One Native Life (10 page)
My downtime was spent listening to that music. I made mix tapes on my cassette deck, and each one was a kaleidoscope of styles: Otis Redding to Bob Wills, Billie Holiday to Blondie, Miles Davis to The Doors. Those tapes let me travel musical highways that took me away from my world and its woes. I never thought much about the racial origin of those musicians, only about the feel of the music and its ability to transport me. I was a loner for the most part, and my musical heroes never disappointed me or abandoned me in favour of more ebullient companions.
John Lennon embodied the rock ’n’ roll ethos. He was a revolutionary poet with soul. I’d been getting his message since 1970, when I heard “Working Class Hero” for the first time. I hadn’t grown up in working-class Britain, but I knew something about being pressed into the shape society wanted and about the pain that drove Lennon’s primal screams.
Lennon’s album
Double Fantasy
came out in November of 1980, and I was lazing on my couch listening to it on the night of December 8. I drifted as he sang about forsaking the limelight for home and family, about watching the wheels go round and round and basking in his love for his son, his wife, his stage of life. He sounded happy, settled, and I was glad for him.
I used to listen in the dark. There were no distractions that way, and the notes and lyrics could pull you into the heart of the music. That’s what I did with
Double Fantasy
that night. John sang about the hard times being over, and in that deep winter darkness I believed him and wished him well.
The next morning I heard that he was gone. Someone had chosen to remove the revolutionary poet from the world, shoot him at close range just outside the home he’d come to fully appreciate, maybe for the first time. I cried for him. Then I got angry. Then I cried some more. I played “Imagine” over and over again, then “Working Class Hero,” “I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier” and “Only People,” great Lennon songs all true fans recall. I tried to fill my world with the spirit that had been taken away so callously.
On the news I saw thousands of people outside the Dakota, John’s New York City apartment building. They were weeping. They were holding candles in the air, trying vainly to replace the light that had been extinguished. People of every colour, every persuasion joined in grief over the loss of an artist who could dismantle barriers with words and deeds and music. Even in death he brought us together.
John Lennon always felt like an Indian to me. In the words and music of this white rock ’n’ roller, I found the essence of the warrior way. That way is not about being bitter or resentful. It’s not about getting what you think you’re due. It’s not about blaming history for the condition of your life. It’s not about pursuing revenge for injustice. It’s about living a principled life despite all the seeming crap, about living with soul, about embracing the flame of your spirit and letting it burn brightly. It’s about embracing the light of others, too, regardless.
John Lennon wasn’t native, but he was a tribal person, and he was a hero of mine. He stood for peace, for understanding, for community, harmony, balance, family, love and respect—Indian values, the Indian way. I wish more people had listened. Imagine if they had. Imagine.
. . .
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.
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.
. . .
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 storyteller’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.
. . .
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.
