macCLOUD FALLS, page 22
‘She told me it was in a secret place no one knew except the band. That another place had been mistaken for it and nobody had ever corrected…’
The chief interrupted. ‘She told you that?’ He glanced over to the counter again. Dorothy was still dusting off glasses. If she was really eavesdropping, she was doing a good job of cleaning at the same time.
‘I want to know if I can walk there. Or is it too far?’ the Scotsman asked.
Chief Mutch pushed his chair back. ‘That’s not really a place you should go.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’d need a truck.’
‘So I couldn’t walk there?’
‘It’s not so easy to find.’ He glanced at his watched. ‘Listen, I gotta go, drive down to Vancouver.’ He stood up, glanced again at Dorothy, who this time acknowledged him with an awkward grin. ‘Wait till I get back, will you?’ he added, and then he was gone, out the door with the same spin of speed he’d arrived with. His stocky frame seemed to spring up into the cab of his truck. He started it up and swung out of there as the gravel crunched and the dust rose.
When he paid, Dorothy seemed to want a little information, but the Scotsman’s mind was on what had just happened. It was a whirlwind encounter and not at all what he’d hoped for when he first made contact with the chief. He’d seemed abrupt, suspicious, although not outright unfriendly, and even if it may have been that he was just in a hurry, it left the Scotsman feeling, for the first time since he’d arrived, like an intruder. A stranger.
Back at the inn, he went up to his room. He hadn’t bothered with the video, so there was no footage to check. It seemed the tree-planters had already all retired, and he drifted off to sleep in the heat of the evening, his mind still full of the brief exchange with the chief. In the hypnagogic state, reality morphed into dream, and he felt himself borne across deserts on the gentle breeze above the rush of river water. A figure appeared on the edge of consciousness. An elder who wanted answers from him, sitting by a fire. So you want to write my tellings down, she asked, in her own tongue, which he seemed to know. And in English? In the dreamy firelight, he averred. And what kind of word is that, averred, she said? Could she read his mind, or had he spoken out loud? Have you forgotten who you are? I am your great-grandson, he answered. Never forget that, she told him. Or you will forget yourself. She poked in the fire. The flames had burned a tiny bright-lit cave into the embers, and here she placed the point of the poker, turned it, causing the unburned fuel to fall into the heart of the blaze. The light from the fire was all the light she had. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he could fill the detail into the darkness, the tight skin stretched across her cheekbones, her small round nose. Her bright eyes twinkled amongst the wrinkles. She had kept him when he was a small child, and had always told him stories. In her tongue – she knew a little English, could still recite ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’ which she’d learned at school in 1890s under pain of severe punishment. The literal.
A chieftain, to the Highlands bound, Cries, “Boatman, do not tarry! And I’ll give thee a silver pound To row us o’er the ferry!’’-- “Now, who be ye, would cross Lochgyle, This dark and stormy weather?’’ “O, I’m the chief of Ulva’s isle, And this, Lord Ullin’s daughter…
Parrots can do that, she says. A story stops changing when you write it down, she says. It’s like it dies, just becomes dead sound. The stories I tell, they are alive and changing all the time. It’s never the same. He thought he knew that, that every time she told a tale, it was different. He remembered Tami Nori, the child’s game from mythical Shetland his father used to play with him when he was very young – A’ll tell de a story aboot Tammi Nori, if du winna spaek ida middl’o’it. And then she was gone, and he slept.
The next day he woke feeling sore and tired. He felt he’d had too much sun, had walked too far, had pushed his physical being beyond what post-radiotherapy fitness allowed, so he stayed at the inn, writing. He wrote his journal, and then carried on with the story he’d started about his time in Vancouver. That seemed to flow far more readily than his scratchy attempts to record the world of 1899, or the mind-set of the man he wanted to write about.
The day was hot again, so he had both windows open to channel the canyon breeze through, past his desk. And at last, he found he was really writing – words came quickly, almost too quickly to write them all down. Vince came up to his room, and seemed to want to talk, but the flow was too strong to stop. He had his host bring him some soup and bread at lunchtime, so he could carry on. He thought he wouldn’t stop as long as inspiration lasted, but after eating, after writing for some six hours, he went to lie on the bed, feeling exhausted, but happy.
He woke to the sound of the tree-planters returning, as they always did, around four o’clock. Their day started before dawn, but it finished early too – only so much bending a person could do on any one day, he supposed. He heard a few make their way upstairs but a group went out to the terrace below. They were talking animatedly, as if carrying over an argument started earlier. The reek of tobacco and pot rose with the sound.
He realised they were discussing the First Nations situation. Apparently one of them, who sounded like the older man from the hockey game, had read some article out to the others on the drive back to the inn. The Scotsman went to his window so he could hear more clearly, then switched on the video camera so he could record what they had to say, though the image was just the same slow-moving panorama of the village across the river and the steely glint of the stream.
‘I completely get it,’ the older man said, ‘The First Nations were treated unfairly and horrible things happened. But are they gonna hang onto that victim status for the next twenty generations, or are they gonna do away with the reserves, get over how they were treated and get with the programme?’
A woman’s voice sounded. ‘Maybe Canada can start by paying back all the money owed from the use of their land and resources. Then maybe repay the funds stolen from them and spent on projects that were not for First Nations.’
A third voice, Doug, the false Lawrence’s interjected. ‘Why is eliminating reserves even considered a solution? If you take away reserves, there’s nowhere left for them to call home. There’ll just be Canada, a country that obviously doesn’t respect the native population or the history of the people.’
The woman picked up his thought. ‘Canada can’t hide genocide. What needs to be addressed first is the underlying racism and ignorance. Today’s problems will never go away until Canadians address that.’
The older man spoke again. ‘Yeah, it’s funny with all the money reserves get – maybe it’s time to disband the chief and council and let the government do it. The way it is, they’re the only ones that benefit, while other people suffer like they lived in the third world.’ Doug scoffed, but the older guy was adamant. ‘So how about elimination of the reserves and joining the rest of the country in the 21st century? Can’t apologize forever. Paying taxes would be a good start also...’
The woman gave a snort of condemnation. ‘Native people never put themselves in the position of reserves and not paying taxes to the government,’ she said angrily. ‘The British commonwealth and the church put them there. What you don’t seem to understand is that everybody except the aboriginal peoples are actually immigrants to Canada. This is their land we’ve been enjoying while taking advantage of them, while raping the land of its resources.’
There was a brief pause, the clink of glasses or bottles. Then the older man spoke again. ‘Okay, I’m gonna ask the obvious question here. The on-reserve problems, are those not the responsibility of the bands to fix using the money the federal government gives to them? I’m not trying to be ignorant, I’m just not sure what can be done, other than giving them their allocated money and they stretch it as far as it can go.’
At that moment, the argument ceased altogether and the company fell silent. The Scotsman wondered what had happened. Then a new voice spoke, one he thought he recognised as the painter of Antko’s portrait, the elder’s troubled god-daughter, Deeanna, who had burst into the office at the community centre. Her voice was commanding, loud and impassioned.
‘Who the fuck gave any of you so-called majority people the right to judge anyone? The bloody system is set up to continue to kill off First Nations! What you mean is join the rest of the country, and be a white person, in a white system. Don’t waste words, just state it – be white.’ He heard a rattling sound, and the scraping of chair legs, as if people were moving around. The older man started to say something in protest, but she cut him off. ‘You should educate your mind, your spirit, and your mouth. Simple like that. Teach the truth about the times from first contact on. The glorified history books in Canada are full of prejudice and lies. You see us as parasites and yet the new immigrants, they get far better treatment. Teach the kids the truth. To asshats like you with the boring old get-over-it-already, I say every time we get together and make an effort to raise awareness and a call to action for change, you turn to us and say “You again”?’ The older man was about to respond, but she blocked him, speaking louder still and he was quiet. ‘You know what needs to happen, indigenous people need to take back treaty lands and control education to grade twelve and make new indigenous universities that promote our ancestral knowledge and values, connect to our histories before and after contact and become one nation and be recognized as a nation by the United Nations. When you have a government that continues to legislate laws and bylaws to steal our traditional lands, our children, our culture, our language, and even distort Canadian history to pacify most citizens so they can be blissfully ignorant. What most Canadians don’t seem to grasp is the fact that aboriginal people have been raised on decades of crimes against humanity, committed by the government of Canada and the church.’
She stopped at that point. It was a breathlessly eloquent outburst. No one spoke for a long spell, then someone applauded, a single person’s hand-clap that filled the vacuum. He couldn’t tell whether it was intended as ironic by the sound alone. Finally he heard the antagonist of earlier say, ‘I sure don’t want be disrespectful, Deeanna, but the problem seems not to be federal funding. According to what I was reading earlier – I’ll read it you, what it says in the paper here – “in Attawapiskat reserve, the federal annual funding was around 31 million for 1500 living people. So for a four-member family, the annual funding was $80,000.” Maybe the problem is who controls the funding in those reservations?’
The Scotchman heard a loud decrying laugh from Deeanna. ‘Thinking that more government can solve the problem is like asking your rapist for marriage guidance,’ she said. ‘How about giving us the same rights you have, how about treating us like people instead of a hindrance to society? How about putting as much effort into finding our lost and stolen people as you do others?’
The older guy snorted. ‘Typical. First Nations people do not want to be equal or assimilate because they think they have been displaced. So they want hand-outs cause they think they have been treated badly. Well, I say get off your horses, assimilate and work. Some of your leaders have bucks coming out of their ears. The bucks are not getting distributed to those that need it.’
Deeanna’s reply was simple. ‘When it comes to running reserves, we need more women chiefs.’
The tree-planter woman gave a little squeal of affirmation. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Put more women in as chiefs. When women are in charge, tribes get taken care of.’
‘Maybe the government should start closely monitoring the corrupt reserve Chiefs. There are groups of First Nations people who are blossoming – why can they not learn from and apply the fundamentals of those communities, who are effective and creating wealth,’ the antagonist went on.
Deeanna laughed. ‘To come even remotely close to a financial remedy, each First Nations person in Canada right now would need the equivalent of what a good fertile hundred-acre farm is worth. That’s trillions in total, I reckon.’
‘Quit blaming others, I say. Lots of reserves in Alberta are doing very well, but it takes hard work. Let them go do the hard work, I say.’
There was a pause. Then false Lawrence spoke. ‘Dood, you have no idea about the history or how this country even functions, what money goes where and where it comes from,’ Doug said, and laughed. ‘You read one article, suddenly you’re an expert.’
The Scotsman had heard enough. He wanted to be a part of this argument, he wanted to see the faces of those involved. Particularly he wanted to see this eloquent, angry woman who had painted the portrait of Lyle’s native wife. So he left the videocam running and went downstairs, but as he reached the bottom, the inn door swung closed and, on looking around the terrace, he realised that she had gone as quickly as she’d arrived. The three pot-smoking tree-planters were out on the terrace alone, silenced by her intervention – Doug, the Lawrence lookalike student, the older man who’d told him about the Millionaires who was sitting with his boots up on the table in front of him, and the jolly girl whose name he couldn’t recall, who smiled at him as he crossed onto the terrace.
‘Hey, Bert,’ Doug said, greeting him, looking less like DH Lawrence by day. ‘How’s the writing?’
‘Okay, thanks,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been writing today. How was mountain?’
‘Same old. Dirty, back-breaking. You want some of this?’ He held out a thick half-smoked joint.
The Scotsman shook his head. ‘Thanks, anyway. So who was that I heard just now? The woman?’
‘Deeanna?’ he said. ‘She’s one of the Cloud Falls band. She’s a bit crazy. Comes up here sometimes, gets drunk and shoots everybody down. Greg here likes to make her mad.’
‘Don’t mean no harm by it,’ Greg, the older guy, said. ‘Nothing wrong with natives. They should be treated the same as all Canadians, that’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘Deeanna’s alright,’ Doug added.
‘Deeanna’s great, you mean,’ the girl cut in. ‘She’s smart as anything, just never had a proper chance. Fostered. Pregnant at fourteen,’ she said, aside, as if for the Scotsman’s benefit. ‘I bet she was raped.’ She took the quickly disappearing joint from Doug, and sucked deeply on it. ‘Now that’s what you should be writing. Her story, all abused women like her. And all the disappeared native women.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Yeah. It’s criminal, the number. And the authorities don’t bother.’
‘How come you know so much about it, Lydia?’ Greg asked.
‘I watch the news, Greg. So should you. But if you really want to know, I am one quarter native myself. My grandma Anna was Squamish.’
Greg didn’t reply to this right away, but his facial expression registered some surprise. Then his eyes narrowed and he turned to Doug, and said, aside to him, ‘What do you know, Lydia’s part Indian.’
Doug sat up straight. ‘If you wanna know, Greg, so am I.’
Greg seemed flummoxed. He began to speak, but no words came out. After a minute or two he stretched his arms out above his head and yawned, then stood up, saying he was going for a lie down. Doug looked tired too, and soon followed him upstairs, leaving the Scotsman with the girl, Lydia, who was smoking the end of the joint. It was the first time he’d been alone with her, without her tree-planting buddies.
‘So you making headway with your project?’ she said.
‘Some, yes.’
‘What is it about this guy that’s so interesting to you?’
‘His whole life, I suppose. But you know, the longer I’m here the more I think the story isn’t just about him. I thought I was going to write a history book, but what I’m finding out is that the story is every bit as alive today. I mean, the work he did with the local Indian tribes back then, their claim of land rights, all that, it’s every bit as relevant now.’
‘Sure, nothing much has changed. Although at least now the Canadian government recognises them and pays some kind of lip service, but in fundamental terms, like land and water, in compensation nothing much has changed. And then there’s a lot of people now, like me and Doug, who are part First Nations. We don’t all look it, but we are.’ She glanced at him, then stubbed the joint out in the overflowing ashtray.
‘How well do you know this Deeanna?’ the Scotsman asked.
‘Some. Why?’
‘She interests me. I saw a portrait she painted, over in the community centre. I’m sure it’s a copy of a photo of Jimmy Lyle’s wife, the N’laka’pamux woman he married.’ Lydia didn’t appear to understand. ‘That’s the man, you know,’ the Scotsman added, ‘I’m here to find out about. He married a First Nations woman.’
‘Ah, okay.’
‘So I wanted to talk with her. Deeanna.’
Lydia shrugged. ‘I can give you her home phone if you want.’ She pulled out her cell phone.
‘You get a signal?’ he asked, as she waited for it to start up.
She shook her head, no. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Further up the canyon I do. It’s useless down here.’ She read out a number, which he copied down on the back of Molson beermat.
‘So I should call her?’ he said, looking it over.
‘Sure. She’s great, a real woman warrior, is Deeanna. She comes down here a lot. Old Greg just doesn’t get her, thinks he’s being smart. But she could eat him up for breakfast if she wanted to.’ She yawned. ‘Listen, I’m gonna go lie down too. Give her a call if you like.’
She left with a smile to him cast over her shoulder, jolly Lydia. He waited for a bit, alone on the terrace in the shade. He wanted very much to meet this Deeanna, this woman warrior. She would probably take some time to get back home, wherever that was, so he waited for a while and then rang the number from the motel lobby payphone. It rang out and went voicemail. He thought he wouldn’t try to explain who he was in a message, he’d try again later. His nap had refreshed him and he wanted to get back to his laptop, to write some more of his Vancouver story. He worked late, didn’t really notice dusk falling. Couldn’t be bothered going out to one of the only two places in town to eat, so just got a club sandwich and coffee from Vince and wrote on, into the night.
