Up Ghost River

by Edmund Metatawabin

  I lay down on the floor, where it was cooler, and my chest sank into the damp earth. George began to sing, and one by one, the others joined in. Their voices resonated deep inside my flesh. I listened as my skin danced with their melodies. Until their last notes had faded into the heat. Then I tried to get up, but I felt a heavy weight, like a dog, on my chest. The weight began to fill my chest, pulling me into a darkness deeper than night. I let go and began to fall. The thick black air pulled me downwards, into the ground. I felt the soil between my fingers. I was on the floor, weak and part of the dirt. I was the Great Mother Earth. I was Gitchi Manitou and his Creation.

  George began saying another prayer, signifying the sweat was over. I was exhausted and unable to move. Lenny helped me outside into daylight. The cool air soothed my near-naked body.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In the valley

  The walking people are blank-eyed

  Elders mouth vacant thought.

  Youth grow spindly, wan

  from sap too drugged to rise.

  Dennis read this poem to us twice. Marilou Awiakta was a Cherokee poet from East Tennessee, but she could have been from anywhere. The policy was universal, or at least the same across North America. Kill the Indian to Save the Man. Turned out when you killed the Indian, you just killed the Indian.

  Dennis asked us what we thought it meant.

  “It means it’s hard to follow the Red Road,” I said.

  “Explain.”

  “The Red Road is the way we’re supposed to walk right in the world. It’s called a road, but really it’s bigger than that. It’s all of it—the Seven Sacred Teachings, the vision quests, the shaking tent, the sweat lodges, the animal spirit guides. Each of them offers a teaching on how to live well in the world. The sweat lodge offers a lesson on enduring discomfort. On letting go into pain. On trusting your body even when everything else seems unbearable. It teaches you through experience on how to stare death in the face. Thing is, we were taught that this stuff was shameful. We were taught to be fearful of who we were, and to turn our backs on our traditions, on our ancient coping mechanisms. We were taught not to listen to the elders, the keepers of those traditions. So we became lost. We lost faith in the road. We became afraid to put one foot in front of the other. So we block everything out with booze and drugs.”

  “Is that your story?”

  “Mostly,” I said. “Some of it was my own doing.”

  “What was your own doing?”

  “Well, I’ve hurt a lot of people over the years, especially my wife. I had chances and I blew them. Chances to do right and to come clean and each time I didn’t go there.”

  “Part of this healing is learning how to own your own story,” Dennis said. “To acknowledge what has happened and what you have done and to stop running from it. It’s there. It’s done. People were hurt. Stop reliving it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’re human and you made mistakes. That’s okay. We all do it. Especially when you’ve been in a residential school. Seen and been part of things that shouldn’t have happened. Then you come out and you’re expected to pretend like it never happened. Go on with your life. Chances are it doesn’t work out that way. There’s a lot of hurt inside of you that wants to get out and be in the world. So you start to destroy those who are close to you. It feels inevitable. But once you finally realize what you’ve done, you still have to own that hurt. You still have to repair those relations, as much as you can. Remember, you’ve already taken the first steps.”

  “I have?”

  “Tell everyone about your new job, Ed.” I took hold of the eagle feather and told the group that I’d been trying to find stable work when I went to the University of Alberta to ask about their master’s programs. I had bumped into Marilyn Buffalo-McDonald, who was working as director of its Native Student Services. We had an intense discussion about politics and she told me she was looking for an assistant to help her boost native enrollment at the school. I returned home for my CV, and after a couple of interviews, I got the job.

  Everyone clapped.

  “Sounds big shot. What’s it mean?” Bridget asked.

  “Oh, I’m pretty far down the totem pole. It just means that I’m helping kids.”

  After I started my job at the university, I continued going to cultural training workshops. One took place at Goodstriker’s Ranch, near the Rockies. Each day we had a good breakfast, exercise and heard talks from elders. Nights we slept in teepees. What we found most helpful was to meet for ten or fifteen minutes at dawn by a nearby creek. For me it was not rational and least of all not scientific. What could be accomplished by gazing in wonderment at the coming sunrise?

  But we sat there and watched the creek flow, saw the minute details of the rivulet cascading over pebbles and sand, and we began to understand appreciation. We realized that this gratitude took the form of acceptance: of ourselves and our situation.

  I had never been on a horse before. The owner of the ranch, Rufus Goodstriker, gave me a small gelding to ride. Half an hour later I was navigating a narrow ledge, looking at the deep canyon below, rock face to my right and nothing on my left. I focused on staying atop the horse. My name became the Sandal-Footed Cowboy because I had no cowboy boots, unlike everyone else.

  —

  As the months went by, I went to more sweats, and Dennis said that I was ready to start helping others. That I should use Pa’s teachings and what I had learned in our sessions and in the sweat lodge to get involved.

  “I am involved. We’re trying to raise native involvement at the university.”

  “Some of these people could do with your help,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Have someone else listen to them and guide them along the way.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s still a lot I’m dealing with.”

  “Ed, what you went through has left some pretty serious scars.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Helping others will help heal them.”

  “You sure?”

  “No. But I’d like you to try.”

  The following Saturday morning I replayed this conversation as I sat in my car outside Sue-May’s house. I didn’t know much about her: she was one of the quiet ones in the healing circle. When she spoke, which wasn’t often, we all leaned in, until Bridget singed her hair on one of the candles, jumping up, as the sacred space exploded with four-letter curses. Sue-May hadn’t said much after that. I think she was afraid of causing third-degree burns.

  I glanced at my watch, and looked around. She lived on the top floor of a building on a street filled with massage parlours and pawnbrokers. There was no front yard, just a rough mound of snow filled with Coke cans and tufts of prickly grass.

  A few minutes later, she got in my car and said she wanted to go to the Camsell Hospital. What’s at the Camsell? I asked. It was known to be an Indian hospital where they’d fly all the natives from up north. Mostly for TB. The rates of infection had come down since I’d attended school but the disease still freaked people out. Coughing up blood. Quick, get the children to hospital down south. Then wait. And wait. Any news? Please. No. Usually, the kids didn’t come home. Only arrived in hospital once there was a hole in the lungs full of disease. Not much the doctors could do. Maybe that’s why there were rumours of the ghosts of coughing children wandering the Camsell’s lobby.

  “It was where I had my operation,” she said.

  “What operation?”

  She looked out the window and said nothing.

  At the Camsell I parked the car and she went inside. To keep warm, I turned the car on every few minutes. Outside the hospital entrance, a mother was helping a five-year-old into his coat. They reminded me of Joan and Jassen. Not the way they looked, just the way the boy put his arms around his mother’s neck for support and how she used her coat to protect him from the wind as she got him into his own.

  After an hour, Sue-May returned. I asked her how it went. She said th
ey were too busy to see her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They told me to come back tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “The supervisor will be there then.”

  “Do you want me to talk to them?”

  “No. They said to come back tomorrow.”

  At our healing session that evening, Dennis took me aside and asked how it had all gone.

  “It’s like she’s still on the reserve,” I said. “She treats everyone with authority like they’re an Indian Agent or something.”

  “That’s why I partnered her with you,” he said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re ready. You’re steady enough that you can give back. You’ve done the hard work, and found your voice.”

  I had long wanted to call Joan. I wanted her back in my life. Every time I asked Dennis about it, he told me to wait.

  “Why? I need my family. They are everything to me.”

  “What do they need?” Dennis asked.

  “I think my kids need a dad.”

  “And do you feel ready? Do you feel ready in here?” and he put his hand on my heart.

  I did some smudging ceremonies over the next few days, and cleansed my mind, preparing myself for the talk. I needed to be in a mindset where I felt I knew how to listen to her needs and take them seriously. I had to remember how to follow the Red Road.

  “Joan. Is that you?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Ed. Your husband. Ex-husband,” I corrected myself. We were separated, but she hadn’t yet brought up divorce. Thank Gitchi Manitou for these small favours.

  “Oh. Right. It’s been a while.” I couldn’t believe that eight months had passed.

  “I know. My healer said I shouldn’t call until I was ready.”

  “You were ready?” She sounded bemused.

  “There’s a lot going on.”

  “Here too. I’m taking care of your three children.”

  “I know. I want to be involved.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”

  “Things are different now.”

  “That one too.”

  “You’re a hard woman.” It was supposed to be a joke.

  “No. I’m not. I’m too easy actually.”

  “Is there anything I can say that would impress you?”

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

  “I’m doing an apology dance as we speak.” I could hear her smile on the phone.

  “I gotta go,” she said.

  I called again a few days later.

  “There’s a woman I’m helping,” I said.

  “A woman?”

  “It’s not like that. She’s older.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “She had some sort of operation. In residential school. It reminded me of something that happened to me. Something that I should have told you about a long time ago.”

  “What, Ed?” she said, sighing.

  “There was a man. His name was Mike Pasko.” And then I told her about the time I had gone with him to the Albany, and then about our trip to Montreal.

  “Jesus, Ed,” she said, once I’d finished. We were silent for a while.

  “Are you going to say anything else?” I asked.

  “I’m in shock.”

  “I should have told you before.”

  “Yes. No. God, I don’t know.”

  At our next healing session, Dennis asked Sue-May and me to stay behind after our group work, then he left the room. Sue-May asked me to light a candle and turn out the lights. She wouldn’t say why. We sat in the near dark, face to face.

  “I had an operation. They cut me.”

  “Who?”

  “The doctors at the Camsell.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “When I was sixteen at residential school in Alberta. I was a ward of the state.”

  “What happened?”

  “They gave me a test. In math. There were three men sitting up high. Behind a table. They said I needed my appendix out.”

  “You had appendicitis?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I went to have surgery. I came out. I thought I was fine. But last year, I needed to have an examination, you know, for here.” She pointed at her stomach. “After, the doctor said my insides are all chewed up. Like they’ve been in a food processor. That I’d never be able to have a baby.”

  I reached for her hand in the darkness. Her palms were as dry as moose jerky, but the tops felt soft like a baby’s skin. We were quiet for a while.

  I didn’t know what to say. Years later we found out that she wasn’t alone, that there were thousands like her—Leilani Muir and others—aboriginals, alcoholics, mentally handicapped and juvenile delinquents deemed unsuitable for procreation, who were sterilized without their consent.8 When I met Sue-May in the winter of 1977, the Sexual Sterilization Act had been revoked five years earlier, but not before 2,800 people had been sterilized in Alberta. The Act allowed a residential school superintendent or principal to permit the sterilization of any student under their charge.

  “Tell me about your kids,” she said.

  “My kids?”

  “They are eight, six and five, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  So I told her about the time that Joan and I had gone hiking with Albalina when she was a baby. We’d stopped in a spruce grove next to a creek and listened to the Standing Ones. I cradled Albalina and held Joan’s hand. Near us the branches curled around each other.

  “I hear something,” Joan said.

  “What?”

  “I love you,” she whispered in my ear.

  “The Standing Ones didn’t tell you that,” I replied, laughing.

  “Does it matter?”

  Afterwards we had gone home and made love. I hadn’t meant to tell Sue-May all that, but she listened expectantly every time I stopped, as if wanting more.

  The next day at the Camsell, I went in with her. We explained the situation at the information desk. The clerk, a tall man with delicate hands, raised an eyebrow and said he didn’t think anything like that had happened here.

  “Are you a musician?” Sue-May asked. “You have musician’s hands.” The tall man blushed.

  “I play jazz guitar,” he said. “But only on weekends.”

  Sue-May nodded and looked him in the eyes. “It did happen,” she said. He looked at her, embarrassed, then looked back at me before going off to get his boss. A man in his forties returned. He had a thin mustache, which he played with as he spoke. He told us he’d look into it.

  That evening it got to me. All of it. Sue-May, Lenny, Amocheesh, Bridget, myself: everyone who’d had their lives picked apart by the residential schools. I called Joan and told her about Sue-May.

  “Everyone is so unhelpful,” I said. “And she doesn’t even know why they did it.”

  “Why did they do it?” Joan said.

  “I don’t know. I’m still finding it out.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I think so. There’s a sadness about her.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Sometimes it sits heavy on her. Like in her shoulders. I try to help, but … anyway, I told her about you. About us.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her about the time that we went hiking with Albalina.”

  “We did that a bunch of times.”

  “Remember the time when we listened to the Standing Ones?”

  “You were always trying to get me to do stuff like that.”

  “Still am.”

  “You’re such a flirt.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Listen, I should go.”

  “Can I have five more minutes? There’s something I want to tell you.”

  “Another secret? Should I sit down?”

  “No, nothin
g like that. I’m tired, Joan. And angry. I think I need to take those bastards to court.”

  “Who?”

  “The staff at St. Anne’s. Mike. Everyone who has trampled on us and thinks they can get away with it.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of people.”

  “Joan, come on. Seriously.”

  “Seriously. It’s going to be hard work …”

  “I know.”

  “But I think you need to do it. I mean the whippings. The standing naked bed-wetting punishments. An electric chair. Being made to eat your own vomit. Brother Jutras’s ‘medical exams.’ The solitary confinement in the basement. There’s just so much.”

  “Yes. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with it.”

  “How did you survive while you were there? How did you get through every day?”

  “I had friends at first. They helped me. We helped each other. But after a while, it took a toll. Lots of us just shut down.”

  “God. That’s so sad.”

  “We lost our voices. Lost our way. Didn’t know what was right in our hearts.”

  “Do you think that’s why so many people in Fort Albany drink?”

  “Yeah. That’s part of it. For sure.”

  “Well then I think a court case is a good idea. It will help people find peace.”

  “All the records are in Fort Albany. I’d need to come back. How do you feel about that?

  “You mean to move in here?”

  Joan was working as an ESL teacher, and had taken over my parent’s old two-bedroom when they got their bigger band house.

  “Well … I guess I could live with my parents.”

  “I’ll have to think about it. I mean I can’t just pick up …” She paused. “A lot has happened, Ed.”

  “I know. I just wish there were some way to make things right.”

  “So do I.”

  “Joan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That guy. Mark. Is he … still … in the picture?” I had heard through the grapevine that she was dating.

  “Funny. I didn’t know you knew. No.”

  “I love you, you know …”

  “Yes, I know.”