Up Ghost River (28 page)

“Predators work by exploiting your fear and embarrassment.”

“I could have fought. I could have strangled him. I could have killed him.”

“Ed, you were scared.”

“Why didn't I do anything?”

“What do you think? There must have been a reason.”

“I don't know. He had such a hold over me.”

“Predators are natural manipulators. They use our weaknesses against us.”

“Maybe I like being weak. Maybe that's why I gave up. Give up,” I corrected myself.

“Everyone feels weak sometimes. That's why we are here.”

“I don't want to be weak anymore. I want to be strong. Alcohol makes me feel strong.”

“We are a people who have endured. We have strength in our ceremonies. We have strength in our memories.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll have to live it before you understand.”

“I see.” I looked down at the eagle feather. “I've carried the memories for a long time. See, thing is, I worry sometimes. A lot. I'm afraid I wasn't the only one. Amocheesh went to his house in Montreal, too.”

“It sounds like he was close to several boys. Where is Amocheesh now?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you thought about contacting him?”

“Sure. But I don't know where he is.”

“But you know his family name. And you know where his family lives.”

I didn't say anything for a while. “Maybe I don't want to know,” I finally replied.

“Why not?”

“Because what if the same thing happened and he never got over it?”

“Predators rely on your silence. And the silence of the nuns, priests and everyone else who worked at the school, and those in the community who suspected something. As soon as that silence is broken, it becomes dangerous for them.”

“I don't know if I'm ready,” I said.

“That's good. Good that you are being honest with yourself. We have a long way to go, Ed.”

Then he took out some sage, lit it, and we began to smudge. I wafted the smoke toward myself. The burnt smell reminded me of sitting around our Fort Albany woodstove, of being a boy back home.

That weekend, Lenny and I drove to Enoch Cree Nation, northwest of Edmonton. It was a small reserve, on flat grassland with a few scattered buildings. Dennis had given us directions and told us that we would be meeting Mr. Callingbull, who would be leading the sweat.

In the car, I thought of my great-granddad, John Metatawabin. He did sweat lodge ceremonies in the night in the woods before he was taken away. The police found out about it. Who told them? The town's priest? The Hudson's Bay manager? So many questions, but my family were afraid to even talk about it. Fearful of being targeted by the police or stigmatized by the rest of the town.

I imagined my great-grandfather looking down on me from the Spirit World. As I thought about it, I felt the back of my head burn, as if someone was really watching me. His manitou was outside of me, but also within. His spirit danced in me, and guided me in times of trouble. It drew its power from Gitchi Manitou, who lived in me, and breathed in us all. We were all upwellings of the same pool of Spirit-Matter, all different manifestations of Gitchi Manitou. The
Standing Ones, the Four-Leggeds, the Two-Leggeds, the Grandfather Rocks, the River of Life. All my relations.
Ni chi shannock
.

Mr. Callingbull came to the car to greet us. Then he led us toward a mound-shaped tent made of saplings and blankets.

“You must be Lenny and Ed,” he said. “I'm George. Dennis told me about you.” Then he told us to strip down to our boxers and come inside.

We crawled through the narrow entrance. Inside was dark and hot, like being inside a woodstove. George began speaking.

“We came in through a door of new beginnings. An opening that faces east, the direction the sun rises.”

I'm too hot, I thought. Sweat dribbled down my face.

“We honour the Great Earth Mother, the skies, and the fire, the air and the forest.”

I heard a
pfft
, and my legs became prickly with steam. When the air hit my neck, my throat became tight.

“We honour the Seven Sacred Teachings and the Red Road. We honour Gitchi Manitou and all his spirit helpers.”

Another
pfft
, and the temperature increased. My throat screamed
water
. My mouth was on fire.

“We honour the Standing Ones, the Four-Leggeds, and the Two-Leggeds.”

My skin was going to unpeel raw from my body. My hair felt like it had trapped a burning restlessness inside. I shut my eyes again and tried to get more air. I felt faint. Something warm and wet on my hand. I looked down and saw the shadow of a wolf licking it. I rubbed my eyes. It was dark, but I could make out a muzzle and a pair of yellow eyes. The eyes disappeared for a moment then drew a tight circle around the spot where George was sitting.

“Wolf spirit, is that you?” I asked, the words resounding inside my head.

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I never left.”

“You didn't?” The eyes disappeared. I rubbed my own, and saw a glimmer of yellow.

“Are you there?” I asked silently.

“I'm right here, Ed.”

“What should I do?”

“You already know.”

“Tell me. Please.”

The yellow eyes faded again and I saw an image of Ma tending to a knife wound Pa had self-inflicted while skinning a marten. He was sitting on the tree stump outside our house and she leaned over him, washing the cut with a pot of boiled water. Once she had finished, she stroked his hair. The image faded and I saw Joan holding the hands of my children, in a line, from youngest to oldest, then this too disappeared into black.

“Wolf spirit. Why go home?”

“You need to take your Knowings back home.”

“What are my Knowings?”

She disappeared.

The heat was so intense that I could not breathe. It pulled me into a sadness that had been there for as long as I could remember. Tears mixed with the steam that drenched my face. I cried until I was nothing but dry heat.

I lay down on the floor, where it was cooler, and my chest sank into the damp earth. George began to sing, and one by one, the others joined in. Their voices resonated deep inside my flesh. I listened as my skin danced with their melodies. Until their last notes had faded into the heat. Then I tried to get up, but I felt a heavy weight, like a dog, on my chest. The weight began to fill my chest, pulling me into a
darkness deeper than night. I let go and began to fall. The thick black air pulled me downwards, into the ground. I felt the soil between my fingers. I was on the floor, weak and part of the dirt. I was the Great Mother Earth. I was Gitchi Manitou and his Creation.

George began saying another prayer, signifying the sweat was over. I was exhausted and unable to move. Lenny helped me outside into daylight. The cool air soothed my near-naked body.

Dennis read this poem to us twice. Marilou Awiakta was a Cherokee poet from East Tennessee, but she could have been from anywhere. The policy was universal, or at least the same across North America. Kill the Indian to Save the Man. Turned out when you killed the Indian, you just killed the Indian.

Dennis asked us what we thought it meant.

“It means it's hard to follow the Red Road,” I said.

“Explain.”

“The Red Road is the way we're supposed to walk right in the world. It's called a road, but really it's bigger than that. It's all of it—the Seven Sacred Teachings, the vision quests, the shaking tent, the sweat lodges, the animal spirit guides. Each of them offers a
teaching on how to live well in the world. The sweat lodge offers a lesson on enduring discomfort. On letting go into pain. On trusting your body even when everything else seems unbearable. It teaches you through experience on how to stare death in the face. Thing is, we were taught that this stuff was shameful. We were taught to be fearful of who we were, and to turn our backs on our traditions, on our ancient coping mechanisms. We were taught not to listen to the elders, the keepers of those traditions. So we became lost. We lost faith in the road. We became afraid to put one foot in front of the other. So we block everything out with booze and drugs.”

“Is that your story?”

“Mostly,” I said. “Some of it was my own doing.”

“What was your own doing?”

“Well, I've hurt a lot of people over the years, especially my wife. I had chances and I blew them. Chances to do right and to come clean and each time I didn't go there.”

“Part of this healing is learning how to own your own story,” Dennis said. “To acknowledge what has happened and what you have done and to stop running from it. It's there. It's done. People were hurt. Stop reliving it.”

“How do I do that?”

“You're human and you made mistakes. That's okay. We all do it. Especially when you've been in a residential school. Seen and been part of things that shouldn't have happened. Then you come out and you're expected to pretend like it never happened. Go on with your life. Chances are it doesn't work out that way. There's a lot of hurt inside of you that wants to get out and be in the world. So you start to destroy those who are close to you. It feels inevitable. But once you finally realize what you've done, you still have to own that hurt. You still have to repair those relations, as much as you can. Remember, you've already taken the first steps.”

“I have?”

“Tell everyone about your new job, Ed.” I took hold of the eagle feather and told the group that I'd been trying to find stable work when I went to the University of Alberta to ask about their master's programs. I had bumped into Marilyn Buffalo-McDonald, who was working as director of its Native Student Services. We had an intense discussion about politics and she told me she was looking for an assistant to help her boost native enrollment at the school. I returned home for my CV, and after a couple of interviews, I got the job.

Everyone clapped.

“Sounds big shot. What's it mean?” Bridget asked.

“Oh, I'm pretty far down the totem pole. It just means that I'm helping kids.”

After I started my job at the university, I continued going to cultural training workshops. One took place at Goodstriker's Ranch, near the Rockies. Each day we had a good breakfast, exercise and heard talks from elders. Nights we slept in teepees. What we found most helpful was to meet for ten or fifteen minutes at dawn by a nearby creek. For me it was not rational and least of all not scientific. What could be accomplished by gazing in wonderment at the coming sunrise?

But we sat there and watched the creek flow, saw the minute details of the rivulet cascading over pebbles and sand, and we began to understand appreciation. We realized that this gratitude took the form of acceptance: of ourselves and our situation.

I had never been on a horse before. The owner of the ranch, Rufus Goodstriker, gave me a small gelding to ride. Half an hour later I was navigating a narrow ledge, looking at the deep canyon below, rock face to my right and nothing on my left. I focused on staying atop the horse. My name became the Sandal-Footed Cowboy because I had no cowboy boots, unlike everyone else.

—

As the months went by, I went to more sweats, and Dennis said that I was ready to start helping others. That I should use Pa's teachings and what I had learned in our sessions and in the sweat lodge to get involved.

“I am involved. We're trying to raise native involvement at the university.”

“Some of these people could do with your help,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Have someone else listen to them and guide them along the way.”

“I don't know,” I said. “There's still a lot I'm dealing with.”

“Ed, what you went through has left some pretty serious scars.”

“Yeah.”

“Helping others will help heal them.”

“You sure?”

“No. But I'd like you to try.”

The following Saturday morning I replayed this conversation as I sat in my car outside Sue-May's house. I didn't know much about her: she was one of the quiet ones in the healing circle. When she spoke, which wasn't often, we all leaned in, until Bridget singed her hair on one of the candles, jumping up, as the sacred space exploded with four-letter curses. Sue-May hadn't said much after that. I think she was afraid of causing third-degree burns.

I glanced at my watch, and looked around. She lived on the top floor of a building on a street filled with massage parlours and pawnbrokers. There was no front yard, just a rough mound of snow filled with Coke cans and tufts of prickly grass.

A few minutes later, she got in my car and said she wanted to go to the Camsell Hospital. What's at the Camsell? I asked. It was known to be an Indian hospital where they'd fly all the natives from up north. Mostly for TB. The rates of infection had come
down since I'd attended school but the disease still freaked people out. Coughing up blood. Quick, get the children to hospital down south. Then wait. And wait. Any news? Please. No. Usually, the kids didn't come home. Only arrived in hospital once there was a hole in the lungs full of disease. Not much the doctors could do. Maybe that's why there were rumours of the ghosts of coughing children wandering the Camsell's lobby.

“It was where I had my operation,” she said.

“What operation?”

She looked out the window and said nothing.

At the Camsell I parked the car and she went inside. To keep warm, I turned the car on every few minutes. Outside the hospital entrance, a mother was helping a five-year-old into his coat. They reminded me of Joan and Jassen. Not the way they looked, just the way the boy put his arms around his mother's neck for support and how she used her coat to protect him from the wind as she got him into his own.