Indian Country

Are you in a rut, bored out of your skull? Do you want to make a real difference? Well here’s a cure for what ails’ ya’ become a volunteer. You get to do good things for people, enlarge your spirit, and do a bit of traveling on the side. It was in July when I volunteered to join our parish’s Legion of Mary for our annual mission trip abroad. I was assigned to Canada where for a month I was to minister among the Cree Indians. My group was one of several representing the Midwest. All of us were to meet in Minneapolis, Minnesota our rendezvous point before heading off to our various assignments. I took Greyhound my customary mode of transportation ‘back in the days’ when I had big plans, endless energy, moveable parts, but no money. Since then, thank God my situation has improved considerably I’m please to say.

The bus ride from Chicago to Manitowoc, Wisconsin was slow. It stopped in nearly every tiny town along the route. Hours later we pulled into Manitowoc a small lake front city north of Milwaukee. Two nuns met me at the bus station. They drove me to their St. Paul the Apostle Parish. I spent the night in a large Victorian house adjacent to their convent in the back country. My being a big city boy the quiet, pitch black night sky, combined with noises made by a very loud assortment of God’s creatures of the night took a bit of getting used to but somehow I did manage to log in a few hours of shut-eye (sleep).

The next day was Sunday. After Liturgy and a hearty all-you-can-eat lumberjack breakfast, I helped the nuns load our stuff in their car. Once loaded we started the long drive to the Twin Cities to link-up with the rest of the groups. The drive through Northern Wisconsin was breathtaking. The scenery, the rolling green hills of the countryside was indescribable. Thinking back on nature’s beauty one can easily understand why some of the world’s premier writers, artists, and thinkers were inspired to greatness after spending time in the country far away from the madness of big city life. Hours later we arrived in the Twin Cities.

We spent the night at a private home. After breakfast the next day we assembled at St. Stephen’s Catholic church to meet the rest of the groups. After a brief prayer for a safe trip we boarded our cars then started our long journey to our mission stations. Our first stop was to be Winnipeg, Canada.

America is beautiful. The song ‘America the Beautiful’ became alive as we drove through the length of majestic Minnesota…across the Mississippi at its beginnings as a tiny river as wide as two small streams joined together. I looked out over the countryside. Its grandeur further enhanced by the Handel concert being played over the radio made our trip all the more memorable.

It was sometime later when we drove through Fargo. The North Dakota landscape resembled Northern Illinois-scenic but ‘flat.’ I only wished that we could have spent a night under the panoramic big night sky of the Dakotas.

Our caravan of cars crossed the Canadian border without much ado. We arrived in Winnipeg in the early evening hours of that same day. We bedded down for the night at a small motel near the heart of the city. At first glance this city appears ordinary like so many North American cities. According to Wikipedia the popular people’s dictionary Winnipeg is, Located in Western Canada near where the Canadian Shield meets the Prairies, Winnipeg plays a prominent role in transportation, finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and education. It is known as the Gateway of the West, and was historically known as the Bulls eye of the Dominion and ‘Heart of the Continent,’ due to its critical location on the Canadian transportation network.” It’s an important economic center in Canada.

Winnipeg is located near the geographic center of our continent. The city is also known for its extreme cold weather. Being from Chicago I know what cold is though I don’t think our winters are nearly as frigid as they used to be. It is estimated that this city has a population of roughly over 700,000 people. Though small by big city standards ‘Winnipeggers’ have plenty to keep them busy besides work, the true national sport of Canada. They have ice hockey, skating and other outdoor activities. Home to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and various cultural centers, it was the only city to have hosted the Pan-American Games twice; once in 1967 and again in 1999.

Canada is very large. The logistics are staggering in their immensity. It took us many hours to drive from our initial border crossing point, to Winnipeg, where at a restaurant on the outskirts of Portage La Prairie. I foolishly let my stomach overrule my brain when in a fit of hunger, or was it gluttony, for a pancake, bacon, and sausage breakfast. When we parked our car, like a moron I accidentally left the car keys in the ignition then locked the door. Only a minor miracle enabled me to use a coat hanger to unlock the door through the tiny crack in the upper part of the window making the rest of our trip possible…duh-uh! We sped past Riding Mountain National Park past mighty Lake Winnipeg finally arriving in early evening in The Pas a small city half-way through Manitoba on the Saskatchewan border.

We drove through The Pas and up St. Mary’s Cathedral. We parked our cars and unloaded our luggage at the rectory building. The cathedral staff welcomed up, showed us around the place before escorting us our assigned rooms. An hour later we had dinner. After we dined we had a meeting. During the meeting we got to choose our assignments. When it was my turn to choose, I used the time honored ‘enee-minee-minee-moe’ method of selection. I picked a place called Sturgeon Landing a small Native village on the Saskatchewan border. Throughout that night my restless mind replayed the actions of the past few days making sleep difficult.

Early next morning after breakfast I said my Morning Prayers. Later I joined the two young women volunteers who would join me. One of the ladies was a nun the other the daughter of a very well-to-do entertainment executive. Before we set off, we did some shopping to stock up on a month supply of food and other necessities.

It was when we entered the store that an odd uneasy feeling came over me. At the time I couldn’t identify it. I just felt funny. I started feeling depressed. I a strange sadness come over me. As I thought back there were only two other times where the Churchillian “black dog of depression overwhelmed me.” The first time was when I took an evening seminar in Downtown Chicago. Unbeknownst to me at the time the class was held at an abortion clinic! My wife at that time and I were taking a course on Natural Family Planning. The other time was during the Hippie era when I toured San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. I didn’t tell the two women about my sudden mood swing. I pretended like nothing happened. We bought what we needed and quickly left.

Again according to Wikipedia, “The Pas, Manitoba is some 630 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital, Winnipeg near the border of Saskatchwan. Known as the ‘Gateway to the North,’ The Pas is a multi-industry northern Manitoba town serving a district population of over 15,000 (including the Opaskwavak Cree Nation…The main components of the region’s economy are agriculture, forestry, commercial fishing, tourism, transportation, and services-especially health and education-The main employer is a paper and lumber mill called Tolko. The Pas contains one of the two main campuses of the University College of the North. The original inhabitants were the Cree, who are thought to have migrated from the southeastern prairies 5,000 years ago. ‘The Pas’ is a derivative of the Cree word ‘pasquia’ meaning ‘wooded narrows.’ It may also originate from the French words ‘le pas’ – ‘the step.’”

Years after I left The Pas I discovered the source of my uneasiness. The sadness I felt. During my stay in that city hatred for the Native Peoples was so intense that less than two months after I left that place a young Native girl by the name of Helen Betty Osborne, an aspiring teacher, was abducted, drove to the outskirts of The Pas where she was beaten, raped, then murdered by a car load of white teenagers. As the poor girl lay in the snow screaming in great pain, one of her captors a young man took a screwdriver and stabbed her repeatedly while the rest of the onlookers cheered on as she begged for mercy. They left her to die slowly from her wounds alone in the freezing snow. Almost immediately after her rape-murder the ‘good citizens’ of The Pas knew who the girls killers were but did nothing to bring them to justice. This conspiracy of silence to the knowledge of this writer still grips The Pas as I write.

The city deliberately hid the perpetrators from the law under a veil of silence that lasted 16 years after the act. Thanks to the dogged persistence by one of Canada’s finest, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, years later the murderers were caught.

Ms. Osborne’s killers all received light sentences and are more than likely walking the streets as you read this article treating the awful incident as though nothing had happened.

The dead girl’s case is but a single incident of native women being beaten, raped, and killed in Canada. What I felt in that supermarket was a veil of hatred of one race by another. I only hope that things have changed by now but I doubt it. The book Conspiracy of Silence later became a TV mini-series written by Lisa Priest is about the murder of Helen Osborne. While I did watch the mini-series on television I plan to buy the book sometime in the near future. When we left the store I didn’t as much say “Hi” to the people on the street. Maybe I was wrong judging them as I did but being ½ Native American myself I felt much of their hatred was directed towards me though I felt no animosity towards them.

We left The Pas on a red clay dirt ‘road’ that zigzagged through a forest so dense that even light would have had a tough time penetrating it. Our destination was the then almost inaccessible ‘Indian’ village of Sturgeon Landing. The trip was rough enough but was made more arduous when it started raining. Our vehicle became stuck in a river of thick, brown, mud. We got out and starting pushing. Huge other worldly looking brown bubbles formed and gave off a ‘pop-pop’ sound as they slowly burst around us. They gave the land a gooey red clay look. We felt like we were pushing a broken down land rover on the planet Mars. As we sloshed our way bursting these large bubbles some I estimate to have been over 50 plus/minus inches in diameter-BIG!

What we didn’t know was how close we were to being sucked under and drowned in a river of mud. Fortunately for us the thick, gooey red clay was only waist high or so we thought. With each footfall it was as though we were being sucked into a liquefied ground that sunk five feet from where we stood. It acted like quicksand though it felt rather therapeutic swishing around in the thick, warn, wet, red clay that lay beneath our exposed toes and soles. People who regularly pay exorbitant prices for medicinal mud baths would have given their ‘eye teeth’ to have been in our situation. The deep thick red liquid had a calming effect that worked like clay magic.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it started. It didn’t take long for the clay to harden once we freed our vehicle from the chocolaty mud. Soon we were on our way again inching our way over the logging trail coming closer towards the village.

Hours later when we arrived we parked our station wagon next to a log cabin church whose construction would have made old Abe Lincoln proud. Our assignment: to reclaim the people of this supposedly violent and lawless Native village back into the church of Christ. I was told that the previous pastor a priest had run off with a young Native woman and was never seen nor heard from again.

What happened after we stored our stuff and toured the village was right out of a book. As I walked along the dirt road that lead to the main part of the village some Indian children ran up alongside and behind me and started to pull my hair. They had never seen a mixed person of Native, African-American, and Jewish heritage before. I guess they wanted to see if my hair was real and did my yellow complexion rub off.

Thinking back to the cathedral compound we were told that under no circumstances were we ever to play with the children for fear of loosing their respect. To the Native peoples, the majority of Sturgeon Landing, we were to comport ourselves with the utmost dignity at all times since discipline and strictness were strong signs of respect. Pretending to ignore their barbs and pulls I introduced myself to the people who were gathering around me as I walked through their village. First impressions do count and I wanted to make a good one.

The local whites, French Canadian and English, were glad to see us. They bombarded me with requests that I pass out birth control pills to the Indians since “they multiply like rabbits.” I quickly realized that I wasn’t ‘on holiday’ but on the front lines and in a different country. When the work started we did bandage wounds, distribute penicillin pills and other medical items that we had in our medical kit to those who needed them.

The village was divided in half by a raging river that flowed between halves. There was a smaller adjoining village for tourists on fishing trips. The tourists lived in a separate compound below the Indian village. The tourists and locals generally steered clear of each other.

Saskatchewan is ‘God’s Country!’ One pretty place to paint, write, relax, take pictures in and the fishin’s good. If you are an avid fisher and would like to go there I would advise you to contact: Sturgeon Landing Outfitters-Mr. Jim Metz-Box 24 End of Namew Lake Road-Sturgeon Landing, SK-SOP OHO-Canada or better yet send him an email at: [email protected]. He also rent cabins, motor boats, has a taxi service, and a candy store. And don’t forget to bring your camera.

My work was going smoothly. After a few days I came to this conclusion: problems aside the place was a virtual Utopia. The people, whites and Natives are just plain folks. They would gladly give you the shirt off their backs without blanking an eye if you needed it. EVERYBODY was friendly generous to a fault. Nobody locked their doors at night though I wonder if they still do that now. The locals would invite us into their homes offering us food, soft drinks, and lively conversation. The two American women and I parted company a few days after our arrival for professional reasons. Before that we separated the sister in charge divided the mission duties in half. I worked with the youths they worked with the older people.

Sturgeon Landing at that time was accessible only by a rugged logging trail during the warm months but closed to civilization during most of the year reachable only the local bush pilot’s airplane. Our bush pilot was a mild-mannered French Canadian named Lawrence pronounced ‘Laurent.’ During our off hours I would listen to him tell stories of his daring aerial exploits during inclement weather when at great risk to his life how he would fly ‘his Indians’ to hospitals during medical emergencies. His courage was one of many examples of heroism in the then isolated village.

I saw more practical Christianity in that village during my time there then in my many years living in Chicago. Loving thy neighbor in Sturgeon Landing, and I’m not talking sex though that topic will come later, was more than a metaphor. It was a living reality but speaking about loving thy neighbor as thyself well the good folks at Sturgeon Landing had the habit of taking that a bit too literal. What we would call ‘normal’ sexual morality was near to non-existent there. I once met a woman who like her Biblical counterpart actually had seven husbands! I met men who had more than one wife and the village teens didn’t see anything wrong with taking sex breaks in between drinking bouts, work, or other daily activities. To them sex was meant to be enjoyed anytime, anywhere, and for any reason. Whites and Indians intermingled sexually on a regular basis. In my entire time there I rarely ever saw depressed people in any significant numbers.

A favorite ‘game’ among some white men was ‘Squaw Jumping’ but I’ll leave that to your imagination to figure out how that one was played…whoa!! And I thought that places like that only existed in novels about 18th Century British sailors being stranded on lonely South Sea Islands or in early novels by James A. Michener. I don’t know how Sturgeon Landing is now but back then it was a sexual heaven with traditional morality taking a very low road. The place was wild and it was our job to ‘bring them back into the warm embraces of Holy Mother Church; yeah-right.

Nearly everybody drank to excess and was damn proud of it. They turned alcoholism into a fine art. These good folks could drink anybody I know under a bus. Me being a scion of Chicago’s rough and tumble Robert R. Taylor Housing Projects I felt at ‘home.’ I am no prude. I really wanted to work with these people and do anything I could to lighten their burdens. I would proclaim the Gospel during by day but party-hardy at night all within the realms of reason and propriety of course. I was there to reconvert them and not act in judgment on them that is unless the situation warranted it and besides, they reminded me of the ‘old neighborhood’ where I chugalugged [drank] many a ‘brew’ with the best of them. It was like being back in the ‘Hood.’

A strange thing happened to me as I was walking home one night from one of my ‘late night Catechism classes,’ I spotted a black heap of something on my doorstep but like an idiot I kicked it. A second later the ‘thing’ suddenly stood up! It was black bear about as tall as me! The beast reared up on its hind legs and bared its claws! I ran! It ran! The bear fled to one direction and I the other. I don’t know who out ran who but I do know this I didn’t come back for hours.

That next morning I told some folks what had happened. About an hour later a jeep load of some very drunken ‘hunters’ with faces as red as beets pulled up alongside the mission house. They were going to hunt the bear and invited me to join in. Seeing their smiling red faces I politely declined. These guys were all totting shotguns, rifles, and a few side arms. In their thoroughly inebriated state I didn’t want them to mistake me for a bear and accidentally fill me fulla’ holes, skin me, then hang my head over a fireplace. When they returned later that early evening I was thankful that nobody got shot and, by the way, they never did catch that bear.

Another occupational hazard was a hive of angry wasps who attached their hive above our chapel door. We had two doors. I avoided using the one next their nest but no matter, they dive bombed me every time I passed within stinging range. I was stung so many times that I think I’m immune to bee and wasp venom. After a while I just pulled out the barbs from my arms and went about my business.

The Cree Indians migrated to the area thousands of years ago. French fur traders and other adventurers arrived in the area 300 years ago. Soon after, Natives and whites were involved in a lucrative trade in beaver pelts, valued metal objects, Native women, and in cheap rot-gut liquor. Within a generation the Native peoples quickly became hooked on hooch the start of so many of their problems. Before we arrived we were told about some high school kids who were drowned in a boating accident while all liquored up.

I remember one time after I had just finished teaching at the local community school, one of my students angrily confronted me outside the mission house with the intention of bashing my brains in with an empty wine bottle. It got ugly. He called me out. I confronted him. After he called me a bunch of not-so-nice-names the guy took a swing at me! I ducked. Too drunk to actually hit me he hit the deck instead. Coming to his senses and on his knees the poor fellow started bawling like a baby, begged me to forgive him, then told me that he was, “tired of being a dirty Red Skin.” The next day when he sobered up I gave him Freddy’s Short Course on Ethnic Pride with a lesson or two tossed on temperance. It seemed to have worked. I had no more problems from his since our little pep talk.

Far too many Native Americans on both sides of the border suffer from low self-esteem which spawns chronic alcoholism. Self-hate leads to a sundry of other ills such as spousal abuse and other crimes of violence. One of the many people I counseled was an attractive young woman who was married to an abusive husband. I really felt sorry for the girl. Her eyes swelled with tears as she sobbed out her story of how her husband would regularly beat her after heaping torrents of verbal abuse at the poor woman. I did my best to persuade her to leave this guy not knowing at the time that she had no place to go since all her people lived in the same house. Not having sufficient funds to leave or an appreciable amount of education to get a job away from the village she felt trapped and alone. In a sense she was.

Many young Native women leave their reservations for the city and become prostitutes. Many are raped and murdered. During her impassioned plea to me for help I was so angry that I suggested that the next time her husband physically abused her she would try my mother’s cure all method for abusive mates. The ASAHGM [Anti-Spousal Abuse Hot Grits Method] is a favorite among some women of color where I came from when dealing with wife beating husbands and boyfriends. Remember the famous R & B singer-turned-minister the Reverend Al Green aka Al Grits? This gruesome grits ‘cure’ works thusly:

· Wait until abusive husband/boyfriend is sleeping. · Put on a pot of grits and bring to boil · Tie up sleeping husband · Pour hot grits on sleeping husband · Voila! No more abusive treatment or husband; which ever comes first-take your pick. · Run like hell if he unties himself!

My Mommy’s ‘heat treatment’ has never been known to fail. LOL!

Historically Indians don’t view spousal abuse as individual problems but as indications of failed communities. Spousal abuse and excessive drinking are but two of the many problems confronting Native Americans in Sturgeon Landing and at other reserves.

I read somewhere that the nefarious drug trade has reached the reserves (reservations). Motorcycle gangs including the Hell’s Angels make regular stops to reservations. Though extremely dedicated the RCMP’S (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) are severely understaffed. When I was in Sturgeon Landing we had the services of a single officer who not only covered our village but villages in an area that back in the U.S. would cover an entire county some the size of a small state. Somehow they manage well with the limited resources allotted them.

Gang activity is no longer relegated to inner city neighborhoods where I grew up and worked in. Now there are numerous Native American gangs. Sexual licentiousness has led to rapid increase of STD’s (sexually transmitted diseases). As I mentioned earlier when I was there we were issued bottles of penicillin pills to pass out to infected persons. Since I’m not into medicine I don’t think I distributed any medicines but deferred the matter to sister whom I think had medical training.

On a more positive side Namew Lake is Nature’s perfect drinking fountain. The crystal clear lake water brimmed over with cool, clear, fresh water provided me with an abundance of ‘free samples.’ I remember on one occasion when I, along with some of my students, got in a row boat and headed out into middle of this lake when I took the glass I had brought along, dunked my glass in the water, and started drinking. It tasted soooo goood!

I never drank water near the shore for fear of contamination. The water near the center of the lake was so pure that you could clearly see and count the rocks at bottom of the lake and spot schools of fish of varying sizes swim by. The fish seemed so close you could almost touch them. When it came to drinking water we would pour what we needed into a large pot, boil it for 30 minutes, let it cool, and repeat the process two more times; only then did we consider it potable.

It was the scenery that really awed me most. Sometimes at night I would go outside and lie on the ground and look up at a sky so big so majestic. The stars above seemed as though the entire sky was awash with bright dots of varying sizes and colors. It was a sight I never seen in my life until then as well as now. Think of a sky so bright with stars of every size and description that defied counting. Since we were so far North the Aurora Borealis [Northern Lights] could be seen in all its’ glory. It was as though God had taken a huge white and gray blanket and draped it across the sky with the stars and planets serving as a backdrop to a drama that was unfolding as time measured on.

What are the Northern Lights? According to Nordlys Northern Lights ‘the Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second. But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth’s two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic South Pole and the geomagnetic North Pole.” In short, the” Northern lights occur as a result of solar particles colliding with the gasses in the earth’s atmosphere.”

During daylight hours we were blessed with dandelions; billions of em’ that blanketed the ground outside our mission. Acres upon acres of yellow topped green stemmed flowers could be seen for miles in every direction. It was as though the entire province wore a butter yellow coat so thick as to hide the ground. Before going north I read in a book about Russia describing how farmers in that country would make an excellent dandelion wine. Reader if you want to make your own dandelion wine please type in: Dandelion wine recipe and take things from there. During my stay up north I never broached the subject with my Native friends.

Outside of the occasional violent act, somebody was stabbed to death a week before we arrived; life on the Reserve was pretty quiet. But we did have our share of mad moments. A week into my stay some of my students tipped me off as to where and when a gang of bootleggers who would make there next rum run near our village. I told the ‘Mountie’ policing the area. He alerted others. As these thugs were unloading boxes of illegal liquor to sell to our people, swarms of RCMP’S charged down the hill and busted every one of these bums! It was a scene right out of the annuals of the Wild West. That raid brought their illegal operation to an immediate halt. And who said missionary work was dull and irrelevant?

The only thing I just couldn’t get used to was outdoor lavatories. It was the smell. Now I know why they call those stinky structures out houses. Thank goodness for Mr. Crapper the guy who invented flush toilets.

Bathing in a river is fun. You never have to worry about leaving bathtub rings. Every morning I would go down to the fast flowing river and bathe. When I finished I would roll over on my back, and for the fun of it let the fast flowing current carry me down river like a log then swim back to where I started. That, parasailing, and scuba diving are my ideas of having fun!

When I was studying Scuba diving my future dive instructor, a racist who didn’t care too much for people of color, told me that my body appeared had some sort of natural floatation device. He was right. This natural endowment would save my life twice; once in Lake Michigan when I was hit suddenly by a big wave that sent me down 30 feet to the bottom after knocking the air out from my lungs and another time in the Pacific Ocean on the Big Island of Hawaii when a fish almost as big as I was approached me and got aggressive. Ain’t it grand knowing that in all probability I won’t die from drowning? LOL!

Most people are vaguely aware of the socialist ‘Cradle to he Grave’ mentality prevalent within the Canadian welfare system so I won’t go into that. I don’t know that much about it. But I will say this; the Canadian government prides itself on taking good care of its Native peoples. Compared to the U.S. system of neglect and abuse they’re right.

Native Americans are camera shy to the extreme. Sorry to say I have very few photos of the people to show for. Respecting their customs I left many potential prize winning shots deliberately slip by. The two young teen aged girls resting peacefully in a straw manger (Two Girl’s in a Manger), the dance party at the Recreation Center, and even of the villagers themselves who were quite reluctant to let me take their pictures.

During the day we would make home visitations, listen to any problems or complaints our clients presented, perhaps pray with them, and try to provide them with workable solutions to life’s many mine fields. Nights were our time off. During those years I was an avid partygoer. During the night I would party hardy with the young folks but carefully avoiding any of their vices. I was there to teach and live the Gospel not get drunk or get ‘laid’ though both were easily attainable. If the Boss (Jesus Christ) loved to party no way was I going to be different. Christ attended social events on a regular basis since that’s where the action (sinners) was. I wasn’t going to stay in the mission house either reading a book.

Manual dexterity isn’t my ‘thing.’ The entire Industrial Revolution could have easily passed me by. Case in point: one night after we made a large tub of cherry Kool Aid for the kid’s lunches next morning, I accidentally knocked over the kerosene lamp on the table shattering the glass and slashing kerosene all over the wooden wall! Within seconds the entire wall of the former priest’s house was in flames! Thinking fast I lifted the tub of Kool Aid and doused the flames. Immediately the fire abated. The next day we made another batch. To our surprise the wall wasn’t stained.

Sunday was our big day. Usually a priest from The Pas would come for Confession and Mass both of which were celebrated in the Cree language. Not having a head for languages I followed the services as best I could. In that regard I did much better with Spanish when I was in Mexico, the subject of an earlier article, than in Cree.

Whenever we held services our little church was packed with people who would literally walk miles to attend. One time during a rain storm as I was standing in a shelter near the door of mission house waiting for the water to subside, I saw two small boys and two men carry on their backs the church organ which they stored in their homes for safe keeping after the priest jumped ship. They had carried the heavy thing for over three miles over the foot bridge in the pouring rain! How’s that for Faith!

One of the highlights of the trip was the wild spin we received after our bush pilot offered us a ride in his airplane. The guy performed all sorts of loop-de-loops and other acrobatic stunts with his plane. For fun he would buzz homes and boats on the lake from the air; that guy performed more stunts than professional stunt persons did in ‘Flyboys’ that movie about combat flying during the First World War. Naturally I had the time of my life with him doing ‘loop-de-loops- hundreds of feet in the air-yippee!

The day before departure I persuaded my students to throw a party for the entire village. When all was ready we were missing one key person the drummer for our band. After waiting for about an hour for him to arrive I decided to go and get him. I wasn’t too thrilled about hiking across that wobbly foot bridge in the middle of night to fetch him but I did. When I arrived at his cabin the guy was so ‘zooted’ (drunk) that I had to carry him on my back. Half-way across the bridge he said he had to ‘pee.’ I had to wait until he finished. Standing alongside to keep him from falling into the river below in the middle of a bridge with a full moon in our faces, his long stream of urine could be seen for miles. The scene was embarrassing and I started ‘cussing.’ We made the crossing but I had to lug (carry) him the remaining ½ mile or to the Community Center where the dance was being held.

When I got there I was so pissed off (pun intended) that I tossed his drunk a** into the arms of two of his friends who drug him up the stage and placed him behind his drums. Luckily for us the local Mountie a pleasant but no-nonsense guy who chaperoned our dance so that nobody get rowdy. The dance was a success and everybody had a good time. We didn’t serve alcoholic beverages only soft drinks and there was plenty of food for all.

In retrospect our efforts at re-Christianizing the village was a resounding success despite the very short time were there. During that time we able to gain a great deal of respect and admiration from our Cree brothers/sisters. We had made provisions for a regular priest to follow through with what we started. When it was time to leave, the same Indian children who had earlier yanked my hair were running after us as we drove off. They beseeched us to stay with them forever. The good people of Sturgeon Landing didn’t want us to go but we had our own lives elsewhere.

There was no way I was going to drive all the way back to Chicago-no way. When I returned back to The Pas I quickly called their tiny airport. I made my one-way reservation back to Chicago via United Airlines. I was in luck. The next morning someone drove me to the airport. My flight made a single stop (Minneapolis) before making its way back to O’ Hare International Airport in Chicago.

When I got back home I settled back into my familiar routine. I wrote to some of my former students. They never returned my letters. I still miss them. Reader if you want to learn something about some the stuff I’ve mentioned please search: Nordlys Northern Lights, Lisa Priest’s superb book ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ and the website: www.geocities.com/waabzy/native.


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