Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  Within a few years the colonial government directing Canada’s affairs turned on the Indians, took their lands, and herded them on to reserves, and they were no longer free to come and go as they were once accustomed to do, for they no longer had anywhere to go. They now had Indian agents as masters. Missionaries came among them to tell them what was right and what was not. They were now no better off than the Pequots or the Narragansetts. In fighting for the White man’s freedom, the Indians lost theirs.

  The old Anishinaubae prophecy was fulfilled.

  After the Battles of Queenston Heights and the Thames, these events might have been commemorated on the Wampum Belt, but the belt was either lost or hidden and is now forgotten. Few Anishinaubae people remember their history, and they rely upon European historians to remind them of what happened.

  But the fate of the Indians was commemorated in story. A storyteller dreamed of a mighty struggle between a snake and a man. And this is the tale that he told.

  Our people’s lot is exemplified in a story that grew out of their desperation. A man out hunting one day heard a cry of distress in the distance. There he went. When he came at last to the place where the anguished calls came from, the hunter found a monstrous serpent entangled in the underbrush.

  The moment the snake saw the man, he pleaded, “My friend, set me free. Have pity on me.”

  “No! You might turn on me!” the man explained as he refused.

  “My friend! What kind of creature do you think I am?” The snake sounded hurt. “Why think so ill of me? Do you not think that I ought to be grateful for having my life spared and that I would do everything to do you a good turn for having saved my life?”

  “Yes!” the man agreed. “I suppose you ought to be, but I’m afraid.”

  “Never! Never! Never!” the snake protested. “Never would I turn on you if you were to set me free. Think! Suppose you were caught fast as I am. And suppose someone came along and set you free. Would you turn on your friend?”

  “No,” the man said.

  “Then no more would I turn on you than you would turn on a person who befriended you,” the snake assured the hunter. “My friend! You can set me free and give me life … or you can leave me here to die. If you leave me, you may as well kill me now!”

  With considerable misgiving the man cut the vines that held the snake fast. The moment the snake crawled free, he sprang on the man and coiled himself around his friend and, after nearly crushing him, pushed him into the entanglement where the snake himself had been held bound. And the snake left him there.

  TANTOO CARDINAL

  There Is a Place

  IMAGE CREDIT: MISSIONARY OBLATES, GRANDIN ARCHIVES AT THE PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF ALBERTA, OB. 723.

  CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTE

  I CHOSE THIS TIME IN Métis history, 1915 to 1928, because it was a time of hopelessness. Métis and non-status were essentially illiterate. Nomadic lifestyle and non-tax-based land use left them without educational privileges. In the majority of cases, the money wasn’t there to provide the clothing and materials to hold the children beyond ridicule and discrimination in the white schools.

  Métis industry on the rivers was dying. The railroad was bringing in white settlers in numbers never before seen. Commercial fisheries began, along with the jigger—which allowed fishing all winter. Stocks were depleted. Jobs that would have gone to Métis were now going to white settlers or immigrants. Licensing for traplines and taxes on furs further pinched the Métis trapper.

  The history of Red River and Batoche was forgotten. The new immigrants knew nothing of it, nor did they care—a proud history forgotten.

  Now we had illiteracy, landlessness, and disease to consider in a new world where we had no place. We were obsolete.

  Meetings were beginning. A few determined souls, without education, were pondering what could be done for the children. In 1928 a meeting was held in Fishing Lake, Alberta, where a non-status Cree teacher applied his education to help organize the movement that would produce the Métis settlements of Alberta by 1935.

  There Is a Place

  It was one of those long quiets—me sitting at the old pine table and her washing up the dishes by the stove—when the kettle let us know the water was boiling good. Adeline grabbed it up with both hands (it must have been half the size of her, that kettle) and poured the water into the old teapot next to me. She threw a handful of tea on top of the leaves already filling the pot.

  “Here you go, Francis, half-breed tea. Half black, half muskeg, the only kind the company sells out here in the bush,” she said. She put the lid on to let it steep. “Drink up and wash down dinner. You needed it—looks like the muskrats were pretty skinny where you’ve been.”

  My belly was full. I was tired, like I was ready to crawl under the table and fall asleep like an old dog. I just cupped my hands around my empty mug and tried to shake the feeling. “It’s good to get a square meal and some tea without having to listen to a sermon for it.”

  “Not in this house, but if you talk about those priests around Adolphus you’ll hear preaching for certain.” Adeline went back to washing the dishes.

  “I should help him mend those nets. There’s still good light left to get some work done.” I said it, but I wasn’t sure I could get up off my chair.

  “No,” Adeline said. “Not ’til you tell me where you’ve been for the last year and a half.”

  I didn’t want to think about it. Piecework and drinking. I’d seen a lot, but it all tossed together in my mind and none of it I wanted to tell her. And as soon as I started thinking, I started remembering why I was here, and it did a good job of waking me right up again.

  I looked up at her, watching me with those leathery eyes. Might as well get to it. “Have my boys been hard on you?” I asked her.

  “They’re good. Little devils. Keep us busy, stop us from getting too old,” she said. “We always tell them about you. You’ll see them soon enough—had we known you were coming, we wouldn’t have let them go to town with the Prudens.”

  Daniel and Francis Jr., I could see their faces. Or how they looked when I saw them last. I wondered if they’d know me. How mad they would be for how I left them. They’re too young to know my thinking, and my story. But Adeline would understand, and I had been practising in my head all the way up to the cabin how I’d tell her and what she had to know.

  “It’s good the way you’re keeping them. You know I was eleven when I went to live with my grandpa. When my mother died”—I couldn’t match those eyes so I watched the teapot instead—“they told me she had died of consumption. No one had even told me she was sick. She just didn’t come to visit me every week like she used to. I remember, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. It was bad when my dad, died but this time …”

  “You were out at the mission school. Lucien had to go up to tell you.”

  “Sister Agnes held onto me. She wouldn’t let me go with Uncle Lucien. She said she was worried for my soul. Uncle Lucien told her, ‘We will tend to his soul. He needs the Spirit of God all right, he needs his family.’”

  I could catch her out of the corner of my eye, still watching me. “So he took me out of the mission school and took me home to Grandpa.”

  “Your grandpa was a better one for spirits than the Spirit of God. Lucien always was quite the talker.” She had gone back to washing, and I could look up and talk again.

  “Well, that school was no good for me anyhow. They never let me forget I was a half-breed and lucky to be there. My mom had to give them money for me to go to school, and she did.”

  “I remember. I used to see her at the Bay every once in a while, selling her jackets and moccasins and mukluks. She did such beautiful work. She was a hard-working woman.”

  “My uncles got the moose hides and deer hides for her after Dad died. They would bring fish and fresh meat by the mission school whenever they got some, but still the priests and nuns never let me forget that I didn’t belong. Some of the kids at scho
ol were jealous that my mom came to visit me. They would beat me up and call me names. When they stole priest food from the pantry, they would never give me any.”

  Adeline snorted. “Those priests stole that food in the first place.”

  “Most priests are good people. They’ve always been good to me.”

  She turned around, the soaking rag in her hand dripping on the floor.

  “You ask Adolphus. He still remembers St. Paul de Métis.”

  “St. Paul? Wasn’t that a long time ago? Must be twenty-five years.”

  “Well, you think about what happened to us. When the government and the Church went round telling people that they were setting aside land for us—that we’d have a community, our community, with a trade school and a church and everything else. We moved everything, sold everything we couldn’t move, to start over. The land wasn’t broken yet, and clearing the land nearly killed him, it was so much work, and still having to get crops in. And what happened? The Church never gave us title to our land, and once we built the place up they threw us out. Replaced us with a pack of Frenchmen with nothing to show for it. We’re not going to forgive that, or forget.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Adeline was always tight-lipped when it came to the mission schools. I knew she and Adolphus had spent some time in one in their younger days. When it sunk in, when I saw her standing there lost in anger, I felt a real fear build up. I couldn’t say a word about the boys. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  Finally she spoke. “That tea is ready for pouring.” In relief, I poured myself a cup, mixed in some sugar, and took a sip. It had been a long time since I’d tasted good bush tea. For a moment it felt like it was ten years ago and I was sitting at this table with Catherine. Adeline couldn’t let me stay in that place too long, though, and she was at it again.

  “Wah! You’re still in your own world. Pour a cup for Adolphus and bring it out to him. Then you can come back and tell me about your hard life.”

  I could feel myself burning as I made up the tea for Adolphus. I burned against her, even knowing that she was right. I could barely look after myself. That’s why she and Adolphus were raising my boys, so they wouldn’t be stuck being raised like I was. Lucien hadn’t known how much Grandpa had changed since Grandma died. He wasn’t very well and he didn’t seem to care about life as much. Maybe Lucien figured I would be good for Grandpa. I had tried to help him, back then, to do what needed to be done, but it was never right or enough.

  Sometimes Grandpa would take me along to his poker games. He would play for two or three days at a time sometimes. I would have to come home and look after the horses though. He was happy when he was on a lucky streak. Sometimes he would leave me at home to cut wood or haul water, or whatever had to be done. Then I knew he would be getting into the homebrew and come home in a rage. I hated those times, Grandpa yelling, telling me I was “no good for nothing,” even though the wood was up and the water was there. He would yell and scream for a while, then he would go to bed and sleep, or he would cry, grab me, and cry all over me. I know why he did it, I couldn’t blame him. We’d both lost my mother and my grandmother, and he’d lost others besides, lost himself. And him crying was better than the belt.

  In those days, I had been happy only when Uncle Lucien took me upriver on the steamer. He was the captain and he would keep me up in the cabin with him. He taught me about the water, the currents, how the light on the waves told a story. I loved that world. He told me I had good water sense. He started to teach me how to navigate, and I was good at it. By the time I was fourteen I was working full-time on the boats, in the man’s world. Uncle would take me to dances. In time I wasn’t just a kid any more, and I was a good dancer. The ladies liked me. They made me feel like I was someone they wanted. I had fun with them. I spent my money on them and my poker games. That’s the way money goes, I was never good at keeping it around.

  There was one girl, Flora. She would look for me when we docked in Lac La Biche. I knew her from the mission too. She always wanted to take me home to her house. She had a big family. They would play music and sing and dance. Her mom would make sure I had lots to eat. Then one night her dad pulled me aside and wanted to know what my intentions were. It took me a moment to figure out what he was asking.

  “I’m not looking for a wife,” I had told him.

  “Then get out of here and don’t come back,” he had told me.

  So I did. I went back to get my jacket. I told Flora I was leaving.

  “Sing one more song before you go,” she had said.

  “I won’t be coming back here any more,” I told her. “Your dad doesn’t want me around.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  The whole world closes off when you have to be cruel like that. I just said what I needed to say: “Because I don’t want to get married.”

  She was so hurt. Her face just kind of fell apart.

  “You’re better off for it,” I told her. “I wouldn’t make a good husband for anyone.”

  Better to be back on the water. Anything I could do, someone else could do just as well or better. Except for navigation. I was one of the best. The men treated me with respect when it came to that. And my uncle was proud for what he had taught me. I went back to the docks. We were making our last run before freeze-up.

  That’s what I was thinking of as I walked the dirt path down to the river where Adolphus had his work shed, a mug in each hand. The sun was already back behind the poplars, and I could hear the loons calling to one another on the lake. There was a peace in Adolphus’s easygoing ways that I needed right now. He hadn’t said much over dinner, leaving the news catch-up to Adeline.

  He gave a little whistle of greeting when he heard my approach.

  “There’s the boy again. Something put a smile on your face, there. Is that mine?” Adolphus was mending his nets, sitting down on an old stump next to the shed with his moccasin rubbers off and the cloth jacket Adeline had made him lying on the grass beside him. He took the steaming mug into his hands and blew across it.

  “Thinking about the old days on the water,” I said.

  A smile lit his face. “Those were old days.”

  “Remember when you had me here?”

  “Yeah. About every time your grandpa threw you out.” He laughed.

  “You always treated me good.”

  “Well, it’s always good to have another pair of hands. You chopped enough wood for your food. And this shack …” He patted the shed. “Adeline didn’t even have to yell at you to get the job done. And the boys weren’t old enough back then, Catherine was just a girl—it was always good having you around.”

  “I remember one day when two of the mares had got through the fence and were gone, and Grandpa—he was so hot he came after me with a whip. And after that I followed their trail—”

  “And here they were!” Adolphus laughed. “I remember seeing them walk up the trail and I said to Adeline, ‘Put down some more settings, we got two more orphans for us to look after.’”

  “I guess they were tired of Grandpa too.”

  “When your grandpa was around, even the mosquitoes tried to move in with us to get away from him.”

  “I remember when I came to catch them, Adeline came out with some cookies that she had baked. She said to me, ‘I know your grandpa’s mean to you,’ she said. ‘It’s not right.’ I remember that—that was the only time I’d ever cried in front of a woman, besides my mom.”

  “She has a good heart.”

  “I wouldn’t come here enough to visit. I always—I didn’t want to bother you. But just to know that someone else was there …”

  “We prayed for you. Still do. Figured you need it, especially since you’ve been riding the rails.”

  “Prayed? I’ve never seen you in church.”

  “Just because we don’t go in the church doesn’t mean we don’t pray,” he said.

  Adolphus knew so much about a world I knew nothing about. Old stories, things people di
dn’t talk about any more. When I was a kid, he’d mostly tell me about the animals and how they behaved. He would show me things that would tell you what the weather would be like. He was always watching, always aware. All that he would show me came in handy when I went out into the world because I came to recognize “the weather” in some people. I guess my grandpa helped to put me on guard too. I could tell when someone was going to turn stormy or if they were bad terrain. Most people are warm but I learned not to let my guard down, watch the signs.

  That’s why it surprised me when Adolphus got hurt when we were back at the dock in Lac La Biche. He and Pierre had been unloading some crates when one fell on Adolphus’s leg and broke it. The nuns fixed him up; we borrowed a team from Bertrand, and I drove him home to Adeline and Catherine. I drove up to their house with her dad in the back of the wagon. I remember seeing that there was this beautiful young woman at the place, looking up at us from cutting up moose meat for drying in the smokehouse.

  Adeline was standing out on the front step. I could see she recognized Bertrand’s horses but she was surprised to see me driving the team. Adolphus was laid out in the back of the wagon drinking whisky to deaden the pain. “Adelines out here,” I told him. He groaned, emptied the last of the bottle, and tried to shove it under his blankets.

  “Hello, this house,” he said, and then he passed out.

  Adeline came up to take a look at him. He didn’t do it often, but she’d seen this before, especially when he got off at the end of the season with the rest of the boys. She was going to let him sleep it off in the wagon. Then the girl joined her. I didn’t recognize her for Catherine at first, she had grown so much. Last time I’d seen her she was a seven-year-old girl with tomboy knees. She was beautiful now, and something else. I felt she could tell something was wrong with her father just from looking at me.