When he’d completed the circle and looked into every face, Light in the Sky moved into the centre of the village again. He motioned his parents over to join him and when they did he took their hands in his own, raised his face to the sky again, and sang. His mother and father were very proud and they cried openly in love for their son whose voice rang so clearly over everything.
“Ow-ow-ow-ooo!” he sang. “Ow-ow-ow-ooo!”
Then, someone gasped and pointed to the east. There, above the treetops, the Moon was rising full and round and orange against the night. As Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s song continued the Moon rose higher and higher into the sky. And then, as if that magic weren’t enough, the people heard another voice raised up in song to mingle with the boy’s. Myeengun. Together the boy and the Wolf welcomed the Moon back to the sky. Together they praised Creation for its blessings, its mysteries, its guidance. Together they sang a song that reminded the people of all the teachings the drought had forced them to forget.
They began to cry. They poured out all their hurt and disappointment. They poured out their anger, resentment, jealousy, fear, and indifference. They poured out their love and concern for each other. The Wolf song continued and the people felt their energy returning, felt their faith rekindled, and their belief in the kindness of Creation take hold again.
When they opened their eyes again they saw a wondrous sight. Bathed in the silver glow of the moonlight was Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming. But it was not the bent and twisted boy they’d known all their lives. Instead, in his place stood a beautiful, straight, strong youth with eyes that shone like the Moon itself. He was radiant and perfect. Beyond them the people heard Myeengun’s relatives join him in song. A chorus of wolves raised their songs to the Moon, and in their shrill keening Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming walked around the circle of the village again and looked into every face. Not a person did not cry in joy and awe at the beauty of this youth or the pure, splendid light of love they saw in his eyes. Not a person felt unheard, unspoken to, unloved.
And when he’d made his way around and faced his parents again, the Wolf song grew louder and louder. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming looked adoringly at the two people who had loved him all his life and celebrated the beauty they had known he carried within him. He reached out and touched them and then, as the Wolf song rose and fell, a wonderful thing happened. He began to glow, silvery, ghostly, like the light of the Moon, and as he spread his arms in celebration of the song that filled the night he began to float upwards and upwards away from them. As the people watched in humble awe Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming rose higher and higher and higher until finally they saw him float right up into the face of the Moon.
And suddenly the Wolf song died away.
Silence. A pause, and then, very quietly in the distance, the people heard the rumble of thunder. The air cooled suddenly, and against the horizon they could see the edges of rain clouds scuttling towards them. The clouds moved in very quickly and surrounded the Moon where Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming had settled. When the clouds were thick with the promise of rain they blanketed the Moon and its light winked out just as the first wet thick drops of rain began to fall.
The people cried in joy and celebration. They danced amongst the raindrops. They danced and danced and danced, grateful for the rain, for Light in the Sky and the magic they had seen. It rained for four days and after that the berries flourished, the fish returned to their pools, and game became plentiful again. When winter came the people had more than enough to see them through the cold months. And each of those cold winter months brought a brilliant silver moon to the sky and the people sang in celebration of the boy who had reminded them that faith would always see them through the toughest of times, that feeding the spirit was as important as feeding the body, and that they needed each other for survival.
But there were two who were confused, who felt a deep sense of loss for their son. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s parents went to see the wise woman. They wanted to know why this had happened. As grateful as they were for the events of the past summer they wanted to know why their son could not stay with them, why he needed to live in the Moon.
“All of his life your son felt the words he wanted to speak. He felt them in his heart, in his spirit. He knew them as truth and he wanted to share this truth more than he wanted anything in the world. He wanted to speak the language of his heart. Myeengun gave him the gift of song and he found his voice. When he did, he put all of his love, compassion, forgiveness, loyalty, kindness, truth, and wisdom into it and the universe chose to honour him for that. He lives in the Moon to remind us always of the lesson he was sent to carry to us,” the wise woman said.
“What lesson is that?” his parents asked.
The wise one smiled kindly. “That only with the heart can we truly speak, and only with the heart can we find and become who and what we were created to be. That is Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s gift to us all.”
The night was deep and dark. High above me the stars seemed far brighter than they ever had and I saw shadows thrown by their intensity. Memories of the Sweat Lodge had made me very thirsty and I slaked that thirst with two huge gulps from the canteen. That ceremony had been a great gift. For a short time after that first Sweat Lodge I felt that anything was possible and I dove into my life wholeheartedly.
But I still carried around the old feelings of shame, hurt, and unworthiness. Despite everything that was given to me I still held onto those old beliefs. I could not shake them loose no matter how desperately I desired to. I still chose to believe that I did not belong, did not fit, and did not deserve all the good that our way and our people offered me. They could not fix me. They could not heal me. They could not take away the great hurts and bruises inside me. I felt that if my people knew that I had been to jail numerous times, if they knew that I had lied, cheated, and stole, that I had hurt a great many people, they would not welcome me into their circle. So I did the only thing that I knew how to do: I hid myself and my feelings. When those feelings got to be too much to bear, I drank again.
I drank a lot through those next years. Even though I started to find success in my work, even though I was a participant at ceremonies, even though I appeared proud, strong, and capable, I felt none of that. I always felt like a liar, a fraud, a con. I was unable to forgive myself for the way I had lived my life, for the choices I had made, and my inability to forgive myself left only blame in its place. So I blamed other people. I blamed foster homes, adoption, the white man, society, history, government, sexism, racism—and I blamed myself. It always came back to my own unworthiness, the fact that I was unlovable, unwanted, a failure. And so I drank. I’d stay sober for months at a time but always the feelings arose and I would have to drink to kill them. I would have to, despite the experience of the Sweat Lodge.
When I drank again after being sober for a long period the guilt I felt was unbearable. I felt guilty that I was disrespecting the teachings, guilty that I wasn’t living the way I knew was the way to live, and guilty that I was weak and afraid. So I drank even more. When it got so bad that I was sick from drinking, shaking, sweating, vomiting, seeing things, hearing things, I drank so I wouldn’t be sick and wound up drunk again. Then I would lie, cheat, and steal all over again and the guilt would continue. And so would that circle of pain.
I was in that vicious cycle a long time. Time and again I would get sober and do something positive. Time and again I would have people in my life who were there only to help me. Time and again the way was offered me, and I came close to grabbing for it sometimes. But fear always held me back. Always. I was afraid that if I made the journey to inside all I would find was the liar, cheat, and thief I knew I was. I was afraid that I would discover the me I was always afraid existed. So I faked it. I became what a lot of unhealed Native people become. I became an Indian of convenience.
An Indian of convenience is an Indian who knows of the teachings and the way, but doesn’t really know them. An Indian of convenience picks the parts of our teachings
and of our way that don’t cost too much in terms of sacrifice and uses them. Displays them. An Indian of convenience chooses to display attitude over knowledge, appearances over humility, and cultural activities over traditional teachings and living. Mostly though, an Indian of convenience is a person who gives the impression of belonging, fitting, knowing, and being but who hasn’t found the courage to begin the greatest of all journeys: the journey to inside.
That’s who I was for a long time. I had the hair, the dances, the drumming, the clothes, the head knowledge and the skill to speak of all of it, and the greater skill to write of it, but that’s all I had. I had the outside down pat but my insides, where I really lived, were in turmoil, pain, and confusion and they always got me drunk, always drove the people who cared for me from my life, always helped me create more guilt. My working life was becoming a success, I’d been involved with several beautiful, talented women who genuinely cared for me, the Native community was welcoming and generous, and I had money in the bank. But it seemed that nothing was ever enough to ease my pain. Nothing.
As I watched the sky and thought about the agony I’d endured as a young man searching for himself, the agony of the Sweat Lodge ritual, the agony of my alcoholism, and the agony of four days of solitude on a ledge facing the mountains, I realized that I had never known the most crucial of teachings: that nothing in the world was ever going to be enough for me until I was enough for me.
I smiled at that. So clear, so simple, so true.
The night sky was a huge purple bowl of sky dotted with the icy points of stars. And as I sat there drinking it all in I thought about how those stars represented so many possible worlds. I wondered if there were travellers like me in each of those worlds, wanderers, nomads, who might have been graced with a friend like John, a night like this and a universe that felt close enough to touch, so that finally, sometime before sleep grabbed me in comforting arms, I imagined I could see a rover on one of those worlds, sitting on the same kind of hill on the same kind of night, on the same search as I was. I waved to him. Wished him well. Then, as sleep descended, I imagined him waving back. I smiled.
IV
WISDOM
In my dream I was a young boy again. The land was exactly as I remembered, thick with bush and rock and water. The light of the sun reflected off all those rivers and lakes so that finally the light I moved through was a mercurial silver sliding upwards into gold, an infinite, nurturing light. And I was running. Above me was the hard blue helmet of the sky and around me the trees like crooked fingers raised upwards in praise. Even the rocks lay lodged in the breast of the Earth like hymns. I was naked—stark naked—except for a pair of big black gumboots that I was struggling not to run completely out of. The tops of those big boots slapped against my thighs, and behind me I could hear the exaggerated thump of feet in hot pursuit. I was laughing. Ahead of me was the glitter of a lake and as I burst from the trees onto a platform of rock the sun blinded me for an instant.
At that moment I was grabbed from behind and lifted into the air. I felt strong arms enfold me and there was a wild flail of hair against my face. It smelled of wood smoke and I laughed as I lifted a hand to part it from my face.
Only it wasn’t hair.
It was a curtain. A thick curtain hung in front of a window to block off light. As I parted it the sunlight streaming into the room was hard and I squinted against it. When my eyes adjusted I was looking out at a playground. There were hundreds of children there, running, playing, laughing. It seemed a happy enough scene, but as I scanned it my gaze came to rest on one small child alone in a sandbox at the far edge of the lot. He was playing with a tiny red truck, concentrating very hard at moving piles of sand and oblivious to the scurrying throng around him. Just then the recess bell rang and he looked up. It was me. It was me at six or seven years old—small, crew cut, thick glasses, with baggy clothes, oversized to grow into. The children all raced towards the school and I walked slowly, obediently, behind them. The laughter and happy chatter began to fade into silence. As I watched myself as a little boy move towards the building, all the world receded into a thick silence until finally I could see only the small boy moving evenly towards the waiting school. I couldn’t stand it. I threw open the window and stepped through it into the playground.
Only it wasn’t a playground.
It was a laneway. Flat, narrow and gravelled, it meandered through a brown landscape, furrowed and even as a table. There were few trees, skinny, leafless, and stunted. There was a moon hovering over everything and I walked in shadow. I felt a great sadness within myself and the salty taste of tears at the back of my tongue. Ahead of me was a house. It stood alone in a great field and every window was ablaze with light. The closer I got to that house the more the weight of sadness slowed me down. I heard my footsteps fall in even measure like a drum being thumped at a funereal tempo. When I got to the door of that house it opened and I heard a voice saying, “It’s about time. How long did you expect us to wait for you?” I swallowed hard and stepped through the doorway and into the house.
Only it wasn’t a house.
It was a powwow ground. There were hundreds of people sitting in a huge circle, within which there were many dancers shuffling clockwise to the heavy beat of a drum and the shrill wail of singers who sat under an arbour of cedar boughs in the very middle of that great circle. The dancers were a glorious sight. They wore every colour of the rainbow and their regalia shook and shimmered. Its brilliance rivalled that of the sun. Here an old man in elaborately beaded buckskin. There a young girl in a long dress adorned with jingling metal cones. Behind her a young man bedecked with long skirts of gold yarn and a headpiece of porcupine quills and fur. Old women in simpler dresses, carrying eagle feather fans, were followed by middle-aged men with eagle feather bustles on their backs, great breastplates of deer bone and faces painted in bold patterns. Everyone, it seemed, was dressed in celebration. Then, one by one as they danced past me, they motioned for me to join them. I felt fear. But as that long line of dancers passed I began to feel people closing in behind me. Many hands pressed gently against my back and I was eased outwards into the dancing area.
My feet began to move, seeking out the tempo of the drum. But as I moved I felt a terrible weight on my body. I wanted to move faster, to join that drum and the voices of the singers, but gravity worked against me. I strained against the pressure and as I collapsed my face into a grimace of agony I caught a reflection of myself in one of the small mirrors one of the dancers had mounted on his shield. I wasn’t dressed ceremonially. I was in rags that fluttered around me.
In the mirror I saw remnants of material I recognized. There was the harsh blue of prison shirts; beside it, the lime green of the trousers I had worn to school the first day at Dalewood; next to that the grey silk of a suit I’d once owned; there was a swatch of faded denim, a flag of black leather, and a strip of T-shirt with “Rick’s a drunk” emblazoned on it. I stopped where I was and I felt the burning desire to flee. I felt shame and anger that my regalia was that of a wanderer who’d never found a home, a tribe, or a family. Everyone could see how my outfit reflected who I was—and who I had never been.
I turned towards the people seated around the dancing area, looking for an opening, a place to run through. As I did, the beat of the drum slowed and the voices of the singers moved into a more solemn cadence. The dancers surrounded me. They looked at me, and in their eyes I saw sorrow and empathy. They began to dance slowly around me and as they passed, one by one, they tore off the strips of material I was dressed in. I felt the weight lessen as the rags fell away. I stood there unable to move until finally I felt naked. But strangely there was no shame in my nakedness. Instead, I felt comforted, and as I watched them an old man began to walk towards me. He was carrying a blanket. The closer he came the more I could see the light in his eyes. It was a brilliant light, one that spoke of knowledge and healing. As he got closer he began to open that blanket. It was purple, a deep, deep pur
ple, and at its centre was a huge star pattern done in an orange—more rust than tangerine. When he reached me he opened his arms wide and wrapped me in that blanket. It felt smooth, worn with age, comfortable and safe. I grasped its edges and pulled it closer around me. Then he held out a pipe. It looked ancient. Fragile, but very strong. I felt embarrassed because I’d been told how sacred a pipe was to my people and I felt undeserving of handling it. But the old man stood there, imploring me with his eyes to take the pipe. I did. When I looked at that old man the light in his eyes shone clearly, strongly, and I squinted them closed. When I opened them again the light shone brightly in my eyes. I wanted to smile at that old man.
Only it wasn’t the old man.
It was the sun.
The morning was bright and clear and around me I could hear the sounds of the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks busy with their lives. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up. The effect of being removed from the dream so suddenly was confusing. The real world seemed strange and foreign. It took a while to adjust to being awake and there was a part of me that wanted to sink back into sleep again and get back to the dream. Instead, I took a swallow of water and began to think about my vision and the three days I’d spent on that hill.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. Where shadow had seemed so mysterious and threatening mere hours before it was only shadow now—a part of the pattern, just like I was. The animals I could hear around me weren’t predatory, nor were they prey; they were friends and neighbours now. Thinking of that, I thought about the people in that powwow ground in my dream. They’d been as welcoming as the first traditional Native people I’d met when I was twenty-four. I laughed. If I’d only known then how welcome I was, how the rags of my life meant nothing to them at all, that they were willing to help me learn to dress in something more real and healing than I’d ever worn, maybe I would have grown up then. Maybe I could have spared myself the years of agony between then and now. Those people had known what the word “community” meant because they had lived it—and they’d been taught it by ones who knew by living too.
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