Keeper'n Me Read online

  ALSO BY RICHARD WAGAMESE

  For Joshua

  Dream Wheels

  COPYRIGHT © 1994 RICHARD WAGAMESE

  Anchor Canada edition 2006

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Wagamese, Richard

  Keeper ’n me / Richard Wagamese.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-67477-5

  I. Title. II. Title: Keeper and me.

  PS8595.A363K44 2006 C813′.54 C2006-901798-0

  Published in Canada by

  Anchor Canada, a division of

  Random House of Canada Limited

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  There are those who believe that the root of our aboriginal belief lies in the realm of magic and mysticism. Keeper’n Me shows that those roots are the gentler qualities of respect, honor, kindness, sharing and much, much love. These are the Indians that I have met, known and shared with …

  RICHARD WAGAMESE 1993

  To my mother, Marjorie Nabish,

  for giving me the gift of stories,

  and my brother Charles Wagamese,

  the best writer I have ever known.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  We are granted vision in this life through the territories we navigate with those we share the planet with. I’ve moved through varied geographies in this short lifetime, and along the way there have been many amazing personalities who have added to the fabric and texture of this life. This book and this story could not have been born without their influence. Saying “thank you” seems so insignificant when people have helped me realize a dream, but thanks anyway to all of these people who are in here somewhere and with me always.

  First and foremost, to the Spence family, Dave, Doreen and Kim, who gave me a haven during a very stormy time, shelter from a variety of demons and a home in which to write this book. I owe it all to you.

  To my editor at Doubleday, Jill Lambert, who came looking for a story one day and found only a writer who carried one but needed a hand getting it out. I thank you for your dedication, patience, honesty, insight and friendship.

  To all the native organizations, groups and individuals that ever sat down and talked with me through sixteen long years of communications work, I thank you for giving so openly of yourselves so that I could understand and one day bring this story to your homes and offices.

  To the elders who guided this work and have asked to remain nameless, I thank you for your encouragement, guidance, prayers and support. Without you there is no story.

  And finally, to these people, who have populated each of the territories I’ve navigated, who convinced me I had stories inside me: Morningstar Mercredi, Bill Park, Lorna Crozier, John Cuthand, Carolyn Deby, Maria Campbell, Ray Fox, Paulette Jiles, Tomson Highway, Chief Leonard George, Buffy, Tantoo Cardinal, Norval Morrisseau, Lorraine Sinclair, Helene Kakakaway, Wil Campbell, Gord Enno, Diane Meilli, Gary Fry, Karen Huggins, the Calgary Herald, Viola McLure, Marlena Dolan, Brad Braun.

  There are more, of course, many, many more, but there’s a story waiting to be told …

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Book One - Bih’Kee’-Yan, Bih’Kee’-Yan, Bih’Kee’-Yan

  Book Two - Beedahbun

  Book Three - Soo-Wanee-Quay

  Book Four - Lookin’ Jake

  About the Author

  BOOK ONE

  BIH’KEE’-YAN,

  BIH’KEE’-YAN,

  BIH’KEE’-YAN

  KEEPER: A PROLOGUE

  Get a lotta tourists this way now. Never used to be. When I was a boy this here country was still Ojibway land. Anishanabe we called ourselves. Lotsa huntin’ and trappin’, fishin’ still good in the rivers. Not like now. Everywhere there’s big expensive fishin’ and huntin’ lodges for rich Americans that don’t know the difference between a good pickerel and a bad one. Only fish for the photographs them. Us we used everythin’, every part of everythin’. They come up here year round now with their guns and rods and reels, big boats and Kodaks makin’ lotta noise, botherin’ ev’ryone.

  Okay for me, I’m an old man now. I just play dumb Indyun and they leave me alone. But it’s hard on the young ones. Kinda caught between two things them. Want the big boats, big guns, big money, same time as they want the culture. Hard to find your way sometimes in life. Me, I’m just an old man that’s been down many trails. How they say in them movies? The ones that got lotsa Mexicans bein’ Indyuns? I lived many winters? Heh, heh, heh. Guess that’s true, only me, I don’t talk so romantic anymore ’less some of them rich Americans are ready to dish out cash to hear a real Indyun talk ’bout the old days.

  Funny thing is, like I told the boy, the old days never really gone. Not for us. The outside world goes crazy all the time, findin’ new ways to do old things, forget the teachin’s their own old ones taught. But us we listen all the time. To old guys like me. Always talkin’ anyway, might as well listen, eh? Heh, heh, heh.

  What I mean is, us we always had our storytellers. The ones who come and listen to the old men and the old women when they talk. Listen hard, learn the stories, then go tell everyone same thing. That way the old days are never gone for us, see? Always got a storyteller to pass those old teachin’s down. Works good long as there’s old guys like me. And we got it good us. Young ones bringin’ us fresh fish, fresh meat, driving us here and there, doin’ all kinda work around the place, hanging around all the time. Not just rich Americans got hired help, eh? Heh, heh, heh. Nope. Us old guys had ’em beat years ago. Anishanabe got a good word no one ever argues with, Indyun or not, makes everything right and okay. We say—TRA-DISH-UNN. Heh, heh, heh. Wanna make white people believe what you tell ’em? Say its TRA-DISH-UNN. Same thing with young ones round here. You gotta do it, we say, it’s TRA-DISH-UNN. Good word that. Makes life easy.

  Don’t mind me. Been around as long as me get kinda busy in the head and talk all kindsa things at the same time. Gotta listen though—it’s TRA-DISH-UNN! Heh, heh, heh.

  Boy’s got some stories he wants to tell. Stories ’bout this reserve, this country, our people, how it feels to be a tourist. How it feels to need someone to show you the way. We all of us are tourists. All of us. That’s my theory. Us we hitchin’ and complainin’ all the time about these American tourists that invade our land regular. But there’s teachin’s in evervthin’. They come to our docks, our camps, right onto the reserve sometimes, lookin’ for a guide so they can get what they’re lookin’ for. Fish, bear, moose, anything. When they find one they’re happy and when they get what they’re lookin’ for they’re even happier still. Just like life, I say, even for us Indyuns. ’Specially the young ones. ’Specially now, in this world, in this time. That’s why I told the boy that we’re all tourists. Everyone. Same thing. Indyun or not, we’re all lookin’ for a guide to help us find our way through. It’s tough. Takes a long time sometimes and not lots of people find one either. Them that do, well, they really got something to say then.

  See, things changed too fast and us we got a diff’rent way with time. Never had no punchclocks like the whiteman uses, never had not
hin’ like time management stuff I heard about one time, nothin’ like that. Us we lived with the seasons. Always knew what needed doin’ by time of the year not time of day. Always got things done, always survived. Was like that long time here.

  But the whiteman’s been inventin’ things for a long time now. They kinda got used to the speed of their world gettin’ faster’n faster with each new invention. Got used to dealin’ with time diff’rent even though they were just like us once. Them they lost touch with the rhythm of the earth, left their drums behind long time ago, forgot their old songs, their old teachings and got lost in the speed of things. But when they got here Anishanabe still lived the old way. My father was still trappin’ the same territory been trapped by my family for a long, long time. Kinda seemed like the rest of the country got swept up in the whiteman’s progress sooner’n us. But it’s been only ’bout fifty years that things really started to change around here and maybe even lots less since the young people really started feelin’ that lost kinda feelin’. Now they gotta choose between worlds. Wanna listen to that rap dance instead of the pow-wow drum, watch the television instead of hearin’ stories, make up their own minds instead of hearin’ the teachin’s. It’s hard. Wanna be part of one world cause it’s all shiny and fast but afraid to let go of the other world that’s slower and more familiar. It’s not their fault. Us Indyuns we always like shiny things.

  Lotsa good things like school and workin’ that the whiteman brought here but still, those young ones need a guide to bring ’em where they wanna be. Always lookin’ for the sign, buyin’ diff’rent maps, goin’ here and there all the time. Got the old slidey foot. Always on the move and lookin’. Wanderin’ around all owl-eyed lookin’ for something.

  The boy knows this. He come here lookin’ around too not so long ago. Funny-lookin’ sight he was then, too. Fresh outta the city, not even really knowin’ he was an Indyun, especially not an Anishanabe. Learned lots though. But he was a real tourist that one. Coulda got lost in a bathtub then. Heh, heh, heh. But he learned and that’s why I told him to write all of this down. Be a story teller. Any damn fool can get people’s attention but it takes a storyteller to get their attention and hold it. Lots of people out there gotta know what happened, how you found your way and what it takes to be an Indyun these days. Real Indyun, not that Hollywood kind. That’s what I told him. He’s a good boy, you’ll see. Me, I’ll just come along for the ride, make sure he’s doin’ right. Besides, lotta stuff’s my story too and maybe if you listen hard, pay close attention, you’ll see that they’re your stories too. Our stories all work like that. Its TRA-DISH-UNN. Heh, heh, heh.

  You gotta drive for miles on this bumpy as hell gravel road to reach White Dog. You turn off the Trans-Canada Highway a few kilometres outside Kenora and head north. Heading towards the little railroad town of Minaki, you follow this curving little paved highway as far as the White Dog turnoff, and that’s about where you leave things like cottages, road signs, picnic tables and civilization behind. From there it’s an agonizing trip on this washboard road that’s hard as dusted steel in summer, soupy as a poor stew in autumn and slippery as the Department of Indian Affairs at funding time in winter. Calling it a road’s a stretch even by White Dog standards, but it’s the only way in here unless you care to boat it up the Winnipeg River about a hundred k. The only thing that makes the trip bearable is the country. And what country. The trees come right out to the very shoulders of the road in places and are so tall and green it’ll make you blink and just when you’re getting used to that a big silver lake’ll flash into view like a big mercury platter in the sunlight. My favorite thing is how on summer days the sun’ll throw big stretches of shadows from those trees across the road and when you drive through ’em, all shadows and light, it’s kinda like seein’ the world through a strobe light. Anyway, about halfway in there’s a huge cliff that looks like it’s about a mile high leaning out over the road. The old people used to go there to pray, and I always wondered how they ever managed to climb the thing. We climbed it once, my brother Stanley and I, and it took all morning and all the gumption we had to get up there. But once you’re up top the view is amazing. Looking away across any direction you can see miles and miles of green kinda pockmarked with drops of blue where the lakes sit. It’s like a big green carpet rolling up and down like waves as far as you can see. You miss that from the road but you can still get an idea of the size of it all when you top one of the hills.

  But the further and further you get into this country the more and more the feeling of mystery starts to surround you. Kinda like that cliff is the signpost to another world and I guess maybe this is another world. Not Another World like the soap opera my ma watches every time we hit Winnipeg, although there’s been a few episodes around here’d be good watchin’ sometime, but another world where things like time and moving and living itself are diff’rent. It’s a feeling more than anything. Nothing you can reach out and put your finger on, but if you spend any time at all up here wandering around you can feel it start to work on your bones. Pay attention and you feel it slipping through your car windows driving up here. People that live here get used to that feeling of mystery and magic but not many outside people visit White Dog unless they got business and frankly, we like it that way. Maybe it’s just the pure wild spirit of this land seeping through, I don’t know, but it sure beats the hell out anything I ever saw or felt before. Every now and again you’ll see moose way off in the marshes or bears skipping outta view in the berry patches and Keeper’n me seen a cougar one time too. Just a flash like a well-tanned deer hide through the trees and gone. No wonder Ojibways called cougars bush ghosts. They’re a part of the mystery too.

  There’s a small band of Ojibways that call White Dog home and have for a few hundred years now accordin’ to my ma. It’s home to me too now but I was gone for a long, long time, kinda lost in the outside world. Most people never hearda the Ojibway. Probably because we never raided wagon trains or got shot offa horses by John Wayne. The Ojibways’ big claim to fame is a few centuries back when we chased the Sioux outta Minnesota. Had some kinda squabble over territory and we ended up putting them to rout and chased them out onto the plains where they raided wagon trains and got shot off their horses by The Duke. Yeah, right outta the backwoods and into the movies. You’d think they’d be grateful but they’re still pissed about that. Every now and then at a pow-wow some Ojibway will tell a Sioux that the only way they can recognize them is from behind. Or they’ll be sharing deer hunting stories around a campfire one night and an Ojibway will describe a deer running through the bush faster’n the east end of a westbound Sioux. It’s all in fun and nobody gets offended but them Sioux take a lotta pride in their warrior tradition and they don’t talk too much about their bush days anymore. Nobody ever hearda that tussle on accounta it all happened before the whiteman got here. Funny thing about them white historians is they always figure North American history started when Columbus landed here. Us we know better. The Ojibway people have been bush Indians forever and kinda settled into northern Ontario long before Columbus even hearda Columbus.

  Sociologists call us hunting and gathering Indians. Or else northern woodlands people or something like that. Us we just call ourselves Anishanabe. Means the good people in Ojibway. Most of our history’s about fishing, hunting and trapping on accounta that’s what we do. Or at least that’s what we did before “the settlement of North America” as the books say. Nowadays there’s still a lotta that happening but no one’s making a living off it anymore. Most of the time there’s just welfare. Every once in a while the government will surprise the hell outta everyone and give us work cutting scrub timber or something. A few jobs are created by the band council once in a while too and the American tourists fly in to hire guides, but it’s mostly a poor reserve with not lots to do for people used to the fast pace of the outside world. Took me a long time to get used to walking down to the dock behind my ma’s place on winter mornings, chopping a hole in
the ice and hauling up the day’s water in a five-gallon lard pail. Or even hanging my wool socks up to dry on the pipes of the pot-bellied stove that heats the place or worse yet, making the forty-yard dash to the outhouse through the pourin’ rain. Things like that are just facts of life around here and you get used to it and pretty soon you discover that you’d really rather live like this anyway. Ma says she’s seen too many families get split apart by the “electircal invasion” as she puts it. It’s true. I’ve been here five years and I learned more about things than I woulda if we had electricity and TV. You get to know each other pretty good when all you got is each other for entertainment. Guess that’s the strongest point about this reserve and the people here. Even though we’re poor we still got spirit and heart and we look out for each other. Lotsa other places can’t say that.

  My name’s Garnet Raven. The Raven family’s been a fixture on the White Dog Reserve ever since they signed Treaty Three across the northern part of Ontario in the 1870s. Raven’s also the name of one of our people’s messengers in the animal world, so I guess old Keeper telling me I was supposed to be some kind of a storyteller’s gotta make some sense. I don’t know. But ever since I’ve been here I’ve been listening to what that old guy’s been telling me and pretty much trying to do what he says and it’s all worked out fine. So who am I to argue?

  I live here with my ma. We’ve got a small cabin on the west end of the townsite. This reserve’s built on the shore of White Dog Lake and it’s the kind of rocky, bushy territory you’d expect. So the houses are all spread apart and built on top of rocky little hills. They’re not houses like city folk are used to. They’re just small one-story jobbies with maybe four rooms that all empty into the main room where the stove is. Not much insulation, and some of the poorer people here still use clear plastic instead of glass on their windows. The townsite’s called that on accounta the band office, school, medical building, store and garage are all clustered around the only clear, flat place around. There’s about half a dozen houses down there where the only electricity and telephones are. That’s where the chief and a few band councillors live along with the white teachers from the school and Doc Tacknyk and Mrs. Tacknyk, our Ukrainian medical team. There’s a ball diamond that doubles as the pow-wow grounds four days every summer, a boarded hockey rink with a couple of rickety light poles, and a small aluminum trailer where the Ontario Provincial Police sit drinking coffee the few times they get out this way. Ma’s cabin sits above the end of the dirt track that serves as the main drag out here. Beyond us is just bush trails leading to other houses deeper in the woods near Shotgun Bay.