This is the story of my intense stint working in the A+W and President's Choice burger factory. It was mind numbing (I'll often describe it this way) and boring -- but may have taught me more than anything else ever has about how the world really works. A blessing and a curse. Enjoy the life of a patty slave by proxy...
I've got ink on my hands, we wear different coloured hardhats-- There's flowing and whirring along every which way. Conveyor belts and mechanical contraptions punch out windows in walls, Never altering their rhythm, or slowing their pace.
Logic shot down because someone else is in charge. They steal little chunks of time, so we'll soon learn their way. And no one really talks and no one really smiles, So sometimes I'm forced to whip burgers around...
Just the march of the worker, light industrial.
This shit is serious. One day engineers will rule the world. Until they lose control. I go to work in a burger factory day after day to stand in my place and get worked by machines. Lines break down. You wait. They speed up. You follow. And I become mezmerized. As I watch them lure me in with cheep words and dangling trinkets I know I'll never receive. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who can see what's happening. But I do it because I must. And I do it for the experience. I do it so I will know. And by the end I've found out. And it ain't pretty. If you're not careful it will sweep you off your feet and never let you go. Through the whole ordeal the movie Koyaanisqatsi resides constantly in my mind, its famous song plays on and on in my head.
We have meetings, lots of meetings -- old food safety proceedure movies mostly -- right when I start out. I was pretty stoked to work at the only place in Canada that produces A&W burgers. And I've personally grilled President's Choice burgers in past summers as part of my lifestyle, so I was totally interested to see the primary "production" portion of the supply and demand burger cycle. A lot of people would freak out working around meet -- but I've never been a vegetarian. And a lot of people would expect a fast food giant's burgers aren't really made out of quality beef. And I was once one of them. Once. But there were no hidden curtains or magic "spices" so far as I know -- and no that doesn't bum me out either. I mean, so long as you are okay with the fact that humans are humans and some mistakes will happen (i.e. lugnuts found in burger packages every now and again), and especially if you are down with the whole hormone-injection kick society in currently working with these days (beefing up our beef from the get-go on the ranch), you should be okay eathing A&W. Myself, I will walk away and never forget the blue-collar drive of daily factory work -- respecting the worker, light industrial, for all that I can. And having been subjected to "the grind" of the cycle, I walk away, knowing shit many never will...
Koyaanisqatsi -- Life Out of Balance
[Movie shows clips of our human species interacting in giant flows of production and communication with our environment. This particular portion of the film includes shots of hot dog manufacturing. Many of my fellow employees had just been laid off from the hot dog factory across town.]
For me, the most soothing moments at work come when I just space right out, and I push my earphones in real far, so it cuts off all the choppy poundy noises of clanking machines and falling pallets, but not far enough so I only get bass throbbing -- instead that happy medium where I hear the perfect rush of streaming sound. It usually only works when I'm working at the back of either Line 1 or 2 -- "palletizing" (stamping boxes and putting stickers on them before stacking them as neatly as possible at a sometimes-frenzied pace on a pallet), gluegunning, master-packing or doing that one job where I just have to stand there and make sure the burger-boxing machine (they had a fancy name for it I didn't understand and might get in shit if I divulge this info) didn't get jammed. And this technique I use usually only works when I don't sleep much the night before. But sometimes, in a sort of delusion, the whole airplane-hangar-sized production facility (which reminded me of that videogame Portal, or from that one area "the Facility" in Goldeneye for 64) would turn into a giant jungle of vines and leafy trees and tree trunks that just went on forever. Tubes run up and down like branches (carrying water, soap, and liquid nitrogen), support ladders cut through the open air vertically about a story and a half up, conveyerbelts snake their way through walls and diagonally across the airspace, and metal rods stretch out every which way. It's hard to figure out quite what everything's for sometimes. If you had to get a new meat "rework" bin you would disappear for a bit into the wafting mists from the freezing machines and duck under falling meat next to the grinder -- the way you would have to slip beneath fallen logs and slither through foggy wood. I manage to manipulate the spectrum of sound entering my ear to just the frequency so that all the noises all around me sound like fresh running water. The indistinguishable rush of rainfall. The rushing streams. The exploding water droplets.
Or I spend another minute or so trying to jam in the earplugs as far as I possibly can -- to just get those nice deep billowing bass ripples and nothing else -- and it feels like I am trudging along the ocean floor underwater. Everything moves in slow motion. I manage to rearrange time. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. Tape machine breaks. Fix it. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. And so on. I notice little peices of machinery that "drift" through their own life-cycle at the same speed and time as I -- humming along, doing some stupid fucking job, and trying to just vibe out... if possible. The machines break down all the time, though. We look up to the ceiling and it's way the fuck up there. And us, we're stuck here on the bottom, amongst rotting burgers and silly sharp objects you can easily trip on, feeding off the menial tasks we're tossed like crumbs, in order to feed our families, keep us pacified and even maybe even half interested.
Being in a cold hard factory, wearing a white lab-type coat, I realize I am about as far removed from these imagination lands as I could ever get -- but I make myself believe I am already there in these wonderlands. This is the only way to survive a burger factory.
I'm snapped backto reality [...yes I do sometimes feel like Marshall Mathers in 8 Mile -- minus the hot female in the picture] finally by some random yelling from five to ten meters away. WHAT??? I yell and whip around. With all the noise and everyone wearing earplugs, it's almost impossible to even hear what the guy next to you is saying. BREAK!! One of the blue hats (supervisors) smiles, about to start their stopwatch to time our break to the second. Sometimes I still can't hear what they've said, but they always make a motion as if they are drinking something quickly. That's how language works when language itself is impossible. Break is, no question, the best time of the day. And I go sit outside, sit in one of the farthest benches, and stare off into the south west -- just wishing, hoping, praying one day I will make it there. This image -- looking past the "Pack-Rat Storage" and "NOW HIRING $30 / h TECHNICIAN" signs, into the light posts of the industrial park and further on into the barren prairie landscape -- sometimes into the sunset, sometimes into the bright blue, and often into the pitch darkness -- this is picture will be imprinted into my brain FOREVER. A visual representation of ultimate longing.
Since I have two jobs, some days I go for 13 - 16 hours of work straight on 3 hours of sleep. Yah it's nuts. Sometimes I bike home along winding roads alongside desolate farm industrial buildings, passing the odd semi-truck driver every now and again, taking crash-out breaks to munch on sugar packets from work or just chill in the dirt allyways behind a lumber yard or giant production plant, basking in the wafting fragrance of slaughtered and "reduced" animals. I come to really enjoy these bike rides home. Compared with the city or the chaos of the factory, this place is so simple. There's no one to bother you. You just feel free like the prairie grasses. Sometimes I get home with just enough time to pass out naked on my bed and then go to work right away again as soon as I get up, depending on my schedules.
Sometimes I don't even have enough time to put on deoderant, I must admit, which isn't really that big of a deal since, for one, any sort of perfume you wear at all might get into the burgers, and two, when you're working with dudes that have done multiple stints in jail or rehab and such, you really lose that peer pressure desire to impress. I mean, there are seriously only a couple chill dudes that work there -- and they probably never wanted to work there either. Cheryl's super chill and Izi moved up here from Toronto to escape the gang violence his bro got him all tangled up in, so we could connect a bit (he even gave me a ride to town one day, and hung down at the nightclub I was working at too). But I mean, there were just so many knobs I've worked with. There were these really fucking weird Pakistani kids that work there. I don't know what it is about them, but they just pissed me off so much. I guess mostly it had to do with the fact that I saw them as basically the brownnosers of the workplace -- you know, the guys that suck up to the boss and show up early every day, but then just stand and do nothing as soon as the supervisor is out of sight. The one guy always looks at me real funny and stands too close to me. And so I'll recoil from him the way I would tear away from a wet dog. He has all these pimples and I thought he might just be going through puberty -- but it turns out he's like 25 or something. And then I just started feeling bad for him and his buddies -- they spent all week working making A&W burgers and didn't hang out or anything (at least I can chill out a bit in my limited spare time) and then they work not one, but TWO other jobs on the weekend -- one of them is at an actual A&W restaurant near their home. But one day I caught a glimpse of a look in their eyes that was the most depressing thing of all -- it was the way a younger brother might look up to an older brother. It bothers me I noticed that because the Burger Factory is pretty much the worst job I've ever had in my life. Anyone looking up to me at this point is making a huge mistake. But anyways, working in a place like this for extensive periods of time doesn't exactly encourage me to step up my "A-Game".
But I really like working with the Chinese guys. They seem strong, skilled and highly motivated -- truly happy to be here. It makes me somehow feel more connected to reality than when I'm working at the nightclub. Instead of facilitating the service of similar-tasting beverages that lodge their place in the hearts and minds of the priviledged consumers through massive marketing dollars and dumb chicks with tits, I'm doing the real shit that puts fuel in the bellies of millions, alongside the exact people who know how to do it best: China's finest. Sometimes I feel like, fuck bilingualism in Canada -- you know, that bullshit about reducing racism through forced French lessons. If we were serious about promoting fairness and equality or whatever-the-hell through language, we would all have to learn either Mandarin or Cantonese. For serious. I mean compare the number of French speakers in the world to Chinese speakers. That's your breakdown. But ya -- I don't think I would have survived if it weren't for the Chinese.
Sometimes I imagine these 30 and 40 year old ladies I'm working alongside could be my mother, too eh. And, even though they don't understand a single word I'm saying (because they're Eastern European or Chinese or just aren't that bright or have their earplugs in real tight), I still joke with them and have as much fun as possible with them. You'd be surprised how much something like that can improve your day. Johnson Wang (yeah -- that was seriously his name... but "unfortunately" he wasn't a dick... think about it...) gave me an inner glimpse of the game plan he and his wife shared -- ditch their teaching and journalism jobs back in China for the sake of their kids. Zen worked in a radar factory back in China, and he stood strong like a general. And then there was that one dude whose name I could never pronounce, but he reminded me of the monkey king character from that recent Jackie Chan movie. Instead of just eating snacks from the vending machine or sipping drinks from the coffee machine, sometimes one of the Chinese dudes would offer me lychee tea or green tea loaf or some other type of bun or something. It was always way better than my sandwich lunch, so I was always stoked to hit them up for shit. And I would just relax, for once, kick back and let the unintelligible sounds wash over me.
Blood like this could be from fist-sized clots
I mean these guys have already been on the receiving end of the international trade cycle (good or bad... feel free to weigh in...). So to me I really feel like I've been given a gift to be able to work with them, to learn as much as I possibly can from them. And the thing is -- and check this shit -- they're the only ones really willing to teach -- and that includes supervisors. Fuck, I mean, Hong used to work in a radar factory. Those two girls that were cousins but looked like twins (and even wore the exact same clothing, right down to identical workboots) were telling me about the giant residential factories the North Chinese hit up in the South of the country by Hong Kong to get big cash pretty quick for their families back home. To learn how to do factory work, don't waste your time on the authorities, because they have no interest in training you. Look to the guys who really know what's up.
I don't get much of a chance to hear much about what life is like back in the T-dot, though -- for one, none of my buddies are really loaded, and airtime is expensive, not to mention long distance charges -- and also, I'm always so busy planning for what I will end up doing and sneaking sleep in when I can, that I don't get a chance to try to send out emails much either. I got super stoked though one day when I called Pierre and he told me he met Jack White. Maybe he was lying, but it still was enough to motivate me. When your daily life becomes so banal and meaningless (burger burger burger...) it's nice to know your bud's having a chill time doing rad shit.
Because sometimes soundwaves do escape and travel long distance. Hearing about my buddies scaling and jumping a 12-foot fence to break into a building somewhere there along Bathurst down in the depths of Canada's largest city, to set up all nice and play what I know was the sweetest most refined agro-singer-songwriter-indie-ballads ever crafted -- and then leave without a trace -- well that would stoke anyone out. Props to Ai for hitting up the scene. Infiltration foreva baby!
See, summer is in full force there and I am missing it. If I were there right now, I know I would be listening to the swankiest oldskool dance and hiphop. But instead I keep my eyes on the prize -- working towards those waves I know are rolling in.
I'll just have to keep hitting up the burger scene -- helping create the most popular and certified tastiest burgers in the land.
Stretching
"Well, let's grab my hard hat, and we'll gather in a circle with smocks, hairnets and beardnets on to do all our stretches before sticking our hands in the automatic handwash machines, putting on our cotton gloves, dipping our steel-toed boots in cleaning solution, sticking in earplugs, and rushing off into the cooler down the hallway of giant endless lights, to find out what jobs we'll be doing today.... 9 hours and counting..."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Songs for the Workforce:
The Chemical Brothers - "Believe"
"Galvanize (Push the Button)"
Thursday - "For the Workforce Drowning"
"Autobiography of a Nation"
Boards of Canada - "Everything You Do Is a Baloon"
It was a close call. But now I'm finally in a safe place. Swimming in REAL turquoise waves.
Sometimes you must escape from an "island of prisons". And I must thank all of my friends who have helped me out whether they know it or not. You just might have saved my life...
I realize now that I must take my own advice. It is indeed a fine balance. But sometimes "something BIG needs to happen. Because 'fundamental changes' means everything shifts." But this means be smart. It doesn't mean it's over... You kill off that prickling negativity -- the seeping black oil that corrupts the mind and soul, but stand up strong like the carefree blossoming flower. Yeh -- don't ever let them tell you it's over.
Saskatchewan is just being overrun by oil interests and they don't really even know it yet. And the good hardworking farm town of Saskatoon isn't quite ready to be a star on the map. At its corer it is still a hard-working farming community. The whole northern portion of the city caters to it. Remember, 80 per cent of the men don't own a proper pair of dress pants, as one club owner wanted me to keep in mind. The locals just hate the foreign yuppies that are buying up all the million-dollar housing, putting average homes out of reach of average people. And it's very hard to get an event up and running if you don't have your country music in place.
And yet potash mines are planned. A lady with connections tipped me off to another one yet that's going to go forward. Cameco has big billboards set up, to convince the labour market that their uranium mines are the answer. Don't forget, they've assembled worldwide talent to tap what's there beneath the ground. And OIL... well, it's only the beginning. There's more oil to be had in Saskatchewan than in Alberta -- and they haven't even discovered most of it yet. As one of my rides said, as we headed south -- looking out over the rise and fall of the valley: "Wow, last time I was here there weren't any oil wells." And now across the misty green hillside stood stark black donkeys, consistently pumping like the diligent machines they are. Working as efficiently as possible -- because this is their nature, so the guy at the top can increase his stability. There were probably about 30 now. And the tar sands are still on the way...
Oh ya, this is a very dry place. A place creative minds can get sucked up in all too easily.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Currently the future of this blog is in jeopardy... I'm not sure where I will go from here (and yes I mean that literally) -- though I have some really cool ideas...
But what I do now know is this: despite the incredible sadness my experiences have left me with... THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING!
I only had one way out. A business card with a map on it in my wallet: I swim naked in the stream, run up and down the hills, and burn away all the creeping insidiousness. Caught in the arms of the strongest defenses. Family farmer. The guy knows how to fix things.
It is here I see the most amazing sight: a small little cactus with a bright yellow flower poking its head out of the needles in the evening's dying rays. It is small and insignificant. Really it is nothing. But then again, it is the most stunning singular image that I see for acres and acres in all directions. Given the climate and terrain I think, I've never seen anything quite like this.
"We know a place where no planes go We know a place where no ships go ... (Hey!) Us kids know (Hey!) No cars go"
After everything that's gone down between us -- confusing, disastrous, amazing, and considering my departure is so fast approaching, I figured Lewis and I had to do one more thing together before we head our separate ways. We've just been through so much eh? We've both been working our asses off, on opposite schedules -- and you know how hard that can be. But we decided Canada Day was the one.
So we loaded up on supplies at the supermarket, packed up back packs (just the way we had done -- so speedy and hype-excited -- in Ecuador), and loaded up on fifty bucks worth of beer. Our plan was to spend the rest of the day at Bareass Beach. Only we had no clue how to get there.
Now out in these parts Bareass Beach is somewhat of a legendary place. Clothing optional and tranquil, this riverside paradise is known to everyone but accessible by none. What I mean by that is, everyone we talked to said they'd been there -- and even raved about it -- but no one really seemed to know where it was or have any clue how to get there. Shit. At first we thought it was walking distance.
So we met up with Marek, our urban artz rap stylist with the giant 'fro, and wandered up and down Broadway in the sweltering heat with all our gear. In the alley behind one of the shops, we found a small fold-up chair. Totally functional. What are the odds eh? We talked to everyone and everything that moved. And some people gave pretty detailed "directions" too. And we would get all excited, until the next person would give equally detailed "directions" heading the exact opposite way. We heard a whole lot about Valley Road, crossing through farmers fields, dirt roads, and some big red barn. As we were finding no real leads we would toy with the option of just giving up our quest and sticking in town for the community-sanctioned fireworks. I mean, we didn't even have a way out there. And Marek would say things like: "Yo bro. Like what's even the chance that there'll be people there at the beach n' shit once you show up. Y'no' what I mean? [insert a wry and zesty smile here] I'm not feelin' this yo." We called a cab, and when it showed up they guy told us we were looking at spending a cool sixty or seventy bucks. So what we ended up doing instead was just stopping every couple blocks or so, sometimes opening the folding chair and drinking beers -- because all chill urban kids know how to make the city their beach.
Eventually after another beer, and sensing our lust for adventure, Marek decided he was just gonna make the night an early one and guarantee the catching of many "Z's". So he split.
And with little time remaining and dreams slowly dying (you have to understand too that for Lewis to keep his job, he actually had to be at work the next day at 10 a.m. -- giving us very little to work with) I just hit surfer mode. We were going to find this fucking beach and then we were going to get there. No two ways about it. Pouncing on the internet, I cross-referenced sources, played around with search terms, and poured over satellite images of the Saskatchewan river. In the end I was able to narrow down our course to two different possible routes.
We didn't really have any clue at all how we were going to make it there. But I brought along my hitchhiking "kit" (one sleek cardboard box with large, unadulterated surfaces and a shitload of coloured permanent markers). A lot of people didn't believe us, but I knew there was a market we could hit to ride the wave of cars all the way town to Bareass.
In the end we caught a ride with Caleb out towards the west end, since he was on his way to the bar. We told the long-haired cab driver our plan and he seemed intrigued. He didn't know where Bareass Beach was either -- although he agreed it was the place to be. Since he was just at the end of his shift he agreed to drive us right out to the edge of town, since we had come so far already. "That would be something if you could find out where it actually was," he said, obviously thinking of the money he could make if he could find a way to tap that niche -- $70 bucks ain't bad you know. But he had already gone on an exploratory mission with a passenger once. They returned from their wild goose chase empty handed.
As we pulled into a lonely fill station surrounded by farmers fields, leafy trees and highway, Lewis said, "I'm not sure why, but I have this feeling like I've hitched out of here before." Well, as I knew, this was because he most likely HAD hiked it out of this exact gas station before. He's like that. But I wasn't feeling it. Not enough traffic. Just too much uncertainty.
"Wow, there's like no one here," I said, concerned. "I dunno.... But I guess this is THE SPOT."
He nodded. It was the only gas station around.
"Hmm," I said, even more concerned. If we didn't get "out" then I was looking at one expensive and depressing cab-ride back. It was ALL or NOTHING now. We chose ALL.
"Too bad you don't wanna give us a ride down there..." I looked at the cabbie to gauge his reaction. We gathered our stuff, preparing to exit. He was interested, but not about to waste a bunch of time and gas on some kids that probably didn't have a ton of cash anyways. It had been a long day.
"I don't know if you're into it or not, but I mean, I could give you 35 bucks if you took us all the way there." It was a 40 or 45 dollar fare still from where we were. He wasn't biting.
"I mean, I know my directions aren't great or anything, but I've got a pretty good sense of the geography from maps and that...but I mean, you know, we want to get down there real bad so maybe there'll be someone that comes through here headed there. That's probably the best option, eh?" By this point I had given up and was thinking of some crafty little saying we could write on our sign ("Beer. Weiners. Bare. Beach." or "Show Us Bare Ass") to catch a helpful motorist's attention and prove we weren't insane.
"You have directions???" he whipped around.
"Yep."
"Thirty five. Let's do this."
********************************
It was so freeing to finally be out in the country and on the open road again. Things seemed clearer. Less congested. I was leaving the thoughts of mind-numbing work on the burger factory assembly line behind. I didn't have to deal with or ignore the drama of the Overdrive nightclub. You never know who I was about to meet or run into.
After maybe 10 or 20 minutes down the highway, we passed onto rural roads. But we ended up taking a wrong turn, passing through barbed wire fences, and halting abruptly at the bold set of "No Trespassing" signs. I was sure he was getting pissed. Just another wild goose chase.
"Wait." I said. "I've actually got TWO sets of directions."
We put our heads together, I read the scrawled notes, and we tried to figure out our path like it was a puzzle. See, we knew we couldn't be far away. The river was tricking us, too, the way it snakes back and forth. Making pinpointing a specific location quite difficult. So we flipped one set of directions on its head, inserted a few elements of the other and then used his cabbie super-sense to glue it all together. We passed the big red barn, turned onto the dirt road, and landed at the parking lot within five minutes. He only charged us $30 for the fare
***********************
Two or three guys ambled up the bank. Bulked up. Wearing only boardshorts. Carrying these miniature surfboards under their arms. And that's what they'll call them out here. They'll use them along the river and call it "surfing".
The river itself was as wide as some parts of the Mississippi, and you had to walk through a couple feet of swampy water just to get to the beach. Unlike what we had feared -- a place populated by fat naked old pervy men -- instead we found families and tons of girls in bikinis (always, however, in tandem with their boyfriends). The people were predominantly our age. In the distance sand bars stretched out like islands, I could see bodies and waterfowl filling them up. There was even a tent set up a little further down the shore.
An ATV four-wheeler jammed it out in the marsh behind us -- the blond bikini chick was definitely enjoying the ride she was getting from her prairie muscle man.
"I've found the perfect spot." Lewis said. He motioned just up the bank to a little sandy alcove cut out of the the tall grasses and brush. Primo. So that's where we set up.
We knew we totally could go out and mingle with the cute chicks off on the distant shores. It looked like some of them were swimsuit-less. Maybe we would luck out and a couple of them would end up being boyfriendless. But we decided we would rather just fucking sit on our asses (I had brought along that folding chair), drink beers, and chill. It was that amazing.
Somewhere far off in the background, heavy bass pulsing filled the heated landscape, giving the atmosphere somewhat of a drowsy lazed-out chill. It could have been a speaker system, but it could have equally been the rumblings of a train. Very drum n' bass. Very country. Other than that it was completely peaceful. And as I looked around and saw all the people milling about -- I knew we had made it.
I write this and then drift off...
And I know these moments will sustain me in the days and weeks ahead. I don't care that we'll be stranded. I need the ultimate relaxation of this place -- I need the breezes.
The long afternoon light. The twisting river -- as wide as luck. The fine sand and golden sunshine.
++++++++++++++
And as it got dark people started to leave. The sense I got was "this thing is over and everyone knows it". Even the guys with the tent started to pack up. Normally no big deal. But the thing was, we didn't have a ride back into town. Lewis had to make it home so he could get to work the next day. And I had forgotten my cellphone at home. But we decided, you know what, fuck it. Let's make this one count. Even if it means being those two sketchy hitchhiker dudes at two in the morning in the hazy mists on the side of a lonely prairie road. And we would joke about, "Hey, wouldn't that be crazy if all the sudden two chicks just walked up all like, hey do you guys want to have a fire... and they totally had no boyfriends... or some shit..." Hahaha. Yeah...
At this point I was pretty out of it. I hadn't slept the night before, since I had been working on a blog post I wanted to get finished up. And the beers started to wash over me nicely. So I'm not really sure how the transition went -- but at one point I just came to my senses and realized, I was making a kickass fire surrounded by darkness, a couple girls and a bunch of chill dudes of all ages. We were joking about something, and I'm not sure what, but I remember it being light-hearted and really fucking funny. I busted out my sturdy flip-open hitchhiking knife and cut up some sticks for the crowd there. Out came the hot dogs. Later the s'mores. They would give us a ride home right to our door.
Lewis mixed drinks from our backpacker's bar-- vanilla vodka, gin, three types of juice, two types of pop -- and of course, beer. Molson Canadian (Canada's second oldest company, now owned by an international conglomerate that recently had to pay out $1.05 million for environmental harm) -- in honour of Canada Day (that's how the hot "offsale" clerk sold it to us anyways).
I put down my brown llama blanket and the girls huddled up against each other for warmth.
Someone brought a portable stereo. On went the radio.
Then, for the first time since arriving in Saskatoon, I heard that style of music that's been so refreshing to the worldwide alternative pop-rock scene. It pierced the Western armour (has it helped that Feist is now repping Calgary and not just Queen West... is that the link?) and streamed out all along the lower Saskatchewan River. In Toronto they call it indie-rock. The song was "No Cars Go" by the Arcade Fire.
Hearing that song reminded me of listening to the Arcade Fire's super indie album late at night with my little brother a couple years back -- stuck working my ass off up North, dreaming of returning to Toronto and my friends there, and trying to share what I meant by that feeling -- drinking tea and eating bread slices with margarine and jam with him, when we should have been sleeping, if I remember correctly. And I remember the days when I lived downtown in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood on Brunswick -- nights when practically our whole house would gather together in Pierre's room and just jam out on whatever instruments there were around (guitars, keyboard, bongo, vocal chords, etc.). Sweet stuff. I remember that time we finally got out of the city at Thanksgiving -- swimming in the frozen waters along the Great Lake, taking our time by the foam and wet moss along the shore. And we listened to Funeral all the way back right into downtown's light intensity.
So, from down at Bareass Beach, distant from the much-hyped and disappointing fireworks of the city, meeting musicians, cuties kicking back, tramping through waist-high water, shooting off roman candles and fireworks -- and staying warm by the fire... These are the moments that stick with you. And it's fucking awesome.
Today, on Canada Day, in honour of the First Nations people who gave us our namesake, I thought I'd finish up and post a nice little piece I've been working on for a few months now about my trip up to my buddies' reserve in Ontario. So without further ado, I bring you:
A place with a different center of gravity...
Ojibway Tales
Have you seen the Red Wolf? Where did you run to? Where do you hunt? And where do you wander, oh White Moose? You were spotted in our lands not long ago, it's true.
Get your hands on any real tobacco? Like the real shit? The stuff of healing? I'd know it if I saw it. Real nice. Would you? How 'bout you?
These lands have felt the pain, kept their scars. But we stand tall. Ready to fight. So far we've lasted longer. With the Mother here by our side.
Hey, Can You Tell Me Another Story?
(Yes that is alcohol).
Upon arrival at a tropical resort or paradise island decorated with neatly grown palm trees and painted swimming pools you'll probably be greeted with the run-down: a map marked with the top 5 nude beaches in the area, a guide to the best nightlife, or slipped a little pamphlet with a cute little blurb on some historical struggle for independence laced with curious symbols and heroic feats to warm the heart of any aloha-wearing American. Show up at a news conference about the latest wonder drug designed by a company with a name you can't pronounce and the PR coordinator will probably hand you a press release comprised of 20 lines of mind numbing facts about the long-term health benefits of their product and a three paragraph backgrounder on the giant company in question. Go visit your cousin who lives some town or city you've never set foot in before, and once again, before you can hit the parties, coffee shops, quilting circles or whatever it is you like to do with your cousin to kick back, you'll probably be given an informational blurb to outline the facts and figures of the land you've entered, specifics about industries in the area, the politicians in place and how they're mucking things up and a point form description of the schedule your cousin keeps. Because we're all obsessed with facts. Right?
When I headed out with my buddies in Northern Ontario to chill on their reserve it was totally different. I stepped into a landscape that even ethnographers can't pin down, where the knowledge base is derived from a completely different source, and rules are made, enforced and broken a lot differently from what I'm used to. I felt like I had entered a completely different country. And of course, given their status as their own "nation", I realized that I had. Here there were no tourism boards, welcome signs or fact sheets or anything like that. I mean my buddie ran the only local store (and unofficial liquor sales centre... but not really if anyone asks) out of his home, kinda like on Trailer Park Boys(watch it here) how Cory and Trevor start their own convenience mart in a shed; official documentation is pretty scarce -- one guy is getting five grand a year from the government thanks to the accidental incineration of residential school papers years ago, and where you can and can't hunt is pretty damn important but not "officially" sketched out, and you go to your kokum's (grandma's place) if you want to get a sense of who on the reserve and elsewhere you're related to. At first I thought I was missing something. I couldn't quite get my bearings. And then I realized: unlike the place I came from, this isn't a land of facts, figures, dollars and cents. They don't run things that way. This is a land of stories, long, rich and full. And I couldn't help but feel that they'd got it right.
"Those of us raised in a Western tradition tend to approach life history with certain preconceptions about what constitutes a 'adequate' account of a life. The familiar model comes from the written autobiography -- an author's chronological reflections about individual growth and development, often presented as a passage from darkness to light. Yet this form of exposition is relatively recent and began to appear regularly only after the eighteenth century. Since then it has become so well entrenched, so structured by convention, that it has come to seem "natural" to Western readers and a form not requiring explanation."
-- Julie Cruikshank, Vancouver, November 1988 -- From the preface to her book about three native elders from the Yukon called, Life Lived Like a Story
Time
You might look at a place filled with herbs, grasses and weeds dusted helter-skelter, flanked by hanging white orbs all around just ready to spread dandelion seedlings as far as the eye can see, or skinny bushes dousing the air in showers of pollen -- and you might think "savage". You could look at the children running around every which way digging in the mud, or the old man sitting still and staring off into the sunset, eyes glazed, but trailing that beaver down the powerful river -- and you might say "quaint" or "underdeveloped". Or you might spy that kid picking up his rod to spend his day again with the fish -- and consider him "lazy", or a sort of adorable Huckleberry Finn type. But then you wouldn't have watched long enough.
The reserve.
See, you wouldn't have had the pleasure of tasting all the complexities involved. You wouldn't have seen the sustainable business techniques that only now the rest of the mainstream world is experimenting with. You wouldn't have seen how they nurse their peoples from the cradle to the grave, not as a number, pill recipient or test patient, but as a whole complete human being, through all this entails. You wouldn't have seen their historically-rich governance styles that social scientists are having a hard time getting a real sense of. And you might not really know the long-term consequences of what your personal dreams and aspirations might do, even totally by accident, to such a wonderfully storied and emotionally decorated land and collection of people as this. Full of hopeful, frustrated lives. Trying to overcome. Failing. Succeeding. But always persevering. I describe, of course, the aboriginal peoples of Canada. I'm setting their story, a story we are all characters in, on a backdrop of the Canadian reserves.
On Location
Sunsets are just more beautiful out here.
We walked slowly, powerfully, along the gravel road in the fading light, looking out over the ups and downs of the place, as it moved like a tight-knit family -- a neighbourhood full of life. Dusty vehicles, some loaded to the hilt with passengers and ready to make the trek into the city, others just passing across the reserve, moved with pride -- keeping watch. From time to time you'd see the rez cops (the "Treaty Area" has its own police force and just got a huge new multi-million dollar facility that finished construction recently). On the reserve they have limited powers, they can't stop you for speeding for example, since that law doesn't apply here. So they'll harass you until you pass back onto Canada's legal road network.
Young children crawled all over the place like ants -- climbing old play structures, kicking soccer balls, or scrambling up volcanic rock formations or across worn grassy spaces. There were just tons of them. It reminded me of the Andean countryside, filled with native South Americans, most of whom live far below the poverty line and have no drinking water. I wasn't the only person to be note the activities of the youngsters. Many observers are surprised at first when they see young children on the reserves without a curfew. Also remember, Third World condition plague so many of the First Nations peoples here. The U.N. has wagged their finger on a number of occasions -- saying the condition of aboriginal people in the country is “the most pressing human rights issue facing Canada”. Many reserves are on a boil-water advisory. Cases of tuberculosis are six times higher than the rest of Canada. Poverty affects 60 per cent of aboriginal children. And as one of my rides up north -- a white middle-aged guy with extensive experience on the reserves installing communication towers on even the most remote fly-in communities -- put it, "I mean, there's no industry on the reserves, eh. And they don't have any real entertainment for the kids out there, either. There's literally nothing for them to do."
Greg works at the store here, bums smokes, and passes time with his dog. When the guys from the reserve pick up their checks -- well that's the busy day, when everyone buys gas, snacks and groceries.
Nowadays Canadian aboriginal youth, feeling shut out from mainstream Canadian society, left largely without an image they feel represents them in the media, are going American gangster. Ghettoized, impoverished and dealing with racism, it's a shoe that fits. I've never seen kids smoking pot as much as I saw out there. Drug dealing is huge on reserves, as the pimp-dealer image becomes the new model for success among adolescents. "Crunk" is in the popular vocabulary. This is a place where you have to be concerned about your friend sniffing. And as one of my buddies put it: on the reserve scaling back drug consumption in order to be a good influence on the younger kids means only weed, shrooms and acid allowed.
Drug use is a common on Canada's reserves.
I looked over first at the forest on my right, that harsh bushland that stretches out seemingly till the end of time. In there, I know, are the plants that are so important to these people. Listen long enough and you'll hear tell stories of trapping foxes, lynx or muskrat or about big deer or moose hunts. To my left is that wide river, banks of granite and mud, shimmering silver. That's where, when they put in the dam, all the ancient graves rose up out of the grounds and floated along down it. That's why so many of the people here got sick. Just one more story I store up for myself. And that other one, you know, about the mercury in the river from the mill that got dumped and never cleaned up -- yes, when I heard that story referenced -- it was given great importance. Because that river is a centerpiece here. And my friends still have to get tested to this day for signs of poisoning.
When kids get bored on the reserve they'll do anything to pass the time, like push old cars into the mercury-contaminated river, which is what you're looking at here.
This is the place where it's cool to hit on the girl with the stroller (Aboriginal peoples are growing at a blinding pace, and a good portion of the mothers are young ones). Family clanism can wipe out the value of a high school or university education. Nepotism is just that bad. And you might get $200 or so from your band for no specific reason when you head into town on your business trip for "expenses", though there's no real formula or accountability involved in how this gets passed out. And you might lose your job if the wrong person gets elected. But these things are normal. And no one really asks any questions. It's just the way things works.
The Treaty police force just got a new expensive facility recently.
And in this Never-Never-Land -- off the beaten path and forgotten -- life goes on. Poker games are a daily experience. And your mom might head into town to play bingo or hang out with her friends at the casino. You might shoot some pool in town, or just bang out a game up at your reserve in a community centre with a friend. People develop routines. Like my friend always walks half-way across the reserve at a certain time each morning, just to be predictable, so people will know where and when they can get ahold of him. Because there aren't really all that many phones up here. To get someone on the telephone you have to call their cousin's girlfriend's house, or their mom at work, and hopefully they'll get around to getting back to you.
Shooting pool in one of the community buildings on the reserve.
But how do you place a community on a map when their roots stretch out so deep and so wide? With eyes not set on Ottawa (us native people gave them their moniker...but they still won't come through for us on some pretty damn simple things they promised a long fucking time ago), big business and industry (the same song on repeat gets tiring after awhile...we understand you want to rape our lands and enough is never enough -- yah, profit, we get it), and when unlike stateside residents, keeping your gaze on Iraq and remembering the tales of woe from Vietman (a popular American pastime) just doesn't seem quite as important when you're worried about whether the water you need to stay alive day to day is contaminated or not -- aboriginal peoples of Canada are most definitely people with a different centre of gravity.
Success (opportunity) here is: dealing drugs, getting on the rez police force, bootlegging alcohol, or, most importantly, moving your family into positions of power within the band council.
So getting your head around a group of people who are actually a bunch of different people groups -- as different as Afghanis and Pakistanis, with totally different languages, customs and cultures -- is pretty difficult. And at first you might have a hard time understanding where they're all coming from. But then again, that just might be their greatest gift to the rest of us. Like the legacy of valiant aboriginal politician Elijah Harper. Through their efforts, promoting the communities they live and die for, we are left with a reminder that no matter how hateful and racist oppositional forces remain, the party line is not the only line. Ever.
But I guess it was the same for them too. I mean, they didn't really seem to understand where I was coming from either. For them to see a White Guy (me) strolling along the dirt roads of their reserve was certainly a head-turner. It was pretty funny actually. I don't think I've been that much of an attraction in my entire life. We were all laughing pretty hard about it -- how the vans would slow down, and the eyes would dart my way. You just knew my buddies were going to hear about about it later: "Oh there he goes, showing off his reserve again." They mocked the responses of the others in advance.
Land as Life
If you don't ever figure anything else out about native kids, know this: the land they live on is pretty damn important to them. Always has been and it's not going to change any time soon either. It's who they are and what sustains them. It's probably one of the reasons they like country music so much -- a genre based on physical locale resonates pretty strong out here. And a lot of the older guys wear cowboy hats. Among Northeastern Algonquian, for example, the family hunting group is considered the ideal extended family, and hunting territories are as much about ideas and symbolic associations as they are about ecological adaptation or just putting food on the table. Or you'll get a research-filled book about aboriginal culture edited by Bruce Alden Cox and he'll call it Native People Native Lands. Every reserve dwelling I stepped foot inside had a big framed picture of a wolf in at least one place in the house. Aboriginal people lament air quality. "The lake was the reward for the year's hard work," describes Paula Laureen Henderson in her book Lost Angels. And who else do you hear chatting about the shifting habitats of local wildlife as often? Living and breathing as a native is to try to connect with the area you're from and the life forms that pass by. It's like a ghetto kid repping his hood. Or Braveheart defending Scotland. It's just what's up.
But encroaching on aboriginal lands seems to be a popular game these days. The first 3 pages of the April 17th edition of the Wawatay News, a newspaper that bills itself as "Northern Ontario's First Nation Voice since 1974" were totally filled up with the KI vs. Platinex Mining Dispute story, and half of pages 4 and 5 were chalk full of commentary and a letter to the editor, as well. What's happening here is, a junior mining venture, Platinex, wants to get the goods from under the ground -- in an area the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug first nation, known as Big Trout Lake, says is their traditional land use area. Native groups are basically saying, well hey, you've already relegated us to reserves, now at least leave us in peace to enjoy what we do have. But, of course, when the mining's good, the mining's good. And no mineral company would want to just ignore profitable deposits. That just wouldn't make sense.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the boundaries of traditional land use areas -- the swath of land the reserve natives hunt and fish within -- are not easily identified. The debacle is even more of a firecracker because, despite various levels of government urging against it, the judicial branch tossed six First Nations members from Big Trout Lake in jail for their protests. Trying to protect their reserve and traditional land use area by blocking the advances of Platinex is a crime according to the judge. Womens groups are up in arms too because one of the natives jailed was a female band councillor. When I was in the area, it had been over a month they'd been sitting in cells. Protests have been held, hunger strikes have been called, the Liberal MP here is all caught up in it. Leaflets have filtered their way in photocopy format all the way through the streets of Toronto. Once again, shit is hitting the fan.
I talked to a reserve addictions counselor about the debacle over in Big Trout Lake, and it weighed pretty heavy on his mind. Because mining companies were employing a bunch of guys off his reserve, and another company was looking for rights on his homeland -- vying for the minerals under their feet at the price of single digit profit percentage points. Hardly a fair deal in his mind. "I'm not mad about them stealing our lands and everything and putting us on reserves and that. I understand you can't really change what's happened. But the thing is, we've given you so much -- and I don't mean YOU, personally, but you know what I mean -- how come we've given you so much already, and you still want more? Like, when will it be enough." He's thinking a 50-50 profit split would be sweet. But totally unlikely...
"And another thing too is," he continued, while driving through the very White Man's economy he was describing, "the way I see it, all the money they give us just goes right back to them anyways. Like it just gets filtered back, eh? We don't really get to keep it, or do anything with it." Because the architects of the reserve system knew what they were doing. Their accountants were good at getting value for their money. They knew right from the beginning. And simple fines for drug use or mere cash hand outs (like the residential school payments) can never conquer structural inequality. Instead, what you see happening is, an isolated people group has been given the power to now consume and promote the "White Man's" world. A way of life based around the commodity.
On paper it's simple enough. Groups compete for resources. It's easier for those with more clout and power to attain more at the expense of others. Someone always has to lose anyways. No big deal, right? It doesn't really hurt anyone unless they let it, right?
And the front page of the aboriginal youth newspaper "Seven" features a guest columnist discussing suicide and how to cope with the loss of your friends. Because in case you're still in some la-la land bubble and haven't heard -- Canada's pretty shitty to people sometimes -- and reserve kids are dropping like flies. Nothing new. Nothing's changed.
Page 3 - "Mother stands by jailed councillor" - James Thom - Wawatay News
"The corners of Sadie McKay's mouth perk up when she talks about her son. He was a born leader and a smart man who'd never been in trouble with the law -- until now. Sadie's son Jack has been sitting in a jail cell for the past month, serving a six-month sentence for contempt of court. And Sadie couldn't be prouder of her son, the deputy chief of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug.
'I'm very proud of the stance my son and the others took in defending our land,' Sadie said through an interpreter. 'I know it's for the people and for the protection of the land.'
KI Chief Donny Morris, Jack McKay, Head Coun. Cecilia Begg, councillors Sam McKay and Darryl Sainnawap and band member Bruce Sakakeep were all jailed for their actions in preventing Platinex Inc., a junior mining company based in southern Ontario, from exploratory drilling on the First Nation's traditional lands. They were sentenced to jail, amid public outcry, March 17, several months after Justice Patrick Smith had OK'd the drilling. Sadie said she will stand alongside other community members and defend the land, should Platinex attempt to drill."
Just like in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, when the valiant "explorers" from Europe came across land and resources that made their hearts jump and their eyelids shoot right up, in kingdoms and territories that seemed pretty weird and baffling to them, the men that wanted to get their rough hands on the various gems of North America had to figure out some way to dispose of, sidetrack or contain the rightful owners here. So over a period of time and though a series of drunken nights, wartime aid packages, mysterious treaties and brokered deals, the White Men from afar got North America, and the various nations of the vast land got stuck on shitty reserved spaces here and there. Oh ya, and they got a little bit of cash every year too. Five bucks. But that's about it.
Here the "powers that be" carefully track and hand out the annual payment to registered aboriginal -- $5 per year given out in crisps bills. Note the native RCMP officer being paraded around.
So while the colonial adventurers proudly "pioneered" their old stomping grounds, sucking out the juices -- selling beaver pelts and jewelry to England and later on minerals and oil on the world market, First Nations people got a chance to see what it was like to live in drawn up boxes for a payout. The natives groups on the prairies were promised industrial infrastructure. That was forgotten. They were told a reserve system would be the key to promoting economic growth for their communities. But these days natives in Canada still live largely on these reserves -- which have become economically isolated tracts of land. They have little bargaining power to work with at the political or corporate table. Fair trade? Someone got royally fucked, almost literally. But then again, in the "Wild West" of the US of A you could shoot an "Indian" on site.
Urban native kids full of hope and spunk in Northwestern Ontario.
Now, selfish takeovers were a quite popular trend at the time, back with Victoria or Elizabeth and Leopold and the like in control -- they had their ways. It was pretty simple. Turn the people you don't understand into monsters, misuse their labour, shunt them aside or outright slaughter them -- just do whatever it takes to maintain the upper hand. That was years ago. Back in the ages of Empire . But the most disturbing element arises when you map out just how little has changed when it comes to how the western powers and populace reacts aboriginal peoples worldwide. They are used as pawns by North American lobbyists and politicians. Years of government-funded residential school abuse and sexual mistreatment, not to mention wholesale cultural genocide, is washed over by a few political words, some talks, and a cash hand-out. And when an "undocumented" people group is spotted in the Amazon, a prairie newspaper screams on the main front page headline how their tribe is a "Lost" one. Because, don't forget, they're mysterious and different, while we're right and we're "found". As we stand here proud, reciting autobiographies.
Aww. He's digging through the trash. How cute. (How common).
Go to Red River college in Winnipeg and the teachers will sketch out Canadian law for you. They'll tell you about the Treaties and confederation and they'll tell you about land claims. They'll tell you how most natives feel they were screwed like hell -- duped out of what was rightfully theirs and, for many, forced into poverty. You'll hear about the sloth-like pace of land claim discussions and aid-packages.
Native judicial workers live in apartments like these ones and just might be upfront about the racism they see carried out structurally day-to-day through the courts if you talk to them.
But you'll also hear how, no matter what the government claims from one administration to another, they can't change the fact that they fucked up. Much was stolen, and some say eventually they'll have to pay. Either sooner or later. According to the Assembly of First Nations, there is a backlog of 800-1,000 unresolved claims within Canada's own federal specific claims process -- in other words, claims involving Canada's treaty obligations. Estimates of the total value of these unresolved claims range from 2.6 billion dollars to six billion dollars. It takes an average of 13 years to settle a claim under the current system.
Ontario reserve administrators attend land-use committees. Out in Saskatoon lawyers desks are covered with land claim notes and filings. The process moves along. Cogs in the machine push paper. And some have high hopes. Because, at least on paper, the courts can't help but acknowledge, native people are in the right.
On Wednesday, June 11, 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper took to the floor of the House of Commons and apologized for the country's government-instituted residential school system that foisted abuse and racist education on largely unwilling aboriginal students, while depriving them of the nurturing and cultural training that is essential to a complete human upbringing. The next day on the front page the Globe and Mail ran the headline "...We are sorry".
Let's not make another scapegoat of Canada's residential school system please. It might distract us. White Man knows best. Got it. Their way is the right one. The civilized path. Didn't we already know that? Because we can't forget that these mass boarding schools weren't the cause the of problem, but a result of an earlier one. Ignorance. Greed. Deceit. And a hoarding of power. Age old evils. I mean, many of the teachers thought they were doing the right thing at the time -- and still do. Many of the parents of the students were glad to have the children attend classes. Many students loved it. Most current native leaders are where they are today because of the training they received at these institutions.
But let's not foist praise onto Egerton Ryerson's bullshit idea either. For it is true that when we examine the educational system that forcibly took aboriginal children across the country out of their home communities and squelched their religion and culture while trying to design model employees, ahem, subjects of the Crown, a valuable part of Canada was destroyed. The Lost Generation. And they were raped and sexually abused like... well essentially like the little Catholic boys and girls they were forced to become (and Anglican and Baptist etc.)... I mean I really can't think of a more accurate benchmark for the institutional rape stereotype. I don't know how much they could really learn either when death rates climbed as high as 69 per cent at some of the schools.
Imagine if your dad or a bunch of his friends had been abused and mistreated at a boarding school they probably didn't even want to go to, but had no choice. Ya, that's EXACTLY what it was all about. Not even kind of. Exactly. That's why my buddie's dad from Northern Ontario gets a few thousand dollars from the government every year now. So he was able to buy a new truck and stuff. So ya, he has a nice ride, and it's easier for him to do the work he needs to do. But of course, the people in the city he bought the truck from resent that the government basically just bought him a truck and he didn't have to work for it (even though they gave their kid a new snow mobile just for passing Grade 8 and everyone thought that was rad). But I guess we're Even Steven (Harper) now right? We should name a school or something after one of the guys behind implementing this hey?
While on the reserve, prior to the "official apology" I didn't see healing in the eyes of the people, even though they were now getting compensation. They still felt ignored, not given a fair deal. Instead, I saw determination and cynicism. "They're basically paying us to keep quiet about it," on person told me. And then another person told me the same thing. And then someone else did too. I got the point pretty quick.
Hit the Urban Treaty Days in Saskatoon and you'll get free bannock, soup and cake.
And out in Saskatchewan the scars run deep. Residential schools carry a hardcore legacy. One that's hidden from plain sight still. But if you had been with the right group of kids at just the right time on the perfect rowdy evening a little while back, you could have witnessed the landscape that's been handed down. You would have seen history in action at what used to be called "St. Michael’s Indian Residential School". Duck Lake. In a night of revelry and mischief, some kids bust into the old Duck Lake school building, lit their fires, started drinking hard and partying harder, right in the belly of the beast that gobbled up their identity. And when they left, the fires didn't leave with them, but grew and grew instead... Just like the stories that run on and onand onand on and just can't be put out.. The young guy heading to a meeting with his lawyer after robbing two 7-11s had heard the story and seemed to understand the significance. And the generations before... the ones who experienced it... were so fucking proud too. Because in Canada, destruction forms community bonds. Oh what have we done?
And the guy that first told me of that blaze of a party, an assembly line worker whose dad was forced to attend St. Michael's, can't escape the wrath of the place, no matter how hard he tries.
"It's true what they say about us, eh." He said, gobbling up news of Canada's words of apology for the whole residential school system debacle. "Like the whole next generation. How we're all fucked up and turning to gangs and shit." He laughs about it, stares off into the pitter-patter of the rain, savouring his last few moments of freedom, before hitting the work-room floor again for the mind-numbing work.
"There was so much abuse -- physical and sexual and all that shit. Yeah. My dad has a whole lot of horror stories."
He has a hard time trusting what the government says. He says he likes what he reads ("I'm gonna have to tell my dad about this...He'll probably see it on the evening news I guess. It's a pretty big story hey?"), but then again, it's hard for him to believe that anything could change. After all, the government didn't make any commitment to improve the social conditions his friends and family have been left with. Just giving out $2 Billion. And you know the residential school settlement is shitty when an MP from the party in power even mocks the payout (and of course here's the follow-up mandatory comment retraction). Lets put this in perspective -- to make up for a campaign of acknowledged cultural genocide, the natives whose lives were often torn apart and whose kids suffer the ramification -- they're being tossed a chunk of change that's less than the amount spent by Canadians on Christmas gifts each year -- in Alberta.
Yeah they're talking shit out with mediators and all that. And giving out cash. Again. But fixing the day-to-day... well, I guess we'll just have to wait another 100 years for that one. Once again, the government failed to make that commitment. Even Australia managed to get around to that one.
But the spirit of the people is unflinching. Ask anyone at the factory and they'll tell you he's one of the most positive dudes there.
Word on the Street is the Medicine Man's
I spent the day just taking it all in, hanging out, catching up with my buddies, and chatting about and listening to some of their favourite bands -- Out of Options, The Black Maria (their second CD is the best one, I'm told), Casey Baker and a million others. We were supposed to go to a friend's place for fresh fish... but we were a little late and he had eaten them all already. "Hey. Where were you?" The thirty-something man asked from the porch of his trailer-sized house on the hill. "You missed it. We ate all the fish already!" Just giving us a hard time, eh. Serves us right for being late. Oh well. No big deal. Less risk of mercury posioning for me, I thought, trying to cheer myself up for missing what would have been a rad feast. But it didn't seem to be a problem that we missed dinner.
Hardcore "Rock Band" sessions.
We played Rock Band into the evening, ate some munchies and watched the Simpsons. Then we clambered up the hill to jam out in large shed/house type thing where my buddie's bro crashes.
It was late, and the old beer cups were piled up around, with butts and roaches from previous jam sessions deposited inside. A couple guys had guitars strapped on.
"Did you hear about that," the younger brother said. "What the medicine man was saying..." He said it real low and real serious.
See, some crazy shit was about to go down. Just like so many times before, the medicine man was predicting a foreign outside force was about to come in with a good face on, promising the moon. But this White Man was about to come with the desire to take. To decieve. To steal. One more dot in the pattern. Taking from us. Wanting more for themselves. Be on your guard. It just doesn't end.
And I understood why some of the people, older people mostly, were being so cagy around me, making me feel kind of awkward. Making me lose the words I needed to speak to connect with them properly. They all WANTED to trust me so bad. But experience had taught them otherwise. It's kind of weird to "be" the pariah.
Because as mystical and religious as it sounded, the prediction was hardly a longshot. The exact same thing had happened on this very reserve to the very same band council with some contract work, and an exploited loophole within that contract, only weeks before.
My buddie's younger brother cooked up some huge deer ribs (I swear -- they were like the size of my arm) from an animal they had shot earlier in the year. It didn't look glossy or picturesque and I even found a hair in mine (the teenage cook got in shit for not cleaning it well enough... I guess they take pride in their cooking, obviously), but the rugged flesh tasted better than any cow I've ever sunk my teeth into. This was definitely the highlight of my trip up.
Inserted Back In
For me, the return to "daily life" -- modern Canadian society -- was anticlimactic to the max. When I got back it was as if I had never left. On the TV the analysts were droning on again about the politics of oil sands investment and the environmental impact. Their tone is always polite and upbeat. But they always focus on political maneuvering. And they always play the government's game, attacking stories from the sanctioned perspective. Then Hockey Night in Canada comes on.
In a way I felt like I had just stepped out for ice cream and no one really cared to know what flavour of milkshake I had selected at Dairy Queen. Like, they were happy that I enjoyed my milkshake and everything, but they didn't really give a shit. The only thing was, I hadn't gone for ice cream. I had just visited Canada's ground-zero -- the ugly secret we like to sweep under the rug: the sheer untainted beauty -- almost hypnotic, filled up with troubled lives lacking the opportunity they deserve, manmade disaster, and a deluge of backstory I had never before been provided with. I guarantee you, if I was an American who had just come back to town from visiting their ground zero in New York City at the base of the Trade Tower wreckage -- the Average Joe would have thought it was a big deal.
The experts tell me that dealing with a certain amount of post-traumatic stress after visiting a Canadian reserve in all its isolation and dysfunction is totally normal. With communities divided along religious lines (Benny Hinn does a regular sweep to suck cash from the poorest in Bible Pimp fashion), high unemployment rates, racial undercurrents, rampant alcoholism, domestic abuse, and enduring monuments to White Power at every turn (you know, like their family names -- I'm told the embarrassing tale of "...back when the White Men came and gave us names that they could actually understand and pronounce..."), it can be quite a jolt to step into a reserve setting.
But visiting wasn't the hardest part. The thing that was the most difficult for me was not staring down the ugly throat of racism or billowing unaccountable bureaucracy, or attempting to interact with a culture I should but did not really know that well. To be in a place that the average person and the authorities that protect them cannot really understand is one thing. To leave that place and then get this feeling like you've never actually been there -- or if you did, it didn't really matter -- or it was a silly waste of your time -- that's a whole other ballgame. Jarring. But that's what you come up against when you're a White Kid that moves back into White Society after visiting the "savage" native lands. It's how you're made to feel.
I write: "I feel like I've come from a warzone and I need to let it all out. But I can't. I'm having trouble even remembering the experience."
So there I was, surrounded by seamless walls -- painted hues with complex names selected carefully in some corporate hardware store, walking across tiled floors, looking out on stucco exteriors connected by pristine snaking asphalt. And that's when it hit me:
-Everything in aboriginal culture -- and the whole reason visionary chiefs and communities signed onto the reserve system in the first place -- it's all geared towards protecting and cherishing their lands and their way of life. Sky. Earth. WATER.
-Everything in the White Man's world -- every little action and legal piece of fineprint -- is geared towards attaining more security and acquiring more stuff.
In its simplest form you're looking at the difference between loving what you have and the desire to get more. It sounds rank, but we clean it out, and give it names like "growth" and "development" instead. But really, all you're looking at is the passion to increase the bottom line. That is the definition of success in the modern Canadian economy. That's why the government will never be able to understand its First Nations people. How does it make sense for someone to fall in love with the land, or the air, or the WATER??? What a waste of fucking time.
So in essence, we've succeeded by pushing out all the bad thoughts. Shunting them aside. Out of sight out of mind. We're polite. We're friendly. We're Canadian. But we're forgetful.
And now inertia is the tool we use to keep things in place. Which is just fine for those in power. But if the White Majority actually gave a shit (and hell yes some of them do...) they would get ahold of the Indian Act, decide it was time to clean ship at home (you know, before rolling in the mud in Afghanistan, where even many of the people there feel Canadians are wasting their time...), and if they were really serious, they would not let go of that fucking document until something was worked out (And believe me I understand, from watching the process unfold, I'm not talking about something easy). But something BIG needs to happen. Because "fundamental changes" means everything shifts. And that's what I hear people calling for. It really is. It's the only way.
But then again we prefer inertia.
We need to learn from our mistakes. There are patterns you can graph. And history repeats itself. Already experts fear biological warfare is about to be unleashed on "the Lost Tribe of the Amazon". Let's stop playing the politics game, and look at things for what they really are. I for one am tired of all this horse shit. It seems we only know how to tell one story. It's the story about our own progress. I guess that's partly why I love visiting my buddies on their reserve. They just know so much that I don't, and they have so many stories to tell. And maybe that's why it's so hard for me to write my blog. I hate fucking talking about myself. The White Man's story of progress is so played out.
If both cultures continue their cycle of hopelessness, I'm told, nothing will change. There will be no land of the living skies for anyone. My generation has lost hope. And when a generation feels hopeless, they stop listening and dreaming. And when you stop dreaming you stop innovating. (And innovation is the strength of the human spirit.)
The opportunities for First Nation to succeed do exist, however, many are unable to take advantage of them.
I don't give a shit what people think. I had an amazing time up on the reserve -- probably the highlight of my whole hitchhiking adventure so far. It's pretty inspiring to go to a place where friends and family really look out and care for each other. Ya there's some terrible terrible things all pent up there -- the worst in all of Canada -- make no mistake. But it's just fucking awesome to see real people doing real things to overcome the giant obstacles that are thrown in their path.
In the Morning.
While the White World's eyes shift towards the rising economy of China for mega "growth" potential, native minds get stuck at home -- many defeating the odds, but others languishing on reserves, in jail cells or caught up in gangs and prostitution. One well-read chief compares his people to the Chinese, saying First Nations, too, need the same resilience and determination.
Here is another story I soak in on my travels. The pensive man looks across the table at a young white "latte academic" from Edmonton, the lady who's interviewing him. She's come back, hell-bent on not just being another "suit". He searches carefully for the right words to describe what he means and the hope he sees for his people to her attentive ears. He proceeds, and says this:
The only way to conquer the fear of the new global economy is to dream new dreams and forge new partnerships.
(end)
Other links: -http://www.canadiana.org/citm/themes/aboriginals/aboriginals12_e.html - Here's a really good primer to native rights in Canada (and how little regard Canadian people have had over the course of history for their fellow citizens... not even allowing aboriginals to vote until 1960). -www.indianz.com - Keep track of what's going on in the U.S. scene. Casinos. Scandal. Judicial. -www.ayn.ca/forum- Kind of hasn't been updated recently, but if you want to really understand some of the issues these people face day to day, then check out some of the forums. Caution, some of them get pretty ghetto. -www.afn.ca - This is the Assembly of First Nations' page, a political group that calls itself "the national organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada". -ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38819 and from www.ctv.ca/... Read up on Canada refusing the UN's position on how to treat native groups fairly.
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