One Native Life (2 page)
Stories are meant to heal. That’s what my people say, and it’s what I believe. Culling these stories has taken me a long way down the healing path from the trauma I carried. This book is a look back at one native life, at the people, the places and the events that have helped me find my way to peace again, to stand in the sunshine with my beautiful partner, looking out over the lake and the land we love and say—yes.
MY PEOPLE SAY
that we are of the earth. We come from her. We emerged from her bosom fully formed and ready to assume our place as stewards, caretakers, guardians. Our rich brown skin reminds us that we are her children, that we belong here, that our home is always at our feet, wherever we might travel. In the beginning, I had no access to these teachings. I was rootless. But in the world of my boyhood, I always found people, places or things that grounded me, allowed me to feel connected even if only in very fleeting ways, to the heartbeat of the earth. She is our salvation. The time we spend in communion with the earth is the time, my people say, that we are truly spiritual. It enhances, empowers and frees us. Looking back, I see that as true.
. . .
I HAD A HERO
when I was six. He wasn’t a hockey player, a rock ’n’ roll icon, a comic book hero or even a movie star. He was a mechanic, a tall, slender, chain-smoking grease monkey who smelled of oil, tobacco and Old Spice aftershave.
His name was Joe Tacknyk, and he was a Ukrainian Canadian. He was a quiet, reflective man who cackled when he laughed, told stories of Jimmie Rodgers, the Old Chisholm Trail and life during wartime. He was my foster father. I came to live with him and his family when I was five. He saw the fear in me from that first moment, the confusion, and did what he could to make them disappear.
He’d come for me early spring and summer mornings. He’d scratch at the soles of my feet with a wooden spoon and hush me to silence with a finger to the lips. Then, while everyone else slept, he made an elaborate game of sneaking me from the house with our fishing gear and into the old green pickup truck in the driveway.
As we drove out of Kenora, Ontario, on the gravel road that ran north from town, he’d slip me a cup of coffee and some warm perogies wrapped in a napkin. We’d watch the land roll by, and the silence we sat in was as profound as any I’ve ever experienced. There was nothing to say. Mystery. We sat in the hold of the mystery of the land. There were no words to describe that feeling.
When we got to the marina, my job was to load the gear in the old wooden boat while Joe hooked up the gas tank. Then we’d pull away from the dock and he’d look at me. I’d scan the water of the river, pick a direction and point, and he’d head us that way. Once he’d found a cove or a bay or a rock point somewhere we’d start to cast. Wordlessly. Always. The only language we used was the quiet way of fishermen, the nod, the gesture when we needed tackle, each of us content to look at the land and the water and the deep endless bowl of the sky.
I landed a huge jackfish one morning. When it hit my bait, the rod bowed under the keel of the boat, and I could feel the whale-like pressure of the fish at the other end. Joe sat and watched me. The only words he offered were cautionary ones, cryptic tips on how to play it. After twenty minutes or so he netted the exhausted fish and hoisted it into the boat. It was enormous. My hands were sore from clenching the rod, but I held that fish up by the gill case and felt proud and noble and strong. He smiled at me, ruffed my hair some and went back to casting, but I knew he was proud of me. That made the effort worth it.
We let that fish go. I sat in the boat and watched it heave for breath, and something in me understood that it was the battle that was memorable and the fish deserved to live to fight another day. Something in me understood that I’d been graced with some of the spirit of that magnificent creature and that it could be free again. I asked him and he looked at me quizzically for a moment, then nodded and helped me ease the fish back over the side of the boat.
We never spoke of it after. Never shared that moment with the rest of my foster family. But there was an unspoken bond between us, and I knew that I had earned his respect. I could see it in the way he looked at me when we were on the water, like an equal, like a partner, like a man. I’ve never forgotten that.
Joe understood that I was Ojibway. He understood that I needed a connection to the land to feel safe, real, right. He also understood that there were things in me I could not express, and he gave me the language of fishermen so I could start to find the words.
Of all the men who came into my life as I was growing up, Joe Tacknyk was the one who fostered “father” in me. He gave the word meaning. See, Joe understood that we all have one basic human right coming in—the right to know who we are created to be. He took the responsibility to show me that in the only way he could.
For me, at six, fishing was as close as I could get to my roots. Joe got me to the land because he knew that was where my spirit could renew and reclaim itself. He knew that who I was, who I was born to be, was directly connected to the land and its mystery. He got me there. Always.
Cancer claimed Joe a year after I was adopted by another family at age nine. When I heard I took a long walk on the land and breathed the news deep into me. The tears that landed on the grass that day were tears of gratitude. He was my hero, Joe Tacknyk, and I would never forget him.
I don’t fish now as much as I once did, don’t get out on the water as often as I might like, don’t surround myself with the mystery of the land nearly as much as I should. But there’s never a moment when I don’t feel Ojibway, and I can thank Joe Tacknyk for that.
. . .
I’VE DISCOVERED,
in my life as a tribal person, that rituals ground you. They don’t need to be elaborate in their solemnity or deeply devotional in their application to affect you that way. No matter how slight or insignificant, rituals connect you to the people you share your home and your planet with. They allow you the freedom to breathe.
Walking the dog in the early morning by the lake, washing the dishes right after supper, getting our morning coffee ready the night before, making the lunch my partner will eat at work each day: all of these things root me just like the more traditional rituals of prayer, smudging and sweat lodges.
For part of my childhood Sunday nights were a ritual. It was 1965, and times were a little slower back then.
I was living in my second foster home, with the Tacknyks, and those Sunday evenings were the first thing to give me a sense of family, togetherness and sharing. Everyone gathered in the living room. The lights were turned low. The telephone, if it rang, was never answered. I still recall the excitement as the old Philips
TV
in the corner sprang to life.
It began with
Supercar.
The heroes were animated puppets riding in Supercar, a machine that could dive under water and fly through the air at jet speed. We watched it every week. Then, as the credits rolled, we arranged the
TV
trays that dinner would be served on. We did that quickly, because a big show was coming up next.
It was
Walt Disney.
Every week Disney offered up amazing journeys with Spin and Marty, Flubber, Sammy the Way-Out Seal and the usual gang of Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy. It was a charming program. Everyone, regardless of age, could sink themselves into it and disappear for an hour.
Next came the
Ed Sullivan Show.
Once the dishes were cleared for washing up later, we sat and watched the entertainers presented each week. There were still vaudeville performers around then—tap dancers, magicians, ventriloquists and singers. They were show people, raised on the boards and taught to work a crowd, humble and generous in their art. The show was captivating. I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, too, along with Elvis, Liberace, Ethel Merman, Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop, and the great Edgar Bergen.
But it was after that weekly spectacle that the night became truly magical, because at nine o’clock
Bonanza
came on. It was the highlight of the week for everyone. We rode the West with Ben and Hoss, Little Joe and Adam. As we covered the length and breadth of the Ponderosa Ranch each week, we could almost smell those pines, feel the sway of horses beneath us. The Cartwrights gave us adventure and romance and the feeling of family. We never missed it.
We all had our favourite characters. Mine was Little Joe, with his beautiful paint horse. And we all had our favourite episodes, which we talked about and argued over. Mine was a hilarious story called “Hoss and the Leprechauns.” Every week we were lifted out of our lives and swept away.
Later, alone in my bed, I would go back over all that I’d seen. I drifted off to sleep filled with images of hope, warmth, community, adventure and the generosity of spirit. I couldn’t wait for the replay of that ritual in seven days’ time. Those few hours in front of the television made me forget that I was a foster kid, a displaced person, filled with hurts I hadn’t found the words for yet.
Television has changed now. The old innocence and humility are missing. There are no Ed Sullivans, no grand production numbers with dancers and orchestra, no chorales or entertainers who learned their chops in small vaudeville theatres, no Red Skeltons, Maurice Chevaliers, Carmen McRaes or Cyd Charisses. There’s certainly no one like the Cartwrights.
When you gather with others for the sublime purpose of being together, the strength of that ritual binds you, shapes you, maybe even saves you. I learned that as a foster home kid, and rituals still hold that charm and power. We’re tribal people, the whole magnificent lot of us, and we shine brightest when we honour the rituals that join us.
. . .
I FELL IN LOVE
when I was seven.
Her name was Wilhemina Draper, and everyone called her Billie. She was the most popular kid in our class. She had brownish-blonde hair cut in a bob and big blue eyes that sparkled when she laughed. She could outrun everyone, and she learned how to skin-the-cat on the monkey bars before any of the boys would even try it. She fished and even baited her own hook. She smiled at me in class one day, and that was all it took.
I was the Indian kid from up the block. I was a foster kid, and that made me different. All the other kids in my class had real parents and real families, and they were part of real neighbourhoods like the families in the books we read in school. They had Dick and Jane and Bobbsey twins kinds of lives. My life was far from that. I existed on the fringes.
Not that my foster family treated me badly. I don’t recall a harsh thing being said or done to me in that home. But northern Ontario in the early 1960s was hardly a comfortable place to be Indian. I wore the feeling of being different like clothing. I understood, even then, that familial love transforms you, makes you bigger somehow, elevates you. When I was seven, I craved that raising up.
Billie Draper smiled at me, and I felt like I belonged, like I fit. That smile erased everything. Up until then, school was all about being the only Indian kid, about the teasing and name-calling and schoolboy fights that went with it. With that one smile, the clouds in the heavens parted.
She lived at the bottom of a steep hill. From my house at the top of that hill, I could see her pedal her bike around the neighbourhood below. One day I pedalled my bike down that hill as fast as I could. When the pavement levelled out I slowed down some, and when I reached Billie’s house I faked a crash to the sidewalk. She saw me fall. I’d counted on that. When she bent over to check on me, I reached up and pulled her into the wettest, sloppiest kiss ever given. She screamed and ran back into her house. I was left dazed and happy on the sidewalk, staring up at a sky suddenly blue.
The story of that kiss spread like wildfire. Every boy wanted to kiss Billie Draper, and I was the class hero for about a week.
I was adopted out of the neighbourhood a year or so later, and I never saw Billie Draper again. But I never forgot that kiss or the smile that drove me to it. What I needed most back then was someone to tell me that I was okay, that I counted, that I belonged. I was in that foster home because my parents had been sent to residential school and never developed parenting skills. They couldn’t offer the nurturing and protection I needed. I was in that foster home because someone had fractured the bonds that tied me to tradition and culture and language and spirituality. I became one of the lost ones, one of the disappeared ones, vanished into the vortex of foster care and adoption.
We talk a lot today about healing the wounds of residential schools. The government is paying out large sums of money to the survivors and setting up programs for them to discuss their pain and anguish. But there are other generations besides the ones that experienced the trauma first-hand. There are people like me, who had to endure a life of separation, of cultural displacement. We need to take care of those people, too.
Somewhere out there, right now, is an Indian kid like I was, wandering around someone else’s Bobbsey-twin neighbourhood wondering why he’s there and who he is. Somewhere out there is an Indian kid looking for the smile that will make the clouds go away. He’s our responsibility, all of us.
. . .
I SAW MY
first movie in a theatre in 1964. Back then a movie cost a quarter, and for an extra fifteen cents you could get popcorn, a handful of jujubes and a pop. In Kenora, the mill town where I lived, the movie on Saturday afternoon was the only place to be. Every kid in town wanted to be there.
My foster mother handed me the money wrapped in Scotch tape, so I wouldn’t lose it. It sat in my pocket like a molten lump. I fingered it all the way downtown, the edges of that tape already ragged and threatening to unfurl. There was the smell of sulphur and pulp in the air, and I knew that something magical was about to occur.
