One Native Life

by Richard Wagamese

  The Kid Who Couldn’t Dance

  . . .

  WHEN WE WERE TWELVE, my friend John Albert and I were huge Peanuts fans. The cartoons of Charles Schulz connected with the kid world we lived in, and we collected every strip from the daily paper. It was a contest of sorts, really. Everywhere we went we clipped Peanuts cartoons from discarded newspapers and glued them into scrapbooks. When we met we’d compare collections. There was often a little jealousy over the classic strips one or the other of us had managed to find.

  We each had our favourite characters. His was Schroeder, the quiet, piano-playing prodigy, and mine was Snoopy. Maybe the fact that I have a little white dog today had its roots in my childhood fascination. I loved the antics of that whimsical beagle.

  Whenever Charlie Brown and the gang were on TV, I was glued to the set. Snoopy came alive then, and I couldn’t get enough of him. I loved it when he fantasized about being a World War I flying ace, and even more when he danced. He seemed to explode in joy. I had a T-shirt of him dancing that read, “To live is to dance, to dance is to live.”

  There was a part of me that wanted more than anything to explode in joy, to wheel about in wild abandon. The image of a small, imaginative dog dancing in exultation of life captivated me.

  But I could never dance.

  When gracefulness was handed out, I was apparently at the far end of the line. The most I could ever manage was a rudimentary box step, a stutter and clump. I was all elbows and knees, with feet too big for the skinny frame I had back then. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it. Music had a huge effect on me. But whenever I tried to dance, the elasticity went right out of my body. I zombie-danced. I clomped about looking for rhythm. I could always feel the exuberance in the music but could never express it through my body.

  I wanted to swing along with the big bands, foxtrot to the music of a hot jazz combo, watusi with the Beach Boys or even do-si-do with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. The dance productions on TV variety shows intrigued me. I wanted to cavort and romp in time with the beat, to throw myself into the music. But whenever I tried I was all elbows and knees, wearing big man’s shoes on skinny kid’s feet.

  School dances were a washout. I seldom left the wall, and when I did I sweated profusely. If I happened to waltz with a girl, I left clammy palmprints on her back. I could never relax and let the music guide me. There was always the paralyzing fear that I would look as clumsy as I felt. I’d faithfully watch Soul Train and Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, but I could never emulate the moves of the teenagers on those shows. I became content to sit and watch whenever I was at a dance or a club or, when I got the rare chance, to lean my head on a girl’s shoulder and shuffle my feet during the slow dances.

  When I was in my early twenties, friends took me to my first powwow at the Standing Buffalo reserve in Saskatchewan. There wasn’t a big powwow tradition in southern Ontario, so I’d never been exposed to it. To me it was a cultural oddity, something only for Indians who’d grown up on a reserve. As a city-raised kid in a white home, it made me nervous. But this powwow was huge. There were hundreds of dancers and dozens of drums. It was colourful and dynamic, and the throngs of people gathered to watch generated an excitement that I felt in my bones.

  The music was elemental and pure. It was driven by praise and soulfulness and a spirit hewn from history and change and a primal love of the earth. It resonated in my rib cage, and the high trill of the singers’ voices filled me with a wildness that took me as close to genuine freedom as I’ve ever been. The drum connected me with something I hadn’t known before, and I felt a huge lump in my throat that was equal parts sorrow, gratitude and joy. When I was coaxed out for my first inter-tribal dance, I closed my eyes and felt the drum and began to move my feet. It was magic. I could dance.

  It would be a few years before I was graced with the drum teachings of my people, but there was a spiritual connection nonetheless. Once I felt the drum in my chest, the hollowness I’d carried as a displaced Indian kid was gone. In its place was belonging.

  It’s been almost thirty years now, and the drum still moves me. I still can’t do a foxtrot, still look all angles and knees dancing to contemporary music, but I do a proud men’s traditional when I get the chance. The kid who couldn’t dance found an expression for the joy that lived in him in the music of his people. When you dance for joy, dance for life, dance for the earth, there are no wrong steps. Snoopy, I think, would be proud.

  BOOK THREE

  NIBI

  (WATER)

  WE BEGIN OUR lives in the water of our mother’s belly. We emerge into the world on the flow of it, and the tears we cry over the course of a lifetime—of joy, of sorrow—are the residue of that nurturing pool. Those tears cleanse us, energize us, heal us. My people teach that our greatest quest is to become like calm water in a pool. Ceremony and spirituality can bring us near to that. So can stories and teachings and other people. As I grew into a man, these tools combined to teach me that, like water, life has ebbs and flows. Within them is the promise of returning to the innocence in which we were born.

  Being Buffalo Cloud

  . . .

  THERE’S A MOUNTAIN to the south and east of us that humps up like a buffalo. From the Paul Lake road, heading west from Pinantan Lake, its bald rock face and the carpet of fir slumped around it make it look exactly like a resting bison.

  There is strength in any mountain, but this one is special. Ceremonial, almost. It is stoic, as though it holds itself in, the stories within it spoken in the whisper of the wind off its crest and plummet. Standing in the hushed quiet of morning, it’s easy to believe we have a sentinel, a Spirit Helper watching over us.

  Such thinking was strange to me for a long time. I was raised in a concrete Protestant reality with no room for imagination, flights of fancy or even the pull of everyday magic like moon shadows or rainbows. There was certainly no place for mystical thinking. Instead, faith sat in our home like a yardstick, a device by whose measure I always fell short. Second Timothy, where it says something about “study to show thyself approved,” was big in my adopted home; so was the whole “blood of the Lamb” righteousness ethic. To be a Gilkinson, I always needed to qualify, to prove my worthiness.

  I became a Wagamese in 1978. That was the year I reconnected with my native family. The name seemed easier to bear, loose and rolling like the Ojibway language I heard around me. There was no Rock of Ages that guided the expression of it, only the spirit of the Canadian Shield that ran like a spine beneath our traditional territory.

  I heard stories of a life on the land from my family. I heard recollections of certain rapids and backcountry lakes, of animals, hunts, paddles to far-off fishing spots and seasons of incredible hardship or plenty. Infusing them all was a sense of wonder, the acceptance of magic as a property of living. Because of that, the stories had a palpable air of humility and gratitude.

  My reconnection led me to other things. I found ceremony and ritual, and through them I started to see myself as part of the great creative wheel of spiritual energy that I learned exists all around us. Being a Wagamese was all about belonging, fitting. The name was a relief and a haven, a symbol of my ongoing worthiness.

  But there was more.

  My people have a grand tradition of naming. A person can carry many names through the course of a lifetime, and each time a name is bestowed is an honour time. Elders grant them, as the carriers of our traditional and spiritual knowledge. You come to them in humility, with an offering of tobacco, cloth and a personal gift. They pray and meditate for four days, then offer you the name that comes to them from the Spirit World.

  The man I went to see sat with me many times over the course of a month. We talked about my being taken away as a child, about returning and about the feeling I had always carried of the presence of magic in life. When I made my offering and asked for a name, he accepted the duty.

  He called me Mushkotay Beezheekee Anakwat. It means “Buffalo Cloud.” It’s a st
oryteller’s name, he said, and he told me that my role in this reality was to be just that: a teller of stories, a communicator, a keeper of the great oral tradition of my people.

  I became what he instructed. I sought out stories and storytellers. I sat with them and asked questions and learned about the role of storytellers in our tradition and about the principles that guide that role. I learned about the importance of perpetuating the tradition of storytelling into a new time with powerful new tools. Then I began to write.

  Through the years, I’ve been a newspaper columnist, a radio and television news writer, a documentary writer and producer, a writer of memoirs and a novelist. I’ve brought the story of my people forward, and I’m proud and humbled by the opportunity. I’ve come to realize how much resides in the names we carry. There’s history there, philosophy, tradition, the ability to rediscover ourselves in tough times and to celebrate ourselves on days of joy.

  I am not a Gilkinson. I was never meant to be. I was created to be a male, Ojibway human being. That’s what Creator intended. The expression of my being lives within the context of Creator’s plan, and I feel valid, real, honourable.

  I stand in the grandeur of this country and say my name to the cosmos, as I have been taught to do. Mushkotay Beezheekee Anakwat. Buffalo Cloud. I reintroduce myself to the universe in the traditional way of the Ojibway, and this small ceremony is a joining to everything. I’ve come to believe that, just as I believe that our prayers are always heard, accepted into the healing energy that flows through all of us. Gitchi Manitou. Great Spirit. Great.

  Making Bannock

  . . .

  IN THE OJIBWAY world there are two ways of doing things. One is the slow, methodical Ojibway method, and the other is the slow, non-methodical Ojibway method. It all boils down to the amount of anxiety you want to build into the process.

  I learned this elemental science soon after I reconnected with my native family. I had been gone for more than twenty years. When I emerged from the vortex of foster care and adoption I was citified, broken down some by the subtle racism of Canada and unprepared for life as an Ojibway man. But Ojibway science reached out to save me.

  Oh, there are people about who will say that our ways are not scientific, that they never have been. There are those who will say that if the Ojibway had any sort of technological or innovative sense, we’d have been further along the developmental trail at the time of contact. These are the descendents of the people who turned to us for survival’s sake when the North American winter descended. Science and innovation apparently have slippery definitions.

  But the science of the earth is a different creature from the science of numbers and theorems. It’s a discipline of coexistence. It’s the knowledge and acceptance of the mystery that surrounds us—and the awareness that allowing it to remain a mystery, celebrating it rather than trying to unravel it, engenders humility and a keen sense of the spiritual.

  My mother is the best bannock baker going. When her bread comes out of the oven every Indian in the bush comes running. Her bannock rises elegantly. It is spongy and soft and tastes golden, like the colour of the crust. With jam or a thick smear of lard, washed down with strong black tea, there’s nothing like it in the world.

  She gave me some on my first visit home. To me it tasted of reconnection, warm and welcoming and oddly familiar. It still does, actually. I wanted to learn to bake it just like she did. She laughed when I told her. To my mother’s way of thinking, the thinking of a bush-raised woman, men didn’t bake. But I was insistent, and she undertook to teach me.

  I’d been raised with the Western science that calls for precise measurements and a decisive experimental process. I clung to the security of numbers. But what my mother taught me that day had nothing to do with grams or ounces, teaspoons or cups. Instead, she told me to take a couple handfuls of flour, a splat of lard, a splotch of baking powder and a nip of salt. Then to swash it with milk or water, pat it about until it felt warm and soft, and bake it until it looked good. Once it was out of the oven you gave it an earnest slap to settle it and left it on the counter to cool. The splotch, splat, nip and slap process was odd— but it worked.

  That first bannock was glorious. I watched it rise like a little kid would, with my face pressed to the glass. When it cooled enough to cut I sheared off enough for the two of us. It was the first Indian thing I’d ever done. It was the first time in my life I could remember receiving Indian teaching, and it was the first time I had physically expressed myself as an Indian person. It was unforgettable.

  When I tasted it I smiled. My mother was a good teacher, and the texture of that first Indian bread was sublime. With marmalade and butter melted into it, my bannock was a rip-roaring success. We shared it with my stepfather and uncles, who were waiting patiently in the living room. Watching the men of my lost family enjoy a tribal thing that I had created was as poignant a moment as I’ve ever had.

  I still bake my bannock the same way. Friends marvel at my non-methodical manner at the stove. I laugh and tell them it’s native science, and it is.

  When I bake bannock I feel Ojibway. The process evokes images of bush life, an open fire, a lump of dough on a stick and a circle of people gathered in community to share fresh bread. Knowing that I hold an Ojibway skill, a part of our science, instills pride in me. And when the plate is passed around to the usual lip-smacking, finger-licking compliments from non-native friends, I smile to think that our Indian science is being shared.

  Sure, it’s an easy thing, something a child could do, but passing it forward is what matters. Our cultural survival depends on it. There will always be someone seeking to recognize themselves in the sure small ways we do things. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

  The Birth and Death of Super Injun

  . . .

  I GOT MY first writing job in 1979, as a reporter for a now defunct newsmagazine called New Breed based in Regina, Saskatchewan.

  I lied to get that job. I was almost twenty-four by then, and directionless. When I saw the job advertised on the board at the Native Employment Centre, I wanted it right away. I loved words and stories, and I carried a dream of writing, though I did not bear the knowledge of how to make that happen. This job could mark my entry.

  It also meant working with my people. I wasn’t Metis or non-status, but being Aboriginal seemed enough at the time. So I lied. I told the editor, John Cuthand, that I had graduated from a two-year journalism program in Ontario and I was on the road searching for a place to settle. That was on a Wednesday. He was busy, so he told me to return on Monday to do a couple of rewrites for him.

  I was ecstatic but scared. So I did what I always did when life confounded me—I went to the library. I asked the librarian for all the books she had on journalism and reporting. For five days, I sat there reading and doing writing exercises. I learned about journalistic style and ethics and what editors looked for in news copy. From opening to closing I sat in the library writing and rewriting. I stoked the fire of my desire with every scribbled page.

  When Monday came I appeared on time and was ushered into the back with a handful of newspaper stories from mainstream papers. John sat me at a typewriter and asked me to milk them down to a few hundred words apiece. I’d failed typing in high school, so I sat and pecked out one letter at a time. It took me an hour, but I finished the assignment.

  John hired me on the strength of my writing.

  That job introduced me to the volatile world of native politics in the late 1970s. The constitutional reform that would entrench our rights was still three years off, and governments regarded us as problems rather than as citizens. There was a lot of unnecessary wrangling over the delivery details of rights and programs most Canadians took for granted.

  As a reporter I saw dire poverty up close and personal. I saw people who’d been damaged by the forward thrust of history fighting to maintain an identity in the thick flow of change around them. I saw young people desperate f
or a cultural linchpin and elders, stately and graceful, reduced to being old and ignored. I saw how cruelly a nation could forget one of its founding peoples.

  The stories I wrote for New Breed awakened me politically. This was my first hands-on introduction to the lives of my people. I felt the flames of identity being fanned to life within me. Not only was I becoming a writer, I was becoming an Indian. But politics does not nurture identity, because rhetoric is not teaching. I absorbed all the things I saw and heard around me, and because I craved so much to present myself as a native person I became strident and irritatingly vocal.

  I was a quick study, and I learned well. The questions I asked as a reporter grew sharper, more pointed and challenging, especially to native politicians. One day at a press conference I was pursuing an issue, pointing and gesturing, moralizing and editorializing. One of the leaders I was going after shook his head and said, “It’s like being attacked by Super Injun.”

  Everyone laughed, and I was horribly embarrassed. But there was a man there that day named John Rock Thunder. He was an elder and a teacher, and when he approached me later he did it so skillfully that I was surprised to find myself alone with him in a small area off to the side of the conference room.

  I had it all wrong, he said. He pointed to my beaded vest, moccasins, long hair and turquoise rings. Then he pointed to my heart.

  “You want to be the ultimate Indian,” he said. “But you have to start from the inside.”

  He went on to tell me that I had been created in a specific order. I was created to be first a human being, then a male, then an Ojibway Indian. I needed to learn how to be a good human being. In the process of that, I would learn how to be a good man. And through that process, I would discover I had been graced all along with being a good Indian.