Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  Lisa found the fact that he was Native, a noble savage, as she once heard him described in a philosophy class, quite exotic. She was in her third year of sociology, planning to head toward social work, when she met him. Richard Spencer. Medium height (though she always liked taller men), lean, comfortable in a crowd though he preferred his own company. He was somewhere in the middle of his MBA when the fates conspired to join them together, eventually in holy matrimony. And then in divorce court.

  Fourteen months of dating, seven months of engagement, and six years of marriage. That was the extent of their life together. No children, no house (they rented), and only a few RRSPs that were split amicably. Now Lisa couldn’t get over how ridiculous she felt, eagerly waiting for any glimpse of her ex-husband, somewhere behind enemy lines. It had been about five months since they had last seen each other, and approximately four months since they had spoken on the phone. He had moved into his brother’s house on the reserve.

  Yet this was one of the reasons they had broken up. Actually, more specifically, it was because of Richard’s brother, Donnelly Spencer. Lisa remembered him as having the stereotypical long hair, living perpetually in jeans, and drumming on that big drum he was so proud of, and he was determined to be the most fluid speaker of Ojibway in the community—in many ways, the exact opposite of Richard. But in other ways, not. Richard was extremely proud of his heritage, though not enough to be annoying, and it had eventually rubbed off on Lisa. She found the stories of his childhood on the reserve, the tales told to him over campfires by his grandfather, charming and necessary to the preservation of the culture. She even did her part by buying dream catchers and that ubiquitous headdress made out of safety pins that dangled from practically every car in the village.

  But all that had changed. A foreign entity known as a Toyota Corolla had altered the life they knew and shared. The Corolla wasn’t theirs. It didn’t belong to anybody they knew. They still had never laid eyes on it. It just came out of the darkness one wintry night, like a vengeful spirit, and took the life of Donnelly Spencer, big brother of Richard Spencer, brother-in-law of Lisa Spencer.

  Richard took it hard. Almost too hard, which puzzled Lisa. Richard and Donnelly had always been fairly close, no different than a billion other brothers living on this planet. One of Lisa’s own sisters had died when she was a teenager, the unfortunate victim of some exotic blood disorder, leaving Lisa with only her memory. Lisa remembered being upset, crying herself to sleep on many a night, but time passed and the memory, while she still treasured it, lessened until it took on the official title of “fond remembrance.” She also had three other siblings to lean on when necessary, the big family a vestige of their Catholic origins.

  Lisa had gotten along with Donnelly, although she always suspected he never fully accepted his sister-in-law into the family. Just somewhere, behind the warm greetings and Christmas hugs, she always felt there was a hint, a subtle regret that Richard hadn’t taken the time to find himself a Native woman to carry on the future of the Ojibway Nation. At least the Otter Lake First Nation’s portion of it. To be fair, Donnelly was always glad to see her, and she him, for he had a way with a story, and she liked that. The innate sociologist in her, no doubt. His tales of conferences, Pow Wows, gatherings, and political meetings were legendary. If there was a way of making a first ministers’ meeting on Aboriginal issues interesting and even exciting, Donnelly was the man.

  Once, trying to be one of the gang, Lisa accepted an offer to participate in a sweat lodge being held at Donnelly’s cabin. She gamely put up with the semi-nudity among strangers— “Just like going to the steam room at the Y,” she told herself. Even the feel of cedar bits between her toes was distracting. In the end, it was the claustrophobia that got to her. Up until this adventure, she had never thought she was claustrophobic. In fact, she preferred small, economical cars. But the closeness of the walls, the sound of people only inches away, the darkness, and, of course, the stifling heat were more than she could take. Barely twenty minutes into the sweat, she found herself crawling out, embarrassed and naked, for she had left her towel on the floor of the sweat lodge. Richard had tried to placate her, saying he’d never been in a sweat lodge himself, but it did little good. Donnelly had reached out to her and she had failed to hold on.

  Now Donnelly was dead. Dead and buried. And Richard was no longer Richard. He had started to change. It started soon after the funeral. Lisa knew something was wrong, but Richard was one of those kind with whom, when he couldn’t exactly say what was wrong, there was no point in talking about it. But Lisa knew something was up. Richard started taking an interest in things that had never caught his attention before. He vowed to take up drumming. He even signed up for a class in conversational Ojibway at the friendship centre, but ended up lasting only a few weeks when he found out it was a different dialect from the one on his reserve. He started taking more interest in politics and issues, stuff that he had shrugged off before by saying, “Ah, I bet Donnelly will have something to say about that.”

  Lisa tried to support Richard with his new interests, once buying him an Indian Motorcycle sweatshirt. He laughed and hugged her when he saw it. He put it on immediately. She told him he should take off his tie first.

  “It’s a little big on me. It would have fit Donnelly perfectly. Don’t you think?”

  She thought it fit him perfectly, but she didn’t want to contradict him. He talked more about Donnelly after his death than when he was alive. And Richard’s sense of disconnectedness grew and grew. He still did his work—his job at the bank didn’t suffer, he was too much of a professional for that—but he became distant. Lisa thought it was a phase, and she tried to connect with him, drawing on the loss of her sister as a bonding issue. It didn’t work. He just smiled politely and changed the subject.

  She put up with it as long as she could. The first anniversary of Donnelly’s unfortunate death came and went, and by then Richard was thinking of quitting his job at the bank and using “his powers for good, not evil,” as he put it. Maybe he’d get a job working with the Assembly of First Nations or some Native business organization, and if worse came to worst, there was always the Department of Indian Affairs—“It’s better to be in the tent peeing out than outside peeing in,” he said. When you know how to control and manage money, it’s not that difficult to find a job.

  “Maybe … we should consider moving back to the reserve … ”

  This was new. When they had become engaged, she had asked him if he ever wanted to move back to Otter Lake. She was a city girl and the thought made her uncomfortable. But it was a non-issue. Emphatically Richard said, “No. You can’t get good Vietnamese soup back home. Too much sweet grass, not enough lemon grass.”

  She laughed but he was serious. “Lisa, you’ve never lived with all the relatives I have. All of them knowing what you’re doing. Who you’re friends with. What you’ve bought. I like the anonymity of living in town.” And that’s what they did. They rented a two-bedroom apartment an hour from the reserve in a nearby town and settled down to a warm domestic life. And during their entire married life, he had never mentioned a possible change of heart. Until now. He was becoming so different. Deep down inside she knew …

  There he was!! On television. Or a little piece of him. Somewhere several hundred miles due east, near a little French-Canadian town, beside a Mohawk community, stood an Ojibway personal banking officer. Lisa saw him, from a distance, smoking as he talked with a warrior standing beside a structure officials had called the treatment centre. He was smoking again. He had picked it up in university to handle the stress of getting his MBA, and eventually she had managed to convince him, as she liked to put it, to give it up. It was the only time, Lisa was convinced, she ever came close to the N-word: nagging. But it was a worthy cause, for both of them—second-hand smoke and all that. Especially someday if they had kids. And here he was, the whole country watching, puffing on a cigarette. Probably an Export A king-size … if she remembered
correctly.

  She couldn’t get a good view of him, the cameraman was too far away; but one thing she was sure of—for a millisecond, a heartbeat even, she thought it was Donnelly. Lisa was almost sure of it and it took her breath away. The slouch, the hair, the head leaning to the side—all Donnelly trademarks. But even at this distance, she saw, underneath the jean jacket, the unmistakable cut of his Calvin Klein dress shirt. Evidently there were some things Richard was reluctant to leave behind in his peculiar transformation. Around him were many Aboriginal people from many different Nations, many dressed in jeans and t-shirts, others in camouflage outfits, but there was Richard, smack dab in the middle of everything, still clinging to the feel and comfort of his precious designer shirts. Definitely one of the better-dressed Natives at the barricades that day.

  She didn’t even know why he was there. He’d never been to Oka; they’d been to Montreal a few times, sometimes for work, sometimes for the food. He didn’t really have many Mohawk friends outside of work.

  And as for the political nature of the standoff, again that was more Donnelly’s territory. Yet there he was. And there she was, watching her ex-husband possibly endanger his life.

  Granted, his growing interest in all things Aboriginally political—or, as he called it, the “lndigena politica agenda”—continually took her by surprise. But, she reasoned, there was a tremendous difference between commenting on how the lowly tomato of the Americas revolutionized Italian cuisine and supporting an armed uprising a hundred or so miles from where they had shared their lives.

  A quote from Richard and Donnelly’s uncle suddenly came into her mind. When she was busy trying to get Richard to give up smoking, Uncle Thomas had told her to give up. “Every man picks his own poison,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many people end up dying because of the way they live. Even them healthy white people. I saw on the news one time, about this guy who ran a dozen miles every day, even into his sixties, keeling over and dyin’ of a heart attack on his own doorstep. In his shorts and running shoes. All set to run to heaven, I guess. You can’t change a man’s decision.

  “With some people, it’s drink. Others, too much of the wrong kind of food. Still others will have women—or men—stamped on their graves. Fast cars, farming accidents, being shot by cops while robbing a bank, or even just dying alone in their rooms. In one way or another, we all pick our own poison.”

  She pondered his reserve wisdom for a second. “Donnelly was killed in a car accident. I don’t think he picked that.”

  Uncle Thomas smiled a sad smile. Donnelly had been one of his favourite nephews. A lot more sociable than Richard tended to be. “Donnelly sure did love walking the roads at night. Said the crickets and the frogs reminded him he was at home, like they were singing to him. He made the decision to walk on that road. At that time of night. As he did most nights. That dark jean jacket of his didn’t help.”

  “Maybe,” Lisa responded, “but Richard’s smoking sure as hell isn’t my poison. If I choose my own way of dying, then I want it to be from too much loving. Not cigarette smoke.” Uncle Thomas laughed at that one. He had always liked her, and she him. Sadly, one of the unfortunate after-effects of a divorce is that you don’t often get the opportunity to maintain the friendships with your partner’s family. The memory of Uncle Thomas brought a pang to her heart. Almost as severe as seeing Richard on the television.

  The news coverage went back to the reporter on location. The weather looked the same as outside her window, a beautiful summer day. The only thing marring it was several hundred people on the verge of killing one another. The reporter was talking about the history of Oka, and how 270 years had led up to this past month. Lisa had heard it all before; surprisingly, she had become a news junkie during the crisis, which was very unlike her. An unlikely Aboriginal expert via her circumstances. She always preferred watching the entertainment items, while Richard had obvious leanings toward the business news. Perhaps she too was changing.

  God knows a divorce can do that. Often it has shaped more lives than a marriage has. Though her divorce had been fairly unobtrusive. When the end finally came, after too many months of being distant and moody, she finally challenged him on it. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t argumentative. It was actually civil. “Sometimes I feel like I’m on a reserve in my head, and every time you ask me what’s going on, it feels like you’re trying to colonize me. Again.” Though she tried to comprehend, Richard’s statement made absolutely no sense to her. They were married. Bonded. Sharing each other’s lives. There were no “mind reserves” or “intellectual colonizations” involved. After that, he had said little else. And from there onward, the marriage seemed to dissolve. She quit arguing with him, and he quit caring.

  Lisa always attributed the changes in him to a reaction to Donnelly’s death. Something else Uncle Thomas once said came to mind: “You take something important out of a person’s death, it creates a vacuum. Something will rush in to fill it, good or bad. That’s why people who quit smoking usually get fat. People who quit drinking sometimes find God.” Lisa didn’t view Richard’s new-found interest in his heritage as good or bad. Just unusual. “It’s just a phase,” she’d tell herself.

  Earlier on, Richard had tried to bring her into his rapidly changing world. He would talk with her over breakfast about Lubicon Lake, Wounded Knee and a variety of other Native political catch phrases that any first-year Native studies student would know. He even encouraged her to take a few Native studies classes at the university. Lisa always begged off, saying she had had enough university and was now more interested in life. Once, while attending an elders’ conference, Richard had suggested they attend the evening social, but she wasn’t in the mood. After two days of attending workshops, she was “all Indianed out.” It was said in all innocence, originating from legitimate tiredness and cultural inundation. But after that, Richard stopped trying to connect. And she noticed.

  A few months later, she brought up the subject of separation. Then divorce. Richard, in the process of applying for a new job at the Aboriginal Economic Development Corporation, nodded solemnly. They both knew it was time. Within a month, they were on to their own little lives. She moved back to the city, and he moved back to the reserve. And life carried on. She hadn’t dated yet; it was way too soon, and she had a new life to establish. She didn’t know much about what was happening in his life. They hadn’t talked in months. She heard rumours from various mutual friends, and admittedly there was the odd occasional twinge of … something. A poet might have called it wistfulness, a cynic nostalgia, but she preferred to call it a marital hangover. She was sure it was just a matter of time before those twinges would disappear and the hangover would dissolve, like all polite hangovers.

  Then it happened. The proverbial shot heard round the Aboriginal world. July 11, 1990. The day the Sûreté du Québec stormed the encampment at Oka, determined to put an end to the Mohawk presence in the area known as the Pines. The town of Oka had long planned to bulldoze this traditional burial ground, adding an extra nine holes to an existing golf course. Protesting against this desecration, the Mohawks from the Kahnesatake First Nation had occupied the land for several weeks. By the time the smoke settled that morning, there would be one dead police officer, Corporal Marcel Lemay, and the world would hear about the two sleepy little communities of Oka and Kahnesatake.

  Lisa had never heard of the place. Granted, her knowledge of other Native communities was limited. She’d been to a few Pow Wows, mostly in Otter Lake and other nearby First Nations. She was once proud of the fact that she had developed a fondness for corn soup, an Otter Lake staple. It took almost two years, but before she knew it, it had become a fixture in her Pow Wow life. She related the experience to her discovery of the Korean delicacy known as kimchee, cabbage fermented in hot chilies. Normally, when it came to food, she instantly liked or disliked something. There was no middle ground. These were the only two things she knew of that had slowly grown on her taste buds.
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  This place in Quebec entered her consciousness around noon on the day it happened. She was getting ready to go to her new job, a daycare centre position that her degree in sociology made her ridiculously overqualified for. But she liked children and it was something to do. She was even considering taking a few early childhood education classes to upgrade her qualifications. During lunch hour, the kitchen staff had the radio turned on as they were making sandwiches. Lisa was pouring glasses of orange juice when she heard the news report. At first it didn’t register … then key words gradually made it into her working mind.

  “Mohawk … Native … shooting … death … ” Her ears perked up and she put the pitcher of orange juice down. The rest of the staff were surprised when she loudly shushed them to hear what was being said.

  “First Nations people from all over the country have pledged support for the actions of the Kahnesatake Mohawks. And publicly condemned the Sûreté du Québec and the Quebec government for its actions. Native communities across the nation have vowed to send community members and supplies to aid the besieged Mohawk village.”

  Over the next week, she watched what was happening in that not-so-far-away place. These were not the people she had known, married, or known through marriage; in fact, traditionally, the Mohawks and Ojibways were enemies from the days of the fur trade. Now that rivalry extended only to hockey and baseball tournaments. Like the proverbial squabbling fingers, it was okay to fight among yourselves, but when a single digit was threatened, all the fingers came together as a fist. Men and women from all over the country, from a dozen different Nations, and dozens more from the States, were flooding into Quebec to aid the Mohawks.

  Lisa hadn’t thought of Donnelly Spencer in months but she couldn’t help thinking that was where Richard’s older brother would be right now, “doing his bit for the cause.” Richard no doubt would be watching the news religiously. Especially with his new-found Aboriginal conviction. It was a pity Donnelly wasn’t alive any more, she thought, they would be so close now. Two peas in the indigenous pod. But then again, if Donnelly hadn’t died, it’s probable that Richard wouldn’t have changed so much, thus becoming, as her old psychology professor often said, “a mooty moot point.”