could hit the strike zone every time and scoop grounders effortlessly. After that, I started throwing the ball as high up on the barn’s wall as I could. When it sailed back in a long looping arc, I would chase it and try to catch it. I spent a lot of time hunting it down in the long grass at first, but eventually I could gauge the flight of the ball through the air and snag it with my glove.

  Next I took a bat into the pasture, tossing the ball up and trying to hit it. The book had said to keep my swing level, to start with my hips and let my hands follow them through to make contact with the ball. At first I failed miserably. No matter how hard I tried, I could not hit that ball. But after a few days, I was arcing the ball high out into the field. I’d sprinted after it and hit it back the other way. I practised alone. Although I did it out of those hard feelings in my gut, I not only learned the skills, I came to love the game.

  Every night as I fell asleep, I imagined myself as a hero on the ball diamond, racing around the bases to the cheers of my teammates. But I was still too shy to try out what I was learning, so I paced around the fringe of the diamond at school while the other kids played. Then a challenge came from another school, and the rules were that everyone from each class had to play. Grumbling, the boys in my class stuck me out in deep right field, where I could do as little damage as possible. Well, I made several great catches in the outfield that day, and I hit the home run that won it for my team. My throws were hard and on the money. I started to be the first one picked in every game after that, and the feelings in my gut vanished like a puff of chalk on the baseline.

  What does this have to do with suicide? Everything.

  Every Native person, young or old, who confronts a system that mainstream people take for granted carries those same four feelings: fear, anger, embarrassment and shame. Left unattended, those feelings can corrode your spirit. In a very real sense, that is the nature of Native life in Canada— dealing with the lethal stew of emotions that come from a marginalized life. All of us, reserve-based or urban, have confrontations with established systems that confound us, and we have the same simmering reaction. Some of us learn to navigate the territory. Others don’t. Either way, the challenges are great.

  There’s a part of me in every Native kid who chooses the dark way out. Somewhere deep inside I’m still that frightened, lonely youngster who desperately wanted to make sense of things. There’s something in that all of us can relate to, actually, but we get so busy and so insular with our manufactured lives that we forget we are part of the same human family. Nonetheless, every needless death lessens us and diminishes our light.

  Suicide hurts everyone. For Native people in Canada, it’s an epidemic. On some reserves, the rate of youth suicide is horrendous, and there’s incredible agony for those left behind. The only cure is prevention, and when First Nations leaders discuss the future of our people and chart an agenda for change they’d better start with the issues concerning our youth because this is the generation we will eventually hand the future to. We need our youth strong. We need them here.

  Truth and Reconciliation

  THE REALITY OF Native life in this country is not expressed by our politicians. It’s not articulated by radicals or militants. Neither have our elders, teachers and healers adequately captured it, though they have come closest. Instead, the most significant expression lies in the voices of our youth. The majority of our population is younger than thirty, and these young people have suffered because of our failed efforts and our unhealed pain.

  Canada took an important step along the healing path in 2008. The members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have a mandate to cross the country and listen to the stories of Indian residential-school survivors. Through the courage of survivors to lift the veil of secrecy, all Canadians will learn something of the pain and heartbreak that is the legacy of those schools. Those stories will be compelling and they will lead to healing. But the commissioners and the country need to heed the clamouring of our youth, too. The burden of our collective future is on their shoulders.

  I was in Saskatoon recently for the Anskohk Aboriginal Literary Festival, a celebration of artistic expression. Native people in Canada have not disappeared. We have become creators of note, and that festival was a
n inspiring and entertaining place to be. The third night was devoted to an open mic stage for emerging Native writers. As an established author, it was my honour to watch those young people perform.

  One by one they took the stage, and one by one they exploited misconceptions about Aboriginal realities today. They rapped, for the most part. They drew on the argot and poetries of the black American experience to cuss, detail and shout out the incredible baggage of hurt they carry. Their words and rhythms left no doubt about what their lives are like.

  They rapped about suicides of those far too young to die. They dissed a world in which young girls are duped into prostitution. They rhymed about the angst of homes rocked by violence, neglect, addiction and abuse. They expressed the anger and resentment of young people tired of the alcohol, drugs and gang culture that have usurped the ceremony, ritual, language and philosophy they ought to be able to claim as their own. They raged about displacement. They unloaded blame at the adults who have forsaken tribal teachings for materialism. They seethed and they hurt and they let it go, and I was proud of them. Some say our tribalism can’t find voice in another form of music that’s not our own, but the room that night was filled with electronic drum heartbeats and honour songs rapped in vitriolic honesty. It was an awesome spectacle.

  We owe these kids more. We owe them our truths. We owe them our apologies. We owe them a commitment to our own healing, however hard and bleak the journey may be. We owe it to them to become an empowered people who have learned the importance of forgiveness. Truth and reconciliation are not, as former Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine so righteously proclaimed, “all about the survivors. ” They are about the descendents of those survivors, too. The brunt of the residential school experience is being borne by the younger generation. That’s the straight truth, and it needs to be acknowledged. For every dollar paid out to the original survivors, an equal amount should go to initiatives geared towards empowering our kids: education, employment, healing. That’s how we’ll achieve real reconciliation.