Topic: Richard Wagamese

We watched an eagle soar across a wide expanse of bush. Standing there in the trees, silenced by the majesty of that great bird, I felt honored by the display of its strength and grace.

“That’s how I want to be,” I told my elder friend. We were walking on the land as we generally did whenever I visited. He’d show me things as we passed and share stories and teachings about what they represented or symbolized to our people. He was a walking, talking cultural encyclopedia.

“How exactly do you want to be?” he asked.

“Graceful,” I said. “Just like that. To soar like that, easily, gracefully.

He smiled at my words and put his head down and continued walking and I followed him deeper into the bush. We walked silently for a long time and eventually he sat down on a log in a clearing and motioned for me to sit beside him. What he told me that day never left me.

“The eagle’s grace doesn’t come easily,” the elder said.

The eagle’s grace doesn’t come easily he said. When we see it hang in the sky or glide effortlessly we imagine that it must be a natural action, that the eagle is born with that particular gift. But it takes a tremendous amount of time, dedication and work to achieve it.

When you look closely at an eagle feather. It’s made up of thousands of tiny strands. The eagle needs to know how to control each of them. When the wind blows it needs to know how to catch it, hold it, direct the flow of it to keep it in the air. When the air is still it needs to know how to move the air through its feathers.

As it flies the eagle needs to learn how to read the treetops or the grasses in the wind. It needs to know how to read the clouds, to feel of the air and to learn to shift instantaneously to small changes. It takes a long, long time.

So when we stand on the ground and look up at an eagle soaring magnificently across the sky, it’s not telling us how easy it is to be graceful. It’s telling us that if we work hard and learn who we were created to be, we can learn to soar. We learn our own grace and the motion across the sky of our lives is magnificent to behold.

There used to be a time in this country when we as Native people were invisible. No one cared what we did or what happened to us and there certainly wasn’t anyone who cared about our day to day lives. We were forgotten people and as Canada the nation marched forward into global esteem, we were shunted into the background and our stories and realities tucked away in shadow. But those days are gone and Native people have become more of a part of Canadian consciousness than ever.

That’s either good or bad. It’s good when you consider that the realities of our lives, the hardships we continue to struggle with and the issues that confront us are realized by a bigger part of the population. It’s good when our neighbors come to understand the nature of our discontent and the truth of our troubled relationship with Canada. But it’s bad when we choose to embarrass ourselves by our actions.

Lately a citizen’s group has launched a website aimed at scrutinizing First Nations band finances. The site is called www.reserve-transparency.ca and it follows reams of documents from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that question the rate of pay for chiefs and councils. The group is concerned with what they perceive as flagrant abuse of fiscal funding and a pay scale that seems outlandish and irresponsible.

The Canadian Tax Foundation (CTF) wants band finances to be made public. Why not? These days, self-government has ceased to be a principle and has become a reality for many First Nations. Transparency is a logical idea. Why not show Canadians how well we can manage our own affairs? The whole premise of self-government is built on First Nations as capable, proficient governments who are entirely able to confront and control their individual destinies. The CTF proposes an open book that lets Canadians see responsible First Nations Governments.

It’s not just outsiders who are concerned. Many within reserve communities want to know where and how First Nations fiscal money is spent. There are First Nations activists who are demanding that their leadership be transparent; to allow all band members to see the books, know the financial goings-on of their own governments. This is a reasonable request. Band populations deserve to know how their lives are being managed and to deprive them creates hierarchy, an elite that was never part of our cultures.

The Peguis Band in Manitoba is a prime example. In 2007 to 2008 the chief made $221,642 in tax free salary. The following fiscal year he made $174, 230. Those amounts are equal to $383,579 and $295,124 in taxable income – which is more than the Prime Minister makes. On top of that are the expense accounts that allow leaders to travel globally for conferences and events that may or may not affect their dealings at home. Once all is said and done there’s an awful lot of money aimed at improving the collective lives of First Nations people that’s being eaten up by high paid and self-righteous leadership.

There was a time in our traditional lives when our leaders weren’t paid. Leaders were chosen for leading principled lives. They were chosen by virtue of their dignity, of selflessness, of a concern for the collective wellbeing of the people, spirituality, empathy, compassion and a quality of courage that allowed them to put the needs of the community ahead of their own. That courage is what made them leaders and it never included greed, self-righteousness or self-aggrandizing behaviors. Sadly, nowadays, too many chiefs and councilors seem to think it’s their due as elected leaders to take home enormous amounts.

It’s angering. The majority of their people will never see such money in their entire lives. The new truck, the new house, the boat and motor, the vacations, and the high priced meals in high priced restaurants will never be part of their reality. Our leadership has no need for huge payouts while their people struggle to get by. And it’s especially angering when they take the money and still talk about honoring our traditions.

So why not open the books on band management? Why not allow Canadians and their own people to see how much they are paid, how much they ring up on expenses, and how the fiscal dollars directed toward the community is divided and spent? Honesty and accountability are traditional principles after all and the notion of self-government implies that a people are mature enough to govern openly.

There’s no colonialism inherent in accountability. There’s no racism in asking a government to be forthright in its dealings and there is certainly no besmirching of a peoples’ integrity by asking their leadership for honesty.

We went to a powwow recently. It’s one of the bigger powwows in our part of the country and it was thrilling to see how many people showed up. The arbor was crowded and even in the high dry heat, people were enthused and excited.

There’s something about a powwow that stirs me. It’s not just that I’m a Native person. It goes far beyond that. No, there’s something elemental in the sound of a drum, the high voices of the singers and the dancers celebrating the power of the earth.

That’s what powwow’s all about. Celebrating the power of the Earth, the harmony of the universe, the unity of the people and the nurturing hand of Creator on everything we do. It’s where the songs get their power, and where the dancers draw their energy.

Sometimes it seems like we’ve lost part of that. The huge competition powwows draw competitors attracted to the big payouts. There are long lines of tables where people sell artifacts, t-shirts, regalia, souvenirs and a lot of things unrelated to the nature of the powwow. Sometimes, it seems like it’s all about the money.

So it was refreshing for me to see a young man dance. He was about twelve and he wore a blue grass dancer’s outfit. The porcupine headpiece he wore was elegant and dipped with each step he took. Each step with the twin crutches he needed to get around the circle.

See, this young man was handicapped. The cerebral palsy or the polio he was afflicted with had robbed him of the full functioning of his legs. But he was out there moving with the beat of the drum, and each step was hard, a struggle. But he danced.

It brought tears to my eyes to see that. It made me proud. It made me remember the true nature of powwow and in turn, the true nature of the traditions we Native people cling so desperately to. A staunch pride coupled with deep humility – and the incredible life affirming strength that comes from that.

I watched that young man dance and it affirmed my life and my struggles. He was no quitter. He was a warrior in the truest sense of it. He sought the sacred union of the physical and the spiritual and he showed me in each turn of that circle, that nothing, absolutely nothing is impossible.

Soon I will be fifty-five years old. That means a lot to me. There times in my younger life living through desperate times that were largely self-inflicted, that I doubted that I would ever see thirty. So a full quarter century beyond that speculation is a nice place to be. This age feels good. I can look back and see the experience of living with the framework of six decades on this planet. It doesn’t make me feel old. Just experienced.

The comforting thing about a niche in time like this is clarity. I can see where I’ve been, who I’ve been and what I’ve accomplished or failed to do with equal sharp-sightedness.

For instance, when I first met my people I was twenty-four. I’d been taken away as a toddler and placed in foster care and later, when I was nine, I was adopted by a white family who lived a thousand miles away from where I was born. I moved from the bush to the pavement of a Toronto suburb, and it was a colossal change. But in that home and the schools I went to I learned nothing about who I was as a Native person. Instead, I was made to behave and act and walk and talk as though I were white. I wasn’t, of course, but great effort was made to allow me to become a reasonable brown facsimile. As I’ve said before, it’s not the pounding in of the round peg in the square hole that hurts so much; it’s the scraping away that occurs.
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There are nights that stay with you forever. There are nights that come to you all uncontrolled and wild, bearing images that stamp themselves upon your consciousness, unrelenting and immune to the fading of years. You re-enter those nights like stepping into known rooms, the country of their being a territory, a landscape your skin remembers.

February 25^th, 1964. It was deep winter in northern Ontario and the nights descended like judgments, all dark and deliberate, final almost. I shared a room with my foster brother, Bill Tacknyk, and my bed was the lower of the two bunks. When bedtime came I always fell asleep to the sound of his radio playing softly in the darkness.

That night he was listening to a boxing match. Cassius Clay was fighting Sonny Liston in a place called Miami. You could hear the crowd behind the announcer’s voice. It was like a sea, roaring then murmuring then crashing into silence. The announcer was excited and his words came out of the darkness like the jabs and combinations of the fight itself.

Clay was lightning quick and he pounded the lumbering Liston. He opened a cut over his eye and there was blood everywhere. The crowd noise was enormous and it filled the corners of that dark room and when Bill’s legs draped over the edge of the bunk, I sat up too. We were galvanized by the details of that fight.

I swear I could smell the sweat of it. As the fight progressed I could feel the thud of blows landing and in my mind’s eye I could see the younger, faster Clay wheeling around the ring taunting Liston, hitting him at will. I began to cheer for him. He was blinded by something for awhile and Liston began to win.

But he recovered and as I huddled in my bunk, arms clenched around my knees rocking, I clenched my fists and willed him on. In the end when a battered Liston refused to come out and fight again the crowd cheered and booed and raged and Bill and I celebrated the new heavyweight champion of the world. My foster mother had to come in and tell us to get to sleep.

Well, Clay changed his name about the same time I did and in my new home I got to see some of his fights on television. He was beautiful. He was outrageous. He was a warrior poet and when he crashed over refusal to fight in Viet Nam I hurt for him. In my mind he was a giant and the idea of Muhammad Ali never changed.

But my life changed. My adopted home was a fiasco from day one. No one told my new family about the history of abuse I came from. No one told them about the terror I’d faced as a kid and the horrific physical abuse I’d suffered. No one knew then that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t just a soldier’s pain – that it could happen to a kid too.

When I was strapped and beaten it only exacerbated the trauma in me. When I was banished to my room it only embedded the isolation I felt. When I reacted out of all that fear and trauma and found it difficult to fit it and become the kid they wanted me to be there were always clashes. Physical punishment was the rule in that home and because of where I came from it was the last thing I needed.

But they never knew that. My life there was a constant bombardment of old pain, unrecognized, untreated and unhealed. I ran away a few times and when I was fifteen I emptied my bank account of paper route money and found my way to Miami Beach. It was February and I wanted to be somewhere warm. More than anything I just wanted to be away.

I lived with a pair of old hippies and got a job at a cafeteria as a bus boy. We smoked weed and hung out on the beach hitting up tourists and swiping drinks from tables. But when I couldn’t produce a social security number the cafeteria let me go and I wandered Miami Beach all lost and hurt and hopeless.

One day I found myself at a lunch counter on Fifth Street and Washington Avenue. I was lonely and I wanted to cry. But they served lemon meringue pie at that lunch counter and I ordered a piece in hopes that a childhood favorite might make me feel better. It was marvelous. A man came and sat beside me and I bent my head out of shyness.

Well, he ordered apiece of pie like mine and the waitress asked him if he was allowed to have it. He laughed and said he could eat whatever he wanted. He was the Champ, after all. I looked up and saw Muhammad Ali beside me. His training gym was right above that lunch counter and he came in often.

He bought me a piece of pie when he ordered another and a chocolate shake. We ate together and he smiled at me and rubbed my head like a brother. When he was leaving I asked him for an autograph and he signed my napkin. Muhammad Ali. A giant. A warrior poet. I felt honored. Watching him walk away I felt healed, like I could bear up and when the police found me eventually and shipped me back to my adopted home I held onto the sight of him.

I was gone for good a short time later and my life became a road. These days, thirty six years later, I still remember the feel of his big hand on my head and the taste of that lemon pie. Finding Ali saved me, allowed me the strength to carry on and I guess that’s what heroes do – imbue us with the gold dust of their courage.

Ali made me a fighter and I’ve come out for every round since then. Battered, bruised some, nearly beat, I’ve always stood up – it’s the meringue on the pie of my life.