For Joshua
Page 16
In truth, we’re not angry. We’re sad. They need to know this. They need to know that for us, for tribal people who carry the memories of drums on distant hills, the land itself haunts us. It reminds us of what we have lost every time we look upon it. It reminds us how far away from those tribal fires we have moved, of how incredibly things have changed, of how with every fibre of our beings we seek a return to the things that kept us vital, dynamic, spiritual, and alive forever. They need to know that every land claim, treaty negotiation, blockade, and court case is born out of that desire. They are born out of a spiritual hunger, not a physical greed. They are actions created by a profound sadness and longing for the flames of those old tribal fires. For a sense of who we are. For an image of ourselves cast in the light of traditional fires. They need to know that they are actions taken to ensure that we will not need to grieve the loss of another part of ourselves.
If they can understand this, they can understand us, because everyone has lost someone or something they miss with a longing that is deep and blue and cold. So it is with us, and we need to tell them that.
This is why it is so hard to be considered a real Indian in this world—because it’s easier to calm someone’s anger than it is to heal someone’s sadness or to fill a lonely need. It’s only natural, I suppose, for someone carrying the crushing inner burden of loneliness to do whatever it takes to make it go away. At least that was true for me. When our people tell each other that they need to do this, they need to act this way, they need to wear this, to be seen here or seen there, they are speaking from that loneliness. They are trying to recreate that tribal life today, trying to rebuild it, make it vital and alive again.
But the secret is that we can never bring back those days. We can never recreate the buffalo hunt. The world has changed far too much. But if we recognize the loneliness we carry and own it, call it ours, then what we can do as a people is to recreate and carry the spirit of those things in our hearts. We may not relight the fires that used to burn in our villages, but we can carry the embers from those fires in our hearts and learn to light new fires in a new world. We can recreate the spirit of community we had, of kinship, or relationship to all things, of union with the land, harmony with the universe, balance in living, humility, honesty, truth, and wisdom in all of our dealings with each other.
I don’t know when or if we will see each other. I don’t know if you will ever read this book. But I hope so. I wrote it for you, and in the writing I began to realize that there were probably hundreds, maybe thousands of young Native people who might need to know this story, too. There are many who have been denied the presence of a father in their lives. Many who have never been offered the teachings this book talks of. Many who carry the same set of feelings about themselves that I once carried. Many who maybe already drink the way I drank to kill those feelings. And I just knew you would want to share this with them.
But, ultimately, it is yours.
The truth of my life today is threefold because I will always be three things in this world. First, I will always be a male, Ojibway human being. I always was. Secondly, I will always be a drunk who can never drink again. Lastly, I will always be your father. Nothing in the world can ever change that.
Seek me out when you are ready. I won’t be too hard to find. I’ll be on the land somewhere, feeling its heartbeat on the soles of my feet, knowing with each breath that it is home, that I am home, wherever I might be.
Until then, my son, I love you.
Your father
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its generous support in the creation of this manuscript. Also, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Chief Allan Luby and the Band Council of Ochiichagwe’Babigo’Ining First Nation for the space to complete it.
Thanks to my family, for their support and belief in me; my agent, Bruce Westwood, for friendship and guidance; Natasha Daneman, for enduring the phone calls, e-mails and nomadic movements; Maya Mavjee and Nick Massey-Garrison at Doubleday, for encouragement, advice and acceptance. Further, immense gratitude to Shelagh Rogers for her humanitarianism, Dawn Maracle, Drew Hayden-Taylor, Carla Robinson, Sally Catto, Kika Mowry, Peter Simpson, Professor John Wadland, and all the friends of Bill W. for being there when I needed them.
And especially to Catherine, Sebastian, Pizhoo, and Buddy, for giving me a home and the strength to write this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Wagamese’s award-winning first novel, Keeper’n Me, helped establish him as one of Canada’s major new literary talents. A former columnist for the Calgary Herald, he received a National Newspaper Award for his writing. Richard Wagamese lives in Ontario.