Advance praise for
Up Ghost River
“Up Ghost River is a very difficult story to read, but a necessary one in the reckoning of Canada’s abusive and exploitative relationship with its First Nations people. Edmund Metatawabin’s measured and honest account shows evidence of remarkable healing, and his story has much in common with the history of colonized indigenous people around the world. Metatawabin’s journey is a metaphor for the journey we must all take if we are to heal our relationship to the land at this crucial hour in the environmental fate of the planet. With Alexandra Shimo, Metatawabin writes about his life in a way that is both agonizing and redemptive, personal and political, gut-wrenching and level-headed; it will break your heart.”
Christine Pountney, author of Sweet Jesus
“A harrowing and redemptive story of a man’s personal battles with one of Canada’s worst practices. Edmund Metatawabin’s tale of residential schools and government bureaucracy will leave you angry at the evils of colonization. Yet it will also show you a man’s—and a people’s—incredible ability to survive and seek justice. There are plenty of ghosts in this book, apportions of shame and responsibility, but Metatawabin’s journey and destination on that river will definitely leave you full of hope and richer for it.”
Drew Hayden Taylor, author of Motorcycles & Sweetgrass
“Moving documentation, recollected tragedy and personal triumph, this book is a necessary first-hand account of being First Nations in contemporary Canada. From the atrocities of residential schools, to the present-day policy challenges, Up Ghost River will open your eyes to the all-too-recent history of Canada’s First Peoples, through the experiences of a resilient individual and his family.”
The Right Honourable Paul Martin, former Prime Minister of Canada
“Edmund Metatawabin’s voice is clear, brave and full of the grace of his Cree homeland. Up Ghost River is a powerful and unsettling read, full of heartbreaking truth-telling, resistance and Metatawabin’s uncompromising love of land, his people, his language and his culture. These stories are full of the real lived violence of colonialism and of the beautiful tiny moments that our elders and storytellers wrap around our children to teach them, protect them and nurture them. Metatawabin is a gift to all who are lucky enough to read him, and the key to reading Metatawabin is a willingness to simply allow these stories to transform you.”
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back and Islands of Decolonial Love, and recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award
“A shocking, sadly revealing Canadian story. Cree elder Edmund Metatawabin has the courage to tell how ‘white learning’ stripped him of his name and systematically brutalized him—including strapping him into a school-built electric chair and electrocuting him—traumatizing him throughout his childhood, youth and adulthood, until he could finally let it all ‘pass through’ him and find himself as a human being. ‘We are still here,’ he asserts, and ‘our forefathers … are still here, all around us, guiding those who listen.’ Every Canadian needs to hear this story.”
Rudy Wiebe, author of The Temptations of Big Bear and Come Back
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2014 Edmund Metatawabin
Foreword copyright © 2014 Joseph Boyden
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.randomhouse.ca
Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
this page constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Metatawabin, Edmund, 1947–, author
Up Ghost River : a chief’s journey through the turbulent waters of Native history /
Edmund Metatawabin with Alexandra Shimo; foreword by Joseph Boyden.
ISBN 978-0-307-39987-8
eBook ISBN 978-0-307-39990-8
1. Metatawabin, Edmund, 1947–. 2. Native peoples—Canada—Residential schools. 3. Native peoples—Canada—Social conditions. 4. Cree Indians—Biography. 5. Indian activists—Canada—Biography.
I. Shimo, Alexandra II. Title.
E99.C88M483 2014 971.004′973230092 C2013-908612-9
Cover design by Jennifer Lum
Cover image: Metatawabin Productions and Research
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseila investi 157 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
v3.1
This book is dedicated to Joan, my partner of forty-four years, who refused to let my hand go, and to my children Albalina, Shannin, Jassen and Cedar, and also to all the residential school survivors.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map of Northern Ontario
Author’s Note
Foreword by Joseph Boyden
Introduction
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
PART TWO
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Photo Insert
Getting Involved
Suggested Reading
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
Text and Image Permissions
About the Authors
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have long been a First Nations advocate, but writing a memoir was different entirely. I had previously published a guidebook, Harvesting: Cree Hunting and Gathering Techniques, and a novel, Hanaway, about a young man trying to discover his Cree culture, but documenting my own story felt painful and fraught. I wanted my story out there as it chronicles an important part of Canadian and First Nations history. Yet I was hampered by gaps in my memory, perhaps because of my unusual childhood or the trauma of what I would later do to my body.
Starting in July 2011, I began to work with author and journalist Alexandra Shimo to try to close those gaps. She interviewed people from my past, and dug up old court transcripts, St. Anne’s Residential School records, police interviews and reports through Freedom of Information requests, photos, and newspaper articles to fill in those places where my memory was spotty, checking them agai
nst my own recollections. In some places, we changed names and details to protect people’s identities. Any dialogue is created as it might have happened, to the best of my memory.
FOREWORD
TEN SUNRISES BY JOSEPH BOYDEN
I first met Edmund Metatawabin during the beginning of a cold James Bay winter in 1995. I’d made the rather shocking move from New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico to Moosonee on the gulf of the Arctic and was still trying to find my way in this at once familiar and yet so foreign part of the world. I’d taken a position at Northern College and was basically the itinerant professor who travelled up and down the west coast of the bay from my home base in Moosonee, flying into different Cree reserves such as Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat in order to try and hone the English and communications skills of students wishing to begin careers in fields as divergent as nursing, mechanics, and drug and alcohol counselling.
If I remember correctly, it was mid-November when I first flew into Fort Albany, a few hundred kilometres north of my new home. The weather had been bad in Moosonee when we left, heavy snow flurries building intensely. Less than an hour later, as I stared out the window of my small plane, my hands gripping the armrests, the plane being jostled by strong gusts as we approached the runway, the snow fell so thick I couldn’t see a foot out my window, and that’s when I deeply questioned my young man’s folly of a new career choice.
The plane did land safely despite a few terrifying skids on the snowy runway, and after shakily climbing off it and walking into the tiny room that served as the terminal, I stood and watched as different dark-skinned and white-haired gookums and young pretty mothers with newborns were eventually picked up by smiling family members. Eventually I was left standing alone and staring out the window when even the lone baggage handler/ticket counter attendant departed the building for what I could only assume was his lunch break.
Just when I thought I’d been forgotten completely, up roared a pickup truck and out climbed an imposingly well-built man who trudged to the door and swung it open. I’d been practising how to say my contact’s name: Edmund Metatawabin. I’d repeated it over and over, even asked Cree friends down in Moosonee how to pronounce the surname. “Do I put the emphasis on the vowels?” I’d asked one of my students the day before. “Do I pronounce it Meat-at-a-Way-Bean? Do I pronounce it Me-Ta-Ta-Way-Bun?”
“Just call him Ed,” one student answered dryly.
“You must be Ed,” I said as the large man walked into the terminal and nodded to me.
“No, I’m his brother Mike. Edmund had to help his wife out at the restaurant.”
And with that, he ushered me into his pickup truck and took me on a tour of Fort Albany, the place that now holds a monumental grasp on my being. I learned that Mike, Ed’s younger brother, was the current chief of Fort Albany. I’d been picked up at the airport by the chief! I learned that Ed had been a past chief, and that their father, and his father before him had also served as chief to their reserve. I was riding through the reserve of Fort Albany with royalty! But was Mike not the most down-to-earth guy I’d ever met? On our snowy drive, dodging rez dogs and kids playing hockey with frozen tennis balls, Mike gave me a brief history of his community, a history, both personal and historical, that you are about to embark on, dear reader, one that I understand in that deepest part of me is both central and integral to who we are as Canadians. But I digress. Let me tell you at least a little bit about Ed.
After our tour, Mike brought me to the community centre with its warm and cozy little restaurant where I was greeted by a smiling woman named Joan, who I soon learned was Ed’s wife. “You must be the new teacher from Northern College,” she said, handing me a cup of coffee. Children ran around the tables, Ed and Joan’s youngest, adorable daughter, Cedar, laughing at me before running away. We sat and talked for a bit, and I learned that Joan had met Ed in the community when she came to teach years before. The two fell in love, and the fair-haired and light-skinned Joan stayed in Ed’s northern home with him. Clearly, she flourished here.
Not long after, in from the kitchen walked the man I’d already heard so much about. He was slighter than his brother, with the build of a long distance runner, but the first thing I noticed about Ed was his open and handsome face, the easy and large smile, the long black ponytail reaching far down his back. When he walked up to me with a warm Cree greeting of Watchi-yeh, reaching his hand out to me, I noticed the glint in his eyes. He seemed interested in who he was meeting, almost searching for something in my own eyes. I hadn’t quite experienced it before. It’s a look I’ve grown accustomed to over the years, a look that is also mischievous, the eyes ready to crinkle in laughter at a second’s notice.
I spent a week up in Fort Albany that first trip, and got to know Ed, Joan and their family a little. They even had me over for dinner to the octagonal log house Ed had built himself with logs cut from the surrounding bush, a large wood stove keeping the place warm during even the coldest nights. I learned a number of things that first visit, foremost of which was that this family was a truly special one. Before I headed south to Moosonee, they made it clear that I was welcome back anytime. And so this is how I was introduced to Ed, who explained to me just as I was leaving that the English translation of his family’s name is “Ten Sunrises.” It’s as if he whispered a secret to me because he trusted me, a secret that I’ve pondered ever since.
And I did return often. In fact my trips up to Fort Albany through that first year, through that long winter and into spring, became the fondest memories of my time living on James Bay. There are so many tales I wish to tell that I’ve experienced with Ed and his family. I could speak on and on about my experiences with them. But I realize that this is their story, isn’t it?
Allow me to say this, though: I’ve remained friends with this amazing man and his family for coming on twenty years now even though we live many thousands of kilometres and different worlds apart. I’ve watched from a distance as he and Joan’s brilliant children have grown up into exceptional human beings. Ed not only brought me into his house the first year I knew him, but ushered me into his community with open arms. He allowed me into his parents’ home, where I interviewed for many hours his powerful father, Abraham, and his dear, sweet mom, Mary-Theresa. Ed brought me to St. Anne’s Residential School and shared deep stories of his pain in that cruel institution so that I might better be able to write my novels. Ed welcomed me into his spiritual world, too, introducing me to certain elders and shamans who have forever changed my life for the better.
Years after I moved away from James Bay, Ed asked me to help celebrate the opening of Peetabeck Academy, the combined elementary and high school that finally allowed youth to stay at home in their teenage years and not have to move far away down south to complete that part of their education. I’ll always remember the community gathering outside the brand new and beautiful school, the smoking ruins of that nightmare called St. Anne’s behind us, as Blue Rodeo performed a celebratory concert for us all.
More recently, Ed asked me to return to Fort Albany in order to be the keynote speaker at the Great Moon Gathering, where communities from all across James Bay meet yearly to discuss education for Cree youth. And so I returned, along with my dear friends the Tragically Hip, who played their first high school gym in twenty-five years to the sheer joy of the people who were lucky enough to be there.
Ed is a special man indeed, as you will soon learn through his story. Singlehandedly, he breaks all of the ridiculous and scathing stereotypes levelled at the people of James Bay. Resilience. Self-reliance. Courage. Family. Spirituality. Happiness and deep humour and love. These are what define Edmund Metatawabin and the Cree people of James Bay. Please, now lose yourself in his story. It’s at times painful. It’s at other times a wonderful lesson in the importance of laughter. It’s certainly deeply connected to the land. It is, in part, a tale of a world changing too quickly. But most of all, it is a heart song, a love song to a very speci
al people and place, to a geography and a culture that are a foundation of who we are as a nation.
Joseph Boyden
New Orleans
April 2014
INTRODUCTION
On October 18, 2012, the Canadian government tabled a sprawling 457-page bill that generated such opposition among indigenous people that it sparked a worldwide political movement. First Nations viewed Bill C-45, the Jobs and Growth Act, as an attack on our rights and our voices. It made it easier for corporations to build on our traditional land without our consultation or approval, which we viewed as an attack on native sovereignty. And it reduced the legal protections against environmental degradation of our sacred waters, by reducing the number of rivers and other waterways protected under one of Canada’s oldest pieces of legislation, the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In response, Idle No More was born.
How you viewed this story depended on where you watched it unfold. I am used to travelling between my isolated northern community and down south, as we like to say, and I am married to a white woman, with four children, so I am accustomed to walking in both worlds. The issue split along well-worn lines: Idle No More’s protestors represented the environmentalists vs. big business, the minority vs. the majority, aboriginal rights vs. assimilation, angry natives vs. mainstream Canada. It’s a familiar story, but it’s only partly true.
For my people in the north, C-45 and the other government bills that were protested under the Idle No More banner were an attack on native sovereignty and environmentalism, but also part of a larger story that continues beyond recent memory. We have been silenced ever since we first met the white man. The Potlatch laws silenced us by preventing us from practising our spirituality, culture and religion. We were put under the extreme stress of shifting from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle, and denied spiritual and cultural rituals that had helped us cope, understand who we were and find meaning in the world for thousands of years. We were denied the right to travel or move between reserves without permission from the Indian Agent. We were refused the right to plant crops, banned from cutting down trees or building houses, unless we could get permission from the government minister. When we tried to protest these decisions, the Indian Act prohibited us from hiring lawyers. We were forbidden to appeal any decisions of District Stipendiaries (Indian Agent supervisors), Police Magistrates or Justices of the Peace. The Indian Act silenced us politically by denying us the right to vote, which was only repealed in 1960.1 We were banned from holding any political meetings.
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