Somewhere in Canada

Somewhere in Canada

A young brown man and a couple of friends drove into a white man's yard.
The white man pulled a handgun and shot the young brown man dead.

Pointing a handgun is threatening death.
He threatened death.
He delivered death.

In the court room he pleaded innocence.
He was not responsible.

The white man said
the gun malfunctioned.
The white man's son said
he was just trying to scare them.

What is the basic responsibility given to any child who uses a toy gun?
Never point it at another person.

The Justice system says "he is not responsible."

A jury of peers indicts the society.

*

Gerald Stanley

A killer walks among you and lives within you.
Gerald Stanley

Behold the killer as he pumps his gas.
Gerald Stanley

Behold the killer as he drinks his Timmies.
Gerald Stanley

A killer lives among you and lives within you.
Gerald Stanley

*

Stuff

This is my stuff.
I have the right to protect my stuff.
I earned all my stuff.

There is insurance paid on all that stuff.
No one will take my stuff.

I will kill for my stuff.

The jury will say
It was not murder
He was just protecting his stuff.

How much did you pay for your stuff?
How much do we pay for your stuff?

How much must we give up?
For your stuff.

How much stuff is enough?
.

*

Walk out of the Treatment Centre - Kanehsatake 28 Years Later

I've been thinking a lot about the people walking out of the treatment centre in Kanehsatake at the end of that hot Indian summer of 1990.

I see them walking proud. 

The image fills my heart.

I know there was violence and screams. 

I know that is true. 

In my mind, I see them walking proud.

"We are going home."

+

It takes me time to get things. 

I was angry. (I'm still angry, but I am not crying while I write that so it's not that bad anymore.) You get hurt in this life. Especially by those you love and those you trust.This is the part of life that is hardest to take. Yet, we know as Indigenous people awake in Canada that this is not our way. 

This is not of our making. 

This is malicious malignant manifest destiny.

Hidden in their science

Darwin's racist master work spoon fed to children. 

Dreams of living on the moon.

+

I had written a piece about Genocide. (I posted it here, but it not here anymore).

After that. 

It was like I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't know what to do. I could no longer write and the truth is it has been a struggle ever since. 

I could not get passed this idea. This dangerous idea. What is the response to Genocide? 

War.

That is the answer. That is the only answer.

I couldn't move. 

I couldn't get passed this idea. 

It was like a sickness of the mind. A madness. It was heavier than my younger thoughts of suicide because it kept sounding right. I wanted to pound the war drum.

I drank hard. 

I could not say this thing. 

+

I found my way to Sundance. I made sacrifice for this life of mine. I learned to be grateful again for this life and all my many blessings.

What is the response to Genocide?

Life.

What is the response to Genocide?

Live.

+

So when I think about the Warriors walking out of the Kanehsatake Treatment Centre, I am grateful that the people chose life. 

They would not be goaded into bloodshed. Bloodshed that we could still be cleaning up today. Most Canadians don't understand that there were people ready to strike out, who wanted to hit back hard against a racist society that stripped and raped away their lives and lands. 

It could have gone so bad. If those Warriors did not have the courage to chose life.

Ekosi

Hiy! Hiy!

*

(The following are being reprinted as originally published on this blog.)

22 Years Past

It's been 22 years since the Oka crisis took the issue of Native land rights to national and international attention. It was the most important resistance to colonization in Canada since Louis Riel's Northwest Rebellion in 1885. In the years since July 11, 1991 it seems as though it was the last stand. There has been action in defense of traditional lands, burial sites and sacred places since then, but none have resonated across the  country and around the globe. None have galvanized Native people and inspired them to stand up for themselves.

To get the full story, I would suggest you view, Alanis Obomsawin's documentary, 270 Years of Resistance. The basic story is this, the town of Oka, PQ wanted to develop a golf course on lands that contained burial grounds of the Mohawks of Kanehsatake. The Mohawks set up a barricade and after months were attacked by the Surete du Quebec. The ensuing standoff would last over 70 days.

Those who look back on that time, think that what happened was that the eyes of Canada were opened to the realities of Native rights. That's not really true. To some it was. To most it was just really engrossing television. I don't recall a great outpouring of support by Canadians to stop the Canadian Army from rolling into Kanehsatake. There may have been some gnashing of teeth, but there was no great debate in this country about what to do. They just sat there waiting for something to happen. Those calling for the Army to roll in and crush the resistance was much stronger than those crying out for a peaceful and just resolution.

For us, for the Native People of Canada, it was a moment in which the cry for Freedom and Justice was right and true. When the People of the Pines stood up and said, this is the line that you will not cross. They were standing up for all of us. It was supposed to be the moment that changed everything, we were never going back to the way it was before.

It didn't happen like that. It was like George Orwell's Animal Farm. Once the animals gain self-government it is decided that they have to have someone in charge so the Pigs take on that role. Before long the pigs are living in the house and eating the man's food and playing cards. That's how it happened. People were bought out and sold out. Some don't even know how or why. Not just the political leaders, but the militants and the warriors; there were a lot of them who abandoned their convictions for a few crumbs.It wasn't just the leaders it was a lot of us. Just floating along the river of assimilation, drifting wherever it will take us.It seemed as though the only thing we learned from Oka was how to golf. I don't remember Native people golfing before Oka. There were a few, but it has just exploded since then. You get the feeling that after watching endless loops of the golfers during media coverage of Oka that some of our leaders just kept thinking, "That looks fun!"

In the time since Oka, could you imagine our world, if our people put the same effort into learning our traditional ways, languages and cultures as they put into their golf game. If our leadership put the same resources into funding for education as they spend on the golf course and organizing golf tournaments.

It's been 22 years since Oka and nothing has changed. The only thing that has improved is our handicap.

 *

ON THE 20^TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OKA CRISIS

It was 20 years ago today. That the Oka Crisis, as we know it, began. Although the barricade had been up for months, the land issues had been ongoing since contact, it was the armed raid by the Quebec police, the death of Cpl. Lemay, and the resistance by the People of the Pines that marked the beginning. I wish things were different now. That something had been learned. That things had changed. I know so much has gotten worse. I see the evidence on a daily basis. Could the Oka Crisis even happen today? The governments and the police and the army all trained that summer and in the years since to make sure to never create the same situation. In all honesty, that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is how would we respond as Aboriginal people.

20 years ago, it felt that this country might boil over in acts of armed militancy and revolution. It felt like if the army rolled in on the people in the camp that Native people everywhere were ready to strike back. In the end, thankfully, the people of the pines, decided, that was it. We are going home. They cut through the razor wire and started walking back home. Singing. Of course they were arrested, locked up.That act, may have saved us all. 

As I said, people were ready. We were all sick and tired of the oppression, the loss, the neglect, the violence and the racism. If the army would have rolled in and people were killed. Acts of what are called terrorism, the final act of one who has nothing else, would be common. I feared this then. I understood it completely. I am grateful that today, this is not the world we live in. Yet, I feel, within myself, within our people, that we have swung so far in the other direction, that the example and the vision shared with everyone 20 years ago has been lost.I remember the people of Kanehsatake today. I remember the David family and my friend Dan. I said to him as we remembered those days, "the David family gave me a bed when there wasn't a bed to give, that's the David family." To all the warriors, the women, the elders, the medicine people, the family, the supporters. Thank you for what you did. I hope we can still learn what to do with it.

At the time, the threat loomed that if the Meech Lake Accord was not passed, the country would fall apart. Quebec would no longer accept being left out of the constitution and would simply vote for seperation and pursue independence. How then, with so much at stake, could this one lone Indian man, stand against this? How could he be so selfish as to risk the entire country? I can't say if the message ever got through; but it was never about Quebec. The Meech Lake Accord ignored the Native peoples of Canada and that was no longer going to happen. Not today. NO!

It was beautiful. I remember being on the lawn of the Ledge (what locals call the Manitoba Legislature). There were thousands of us, singing, drumming, dancing, holding signs. Proud. Happy. Overjoyed, really. Inside one man, one of us, was telling the whole country that they could go no further and they had to listen. One of the great days of my life.

Then a few weeks later on July 11, the Quebec Police raided the barricade at Kanehsatake. This was another No.

Kahesatake was the culmination of those events. The people were saying no and they were going to defend this no, with military tactics and weapons. It looked like it looked. My friend Dan David who is from Kanehsatake said on the talk radio program The Word that the people were scared, they were not prepared that first night. All they had was the determination, not to step back, not to back down. In the days to come they would fortify their perimeter, set security and rotations and prepare for the next attack. Ex-military were part of team, how could they not be, First peoples have volunteered for service, in higher numbers than any other nationality for decades. The majority of those Warriors, that would hold the line for 75 days were men who came to stand up for the rights of the people. They were regular men, construction workers, artists and students, some too young to drink. The fresh faced boy who becomes a man in the trenches, it was all there.

In the days, weeks and months to follow the tension grew. You couldn't escape it. There was no burnout, it just keep twisting and twisting. Frustration, anger and a sense of helplessness grew across the country. Random acts of destruction of government and public property were popping up. I heard rumours of factions growing and gathering arms. The idea seemed to be growing, with talk and without. If the army were to roll into Kanehsatake, if people were killed. Armed acts of violence and destruction would spill out everywhere. What other option could there be? This was the line that cannot be crossed. This is the end of that. Push us around, ignore our rights, ignore our history, act like we do not have basic human rights. Not special rights. ABORIGINAL RIGHTS. Human rights, the right to live as we please on our own land, raising our families and building a community is peace.

In the twenty years since, not much has changed. The ongoing attack on the traditional lands of the First Peoples continues, in the past the churches worked hand in hand with the governments, now it's the corporations. Same religion, different God. What do we do? What now?

20 years ago it seemed that we were on the brink of revolution. Now, it doesn't seem that Kanehsatake 1990 would never happen. Not just because the government, police and armed forces have changed tactics but that we changed. At that time the issues, concerns and reality of the First Peoples of Canada were generally ignored by the Canadian public, media a government. The events in Akwesasne during the so-called Gambling Wars held the country spellbound. The images were visceral. The men in fatigues and masks shooting at each other with high power automatic weapons. It was internal, it was between them.

The images were reminiscent of what all Canadians had seen for years, in other countries, in central and South America. Images that are safely judged and filed away. "Oh, it's terrible in those countries".

It's hard to remember what it was like. That Indian Summer of two decades ago. Only weeks before the event at Kanehsatake, Elijah Harper had killed the Meech Lake Accord in the Manitoba Legislature. Holding an eagle feather and saying that one word that had been said so many times before, but this time, this special time, it could not be ignored. No. No, you can't do this. No, you can not ignore who we are, our history, our place in this country. No. No more. Enough.

The media coverage was constant. There wasn't anything else that mattered that summer. I was 25 years old and working at the CBC radio as the National Native Affairs Broadcaster as part of their syndication service, Infotape. We provided stories to all the local and regional stations across the country. On my way to work, I was gearing up for what I assumed would be my inevitable assignment to Kanehsatake. I was mistaken. 

At that time, and I would hazard to a certain extent today, it was accepted within the corporation that Native journalists could not be trusted to cover Native stories. We could not help but be bias towards the Native side of the story. Everyday, I went to work and asked my producer when they were going to send me. Everyday, I was told that they didn't need me to go. Eventually, the decision was made outside of Toronto. Producers in regions across the country began calling the office, asking when I was going to be sent to Kanehsatake. It was the only story that mattered and their audience could not get enough of it. So 10 days after the crisis had started, I was on my way to Kanehsatake.

Roofing down The Beach for Louis and Melinda

When my wife asked if I would help out on the roofing job, I said I would.  It was a chance to work with and help our oldest son.

Bear didn’t want to take on the roofing job but he was going to have his son for a month and he needed the extra cash.

He took the job down the beach. He needed a man and all he had was me. I said, “I’m no carpenter but I can carry shingles and clean up and I am not afraid to work on a roof.”

The Beach is prime real estate on the Chippewas of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation and it has been leased out for generations to non- residents. Despite the belief that land ownership on First Nations is communal, that is not the case. In certain communities, some members of a First Nation rent out the best land in the community to white people.  This happens all across the country.

The ownership, use and access to the land have always been contentious between the Settlers and the Indigenous Peoples with numerous land claims and legal actions taken by the First Nation. On Kettle and Stoney Point this reached its tragic zenith with the assassination of Dudley George by Ontario Provincial Police Officer Kenneth Deane during a raid on the peaceful occupation of Ipperwash Park.

George’s sacrifice did lead to the return of the land and a final settlement agreement. The road home remains a rocky one with community and family divisions simmering below the surface as threatening as the unexploded ordnance sprinkled all across the once fully operational Army training camp.

It is still dark when we head from home to The Beach.

Lake Road right at centre side road and then left on centre side road towards the beach and then right on London Road.  

We arrive at 7 am and meet the man of the cottage. He could have been played by Louis Del Grande from the long running classic Canadian comedy drama “Seeing Things”. He is super friendly and much appreciative of the fact that we are taking on the job. I could easily see him using his psychic powers to solve crimes.

We get up on the roof and Bear surveys the situation.

“Those fucking skylights are going to be a bitch.”

“Watch your step. It’s spongy there.”

“We might as well start up there. See how bad it is.”

“I never should have taken this job.”

He goes to the top level and begins ripping up the shingles with the appropriately named Ripper. It is like a flat rake with six stubby teeth to catch up roofing nails. He rips up and I roll back a chunk or pick up what is loose and take it from the top roof down the highest grade decline to the second roof, skip past the two skylights to the west corner of the house and toss the debris into the rented disposal unit. This will take most of the morning.

At 7:30 AM an old man who could be played by a late career Ernest Borgnine is standing on the road in front of the house with a cup of coffee in his hand.

He doesn’t say anything and neither do we.

He just sips his coffee and watches us work in the pale of the morning.

He comes back around 1030.

I can make him out in my peripheral. His second cup of coffee, I bet.

I can see that he is smiling.

It is heating up. It is going to be really hot and we have only a few minutes of shade remaining.

When working on a roof it is necessary to keep your mind and your eyes on where you are and what you are doing.  I don’t really want to make eye contact but it is obligatory and I roam over to the street and my eye is caught.

He shouts from the ground.

“Hey?”

I respond appropriately in vernacular that contains neighborly friendship but also a “you-can- see- I’m- working- here” tone.

“Yuh.”

He unloads what he thinks is a beauty and what I think must have taken him a good part of the morning to craft.

“What are you gonna do after lunch (comedic beat) when you’re all done.”

I just stare back as a number of responses are made available. My mind is often wicked with comebacks and shittier than you would think thoughts and so I have trained it. I hold back.

He awaits no reply to his bon mot and starts walking towards his cottage, chuckling as he goes. 

The temperature would hover near 30 degrees from 11 am on and it would be mid 30s with the humidity for much of the day. It would easily push 40 on that black roof with the tar shingles sucking up the heat.

No shade. No breeze. No level surface to walk upon and spongy spots to beware and skip past the two skylights to throw the debris into the rented disposal unit.

At some point in the morning we meet the lady of the house. She could be played by Melinda Dillon the mom from A Christmas Story who is also the mom who loses her little boy to the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She was also Hanrahan’s dyke wife in Slap Shot and had that iconic boob scene with Paul Newman. Today, she is the Melinda from Magnolia.

She tells us from the ground that there is a lot of water in the fridge out back and that she “couldn’t go up there” and thanks us profusely for taking the job. I do take the initiative to check out the fridge which has a case of water on the bottom and loaded to the top with Labatt’s Blue.

Louis keeps a close eye on the situation, circling the house now and then picking up the bits of shingle and tar paper that don’t make it all the way into the rented disposal unit. He talks a few times with the neighbor who could be played by an aging Jerry Reed say a couple decades after Smokey and the Bandit.

Louis brings up a bag with bottles of water, he reminds us again to take our time and that there is no rush. “It’s all slow and easy here in Kettle Point.”  I thank him and take a bottle over to Bear who drinks it up and takes the time to explain to me what he is doing. 

I can only marvel at the skill and physicality it takes to do this work. All the numbers and the angles and seeing how it all fits together, my brain does not work like that. Neither does my body. I can skip past the two skylights but I can’t perch on the edge of a roof and cut shingles and punch them into place with an air gun.

There are literally dozens of people who stroll, bike, jog, speed walk and drive slowly by throughout the day who take in the spectacle of roofing. I joke later that night that we could probably sell tickets.

It is about 330pm and the day has been well into peak heat for a couple of hours. In my estimation if we take a break for a couple of hours we can come  back after supper and the sun will be below that tree and we will be getting our first shade since the morning.

I take my plan public and Bear tells me to head on home without him. I say it will be better if we both take a break and that we will still have three good hours of daylight after supper.

I infer ever so slightly that I will not leave without him and that I’m old and I could die.

He agrees. We clean up first.

I am on the ground and I tell Louis the plan and he is in full agreement.

He launches into a bit of philosophy that sounds both natural and completely rehearsed.  “Hey, it’s Kettle Point. No one gets hurt on Kettle Point. It’s slow and easy here. This is where you come to relax.” It has a bro country kind of feel like one of those songs where a fat white guy goes to Mexico and the local girls flock around him and he is completely oblivious to the poverty they live in.

Later that evening a sun savaged neighbor who would be played by the auntie in “There’s Something about Mary” loudly enters.

She is swinging a couple of cold beers and calling out for Melinda. “Melinda…What you got going on.”

Melinda squeals a greeting and soon they have dragged two lawn chairs to the front of the yard and are drinking cold beers and chitter away as they watch Bear and I finish up the top level of the cottage in what will be the hottest day of the year so far.

The next day Bear has to pick his son up at the airport in Toronto and the day after that it pours rain. We return to the job on Friday and once again it is sweltering. During our time off word must have gone around that perhaps it was not cool to gawk at these men working in the heat all day.

So today an unknown number of people have gathered across the street under cover of a thick evergreen and watch us from there.  It is a little past ten before the tops are popping on the beers and by lunch the voices are getting loud.

It is mostly women but I can’t say for sure. At one point I get off the roof to clean up some debris that has missed the mark. After dumping into the rented storage bin I notice that the voices have stopped.

Silence.

The ladies are not making a peep. That’s weird, I think.

When I get up on the roof, I see that Bear has taken off his shirt.

Once again I have to convince him that we should take a break and again it takes an effort but he gives in so he can take a dip in the above ground pool with his son.

I tell Louis and he again launches into the bro-country philosophy and it must be so obvious in my face that I am just not buying what he is selling and so he stops. I don’t mean to be rude but sometimes my face just does what it does.  

Saturday is a big day at The Beach. The folks who have to work during the week are showing up in droves on the weekend.

Today the group has moved to a house to the right of the one they were at earlier. I still can’t see them but I can still hear tops popping and now and again the waft of marijuana smoke.

Around mid-afternoon, a truck pulls up with some inflatables in the bed and a trailer with two shiny Seadoos. The man who would be played by Bill Paxton In True Lies steps out of his full cab four wheel drive monster truck and shouts “Wasssaaappp? .

“Wassssappp?”from that long ago commercial that was all stereotypes and for much of the year of its peak popularity  gave unfunny guys a line to put on endless loop.

I am spent. The humidity and the labour and never walking in balance. I can’t keep up to my son. Not in this heat. I tell him we should go and he tells me to go. This time I don’t have to pretend I am old and I might die. I know that I am old and I might die. So I go home for an hour. Cool off and return to the job.

Bear says you should have heard that one guy after you left. He was going on about how Stephen Harper had the balls to do this and that. The ladies began to drown him out with the happy birthday song.

I guessed they were doing the song in a sped up “For he’s a Jolly Good Fellow” version they were doing earlier in the day.”

Paxton also started going off on the work we were doing. The guy was saying that we had been here all week and the job still wasn’t done. 

“What a shit show,” he expressed in the vernacular of his time.

A “Wassup” of the moment.

We had only worked Tuesday and Friday and this friendly neighbor shows up on another one of the hottest days of the year to loudly criticize our work.

We continue our chore with the sound of beer tops popping and the smell of marijuana in the air.  At the end of the day we feel close to being finished. Even I can see it. We can get this done by Sunday.

The next day, the sun is still shining but the threat of a summer storm is heaving in the clouds and the humidity is thick in the air around us.

We are pushing hard to get this done but once again I have to take a break where Bear won’t. I can’t convince but I know I could pass out on this roof and that will not help.

When I come back Bear has torn up some of the work we had done earlier in the day.

“It was out half an inch when I ran the line.”

(Out half an inch…are you kidding me? Who would know? Who would ask?)

I don’t ask even though it burns me. But I am not the man on this job.

I think these people have no idea who they have up here. The guy is not a carpenter. He’s an artist.

A familiar black truck pulls up decked out in off-road splendor. Dressed in black jeans and black t-shirt with his long black hair tied back and mirrored aviator shades on his dark skin – it is Bernard “Slippery” George. He was played by Ben Cardinal in the movie One Dead Indian, Cardinal can also be seen in Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood and Walking Tall starring The Rock.

Louis and Jerry greet Slippery. They give him some good natured ribbing.

He gets up on the roof and says, “Good job. I don’t do these shingle roofs anymore.”  

The final touches are attended to by three other couples that have arrived on various transports from foot to bike to golf cart. It is pouring rain now. The clouds fat with heat and rain can no longer hold back its bounty. We are soaked to the bone but the job is done and only cleanup remains.

One of the couples could be played by the actors who were Jerry Seinfeld’s parents.  Another one of the couples could be played by the actors who performed hilariously as George Constanza’s parents.

They congregate in the back yard patio underneath the one part of the roof that didn’t need to be done.

We bring down all the tools and start humping the unused shingles down the wet ladder. I am nervous the whole time. To me this is the most dangerous thing I have done this week. I had slipped earlier when carrying a light load. Now I have a bundle of shingles on my shoulder and the ladder is slick with rain.

I need to focus on every step.

When we are done the response from the gathered is muted at best. What we had accomplished these past few days was just ok.

I am bursting with anger. This is so wrong. We are killing ourselves for these people who do nothing but drink and smoke weed and complain. And we are the ones that carry that stereotype.

My God, could I imagine two Bill Paxtons going to work on a reserve and witnessing such addiction, laziness and undeserved affluence.

No one wants to hear that story. This is Canada.

*

There is this point in the drive back where the road curves and at this part of summer the leaves are thick enough that it is possible that you just see bush.

Just for that one moment.  The sun is trying to break through and you imagine how this must have looked long ago.

Long before development.

Bear gives his opinion of the past few days.

“Co-exist, eh?”

-30-

They always return to the mother