Some times a book just gets you...

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS - IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK OR ARE IN PROCESS...WAIT UNTIL LATER TO READ THIS!   :) 

I haven't written about a book for a while.

This one hit me, head on, at the right time.  It is one of those novels - the teachings arrive when you need it most.  I needed the teachings in this novel.

Thank you, Tommy Orange for sharing your gifts with the world.

I wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago and have just gotten around to sharing it.

Enjoy.

Oh, and go buy There, There and read it - especially if you are Indigenous.  There are deep teachings There.

I finished the blog post Oct 1), posted it, and then I couldn’t sleep.

I had many dreams last night about accessing deep, firey centres – about the places being ready but I couldn’t quite get to the entry points.  I dreamed someone was trying to take Dante from a camper I left open and unattended for a few seconds.  I even cried out in my dream and woke up Dal.  I scared the person away I think but I am sure I saw the person with my baby in his hands.

I had lines come to me like:

“My grief grabbed me by the throat.”

and “Our Ancestors are YouTube now” from my infection (the first line) and thinking about There, There where Orvil teaches himself how to powwow dance by watching YouTube. I thought about how that is the “Urban and Native” reality because our elders are missing, in a traditional sense, and haven’t been given the traditional knowledge because residential schools, and other colonial interferences, and I started to feel so sad that we have to research and teach ourselves if we want to connect to our cultures because there are so few elders left. [Side note:  I have re-read the intro and some of the interludes and Orange makes a very good case for this way of gaining knowledge.  He suggests that as modern people, we are no less Indian because we are in cities because cities are still on the land – still part of the Earth – which is still connected to All Our Relations.  He suggests that we are still “traditional” even if our knowledge acquisition methods are modern.]

Then I became afraid.  How do we know what is “right”?

I realise that this grief, that has grabbed me by the throat, was not just for my bio-Mother – it is for my culture.  The loss felt by all I don’t know – haven’t learned because of the shame wall built and the disconnection from what my Spirit knows to be true:  “We are the memories we don't remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us.” (p. 10)  Orange does such a great job of bringing up these pains and questions in his novel…this medicine story for modern Indigenous people in North America…I want to say modern, Urban Indians but I hear Leanne Simpson in Islands of Decolonial Love in the piece lost in a world where he was always the only one: “ i cringed everytime he said ‘indian.’” (p. 56) and I would die if I’d upset her.

But that’s what it is – a medicine story for modern, urban Indians who don’t know how they – we – are.  A medicine story with transformers: traditional (Orvil and Opal with their spider leg legs) and modern (Tony and his Optimus Prime reference) trying to make sense of the responsibility of that role, chosen and not.

Getting gunned down at a powwow by one of our own – intercultural violence when trying to step into – to realise – self-actualise that longing to connect to the deepest parts of who we are:

-dancing as prayer

-drumming as prayer

-singing as prayer

Gunning us down as we learn – as we teach ourselves – how to pray is so fucking tragic!  It’s like we destroy ourselves from the inside because we can’t seem to agree on what to save or honour.

Even the thieves turn on each other – so we even tear ourselves apart to tear each other apart. 

One of the best weapons of colonialism.  We mimic the methods of our oppressors.

The guns were made on a fucking printer! They are not even “real” guns! – Like the Escheresque argument/discussion of who is the “real Indian” in the novel from Opal with her long name and her experiences at Alcatraz during the AIM occupancy in the early 70s, to Tony opening the novel talking about living with FASD – The Drome – to Jaquie Redfeather, the teen mom created out of rape at Alcatraz, the daughter she gave up, the boys her sister Opal raised, and the daughter who suicided as an addict on the streets. 

The stories of domestic violence, alcohol, and the many, many recoveries…realities for urban, non-urban, full blood, mixed blood people.  Dene Oxendene, in an interview with Calvin, says “…I just don’t know about this blood shit,” (p. 150) and it makes me cry…like when Edwin Black finally finds out what his “tribe” is after he finds out who his father is:

For how many years had I been dying to find out what the other half of me was?  How many tribes when asked in the mean time?  I’d gotten through four years as a Native American Studies major.  Dissecting tribal histories, looking for signs, something that might resemble me, something that felt familiar.  I’d made it through two years of grad school, studying comparative literature with an emphasis on Native American literature.  I wrote my thesis on modern Native identity, and the literature written by mixed blood Native authors that influenced identity in Native cultures.  All without knowing my tribe.  Always defending myself.  Like I’m not Native enough.  I’m as Native as Obama is black.  It’s different though.  For Natives. I know.  I don’t know how to be.  Every possible way I think that it might look for me to say I’m Native seems wrong. (pp. 71 and 72)

        Those words hit me so hard, I had to put the book down for a while.  In combination with the teachings from As We Have Always Done, by Leanne Betasamosa
ke Simpson, I was moved to write this poem:

mosaics

It’s like being half person –

but the other half of me isn’t missing;

just hovering.

It’s not even half

    but fragments –

mosaic pieces in drumbeats

    mortared by smoke and prayers;

and hidden under

            silos

            barns

            and tractor treads

leading, on asphalt,

            to concrete

            glass

            and steel fingers

pointing to the skies we are choking

with unholy smoke empty of prayers –

even for forgiveness.

Knitting whispers into DNA

through fragments tiny as beads;

call me

            all of me

to the centre where prayers are made.

So I go.

And I rest awhile

            to hear my grandmothers’ voice[s]

Sometimes she speaks

Sometimes she sings

Sometimes she dances on silent feet

to the music of my heartbeat

echoing hers

echoing hers

echoing hers

echoing ours as far back as the hills remember

            or the grass

            or the velvet on elk’s horns.

It’s all in me –

the keeper of the land –

and the taker:

            sometimes at the same

awkward

dinner talk on warm August evenings.

It’s all there –

            the dust in my veins

and the drum in my breath:

sometimes confidently

other times

tentative to move toward the vision teachings

without the science of genetics…

but I know better,

I’ve been told better;

so dreams speak louder than molecules…

most of the time.

R. L. Elke

Oct 14/1

           

            We are killing each other with weapons we create through mechanisms we obtain from “out there” – the dark web – where Daniel found the 3D printer.  We are killing ourselves with fake weapons for fake money to pay debts that don’t belong to us.  It seems that when the modern world collides head on with our traditional world, people die.   Colonialism buries us one way or another:  either through the attempted removal of our culture or in suffocating doubt about our own identities.  It has stolen our children, kidnapped our elders.  It has forced us to learn how do powwow dancing by watching YouTube.

The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed.  An unattended wound gets infected.  Becomes a new kind of wound like the history of what actually happened became a new kind of history.  All these stories that we haven’t been telling all this time, that we haven’t been listening to, are just part of what we need to heal. Not that we’re broken.  And don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient.  To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived, is no badge of honour.  Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient? p. 137

         Maybe we don't call it resilient.

        But we are still here.
     
     

The Haircut

There have been too many messages to not do this today.  Too many messages today to not do this. 

So I will.

I have been, very slowly, recovering from a strep infection in my throat…living in strange fever dreams and visions calling me to speak – sometimes for myself – sometimes for others but always for truth, however disjointed, opaque, or strangely presented.

I knew today would be strange…had a feeling today would be strange.  It’s my mom’s birthday; the first one after her passing in March.  My dreams and visions, in and out of fever, have been manifesting themselves in many ways in the past few days…dreams from weeks, months, and even years ago are walking around me in various forms:  teachings in the books of my favorite writers, lessons in my course work, and today on CBC as Adam Cohen spoke of his father’s upcoming poetry collection and the great love he has for his father.

That was the straw…the call to action so loud and clear, she could have been sitting beside me telling me to write this: my mom.  A month after Cohen passed to Spirit, I dreamed I sat with him in a broken down conservatory.  I was, for some reason only dream can know, his sound person and, as in this waking world, I have no earthly idea how to run sound equipment.  In the dream the power went out or was out and the only person to be heard singing Song of Bernadette was me.  Mr. Cohen walked down the three steps from the stage to come and sit across from me, where the sound equipment was, leaned into me and chuckled, “hey, why don’t you take that song?  You sing it better than I ever could.”  In my dream I remember saying: Holy shit! Leonard Cohen just gave me Song of Bernadette!  I remember, very clearly, understanding, even before waking, what that meant. 

I shared that dream with my mom.

I knew the second I heard Cohen’s name mentioned that every word was for me – every word was from both of them to me.  I knew that whatever came out of this, I had to write this post.  In case there was any doubt, the whole interview ended with I Came So Far For Beauty when Adam was asked what his favorite song of his father’s was.  I have sung that song in a performance evening attended by my parents when my 26 year old was a baby.

She was, as always, speaking in a way I was forced to heed – eventually.

And I put it off as long as possible because, honestly, I am not really sure how to write it.

I could side track the task with the stories of the dreams I have had recently where I am dancing with one of my students – a hoop dancer – who, in the dream taught me to dance while my mother stood and watched, smiling.  That morning I woke up crying. In the dream I had said how much I missed her, as she faded into the place between awake and dream time. 

Today one of the teachings in my course work was hoop dance teachings.  No kidding!  Yeah.  She’s here.

So, I guess, this is it:

My hair.

Some people who read this have seen me around recently.  They have noticed a dramatic change in my choice of hair style:  my hair has been cut off.  It has been a difficult process to get there – one I didn’t really want to go through.  I, truthfully, would have rather left my hair long, feminine, pretty. 

I knew I couldn’t do that.

Many peoples have many, various, beautiful teachings about hair and the sacredness of how best to keep, handle, and revere it.  Indigenous people have long traditions about the sacredness and medicine of hair.  They are as unique as the various families, nations, and communities.  For some people, some who wear braids, sometimes the teaching is that one braid, traditionally was for the mother medicine and teachings and one was for father medicine and teachings.  For others, for many, hair is the connection to Mother Earth – the tendrils connecting us to Her – and all she gives us in all of the levels and ways of being.  It connects us to prayers, to love, to our Ancestors, to all of our teachings we have gathered through our journey – especially from our elders…those who help to create us as we are…as we have become.

For me, in that regard, my hair grew most during the period of time my mother was sick – the time when I journeyed to her; when we found a peace…when I found a peace.  We talked about our lives, how we became so far apart…how I was forced to either hold old grudges until I ran out of time to drop them or decide what was worth holding against a dying woman to make me feel vindicated for the years I had to withdraw to save myself.  In the end, in the days before the never ending drip of synthetic pain medication and saline and serrated sponges for her chemo wounded mouth, we spoke of our choices and she said and did absolutely everything I had hoped she would…everything I didn’t think she would because she never seemed to understand what my deal was – so I thought. She talked about why she drank.  She talked about all I had been through.  She talked about family pain she had carried, too, forever and chose not to burden my sister and I with so we could have a good life.

 

It was that once in a life time talk.  It had to be.  It was.

After that, I returned one more time for two weeks, through the Yule season, spending Christmas with my family, for the first time in over 20 years, in hospice.  I slept on a blow up cot beside her hospital bed, praying to her every night that it would be ok if she wanted to go.  She was struggling with pain meds and her stomach.  We weren’t sure how long we had with her. 

The docs sorted out the meds.  She rebounded and made it to early March.

I texted every day or nearly every day.  I had my friend and stylist re-coloured my roots, re-coloured the flamingo pink streaks. I kept in constant contact and I prayed and my hair grew.  So that by late February, when I talked to her for the last time, my hair had grown a couple of inches longer.  I told her about the drum I was making.  She was so excited.  Before we hung up she told me she loved me and started to cry…said she always loved me…we cried together. 

Not long after that, I dreamed she was at a gallery opening for Kendra but it was like the old, dusty barns near Chilliwack…the place called Gammy and Grumpas (or something like that) where there are all kinds of old treasures.  She was the first in line to come in but she was on the other side of the line.  She had a walker for some reason and she looked much better than she had the last time I had seen her.  I found her accidentally, as I was trying to avoid running into people I had seen in a different part of the “gallery.”  I immediately went to her and asked her if she wanted to come in.  She told me that she was where she needed to be.  Somehow I knew she came to say goodbye to me.  I remember, very vividly, putting my hands on the bar of the walker and leaning my head into hers.  We stood there, forehead to forehead for a long time.  I woke up with a start – an energy passing over me with a chill – and I was convinced she was about to pass.

It would be another few weeks before that would happen.

Still my hair grew.

I prayed and my hair grew.

After she passed into Spirit on March 5, life kept going.  March 18 was her celebration of life, late snow fluttering onto the golf course where the gathering was held…keeping many family members from the event.  Some of our Saskatchewan family were snowed in. We barely made it through a clearing in that late snow pattern we had in March.

Life kept moving.  Poetry readings happened.  Presentations happened.  Graduations, birthdays, visits from dad, alone, happened.

Winter changed to spring changed to summer.

All in my hair.

I decided, pretty much by the end of May, that I was going to go back to Saskatchewan to piece myself back together with my mother.  That has been documented here, too.

All of that trip grew into the grey roots and the faded pink.  I had to get that trip into that hair before I cut it.  That was the last piece I needed to connect this teaching…so I thought.

When I came home in early August, I fought with myself about it.  I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to have to deal with the vanity issues I knew would follow…the hatred of my face…the struggle with my gender fluidity. All of it.  I didn’t want to add that to all of the other changes in my life.  But I knew I had to.  It was the only thing that made sense.

So I did it.  My dear stylist friend is a Sto:lo woman.  We did ceremony before the cut.  It all was done with good heart. I had held onto the hair a little too long after but have since received good teachings around how to deal with the ceremony of the after and have taken care of that now. 

All that’s to do now is to grow it back.  New life stages, new growth, new hair.  Only thing is that it’s a constant reminder of the loss.  I am sure that is another of the deep teachings of this ceremony.  Learning from those who have gone before me to remember to have a grateful heart for the good teachings she left me with…which brings be back to the beginning of this piece, of today – like the hoop – at the end of the interview with Adam Cohen, I found myself asking out loud:  “what was her legacy for me?”  I would have to say the granite uprightness and the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other when everything in you keeps screaming to just collapse.  My Granny, her mother, had that, too.  Granite strength from intergenerational trauma so far back the Mormons are the only ones who could find the end of it.  Could be worse, I guess.

Days of long hair - summer trip with dad.

So, if you happen upon me at a thing now and then, and you see the change, you know the story now.  I’m not loving it but it’s a process.  And it will grow back. Thicker and healthier.  It always does.