Red Wolf

by Jennifer Dance

  Who says?

  The teachers at school.

  It seems to me, George said with his whole heart, that school didn’t help me much. Getting educated and learning to be like them didn’t do me much good.

  The opposing voice was silent.

  The sound of bells pealed across the farmland. Conflicting thoughts still troubled George. It was Sunday morning and he felt pulled toward the unassuming white clapboard building, yet repelled by it at the same time. He wanted to connect with the God-Man, but he didn’t want to see or be seen by the white-skins who were arriving at the church in their traps and wagons.

  The congregation was singing a hymn as George pushed open the heavy wooden door and slipped into the empty back pew.

  “All ye in Christ draw near in faith, one brotherhood of man.…”

  No one noticed George at first. He glanced around, his eyes settling on the figurine that hung on the wall: a crucified man with fair hair, blue eyes, and skin paler than even the palest white-skin. George was confused. The God-Man at school had had long brown hair, brown eyes, and skin the colour of a white man’s summer tan.

  They’ve killed another one!

  George felt as though he had been punched in the chest. He gasped.

  A worshipper turned around and whispered to her companions. The singing died away until the pianist alone carried the tune. The old familiar feelings rose again; his heart pounded in his chest, his palms tingled with sweat, and his stomach lurched.

  The pianist stopped playing.

  George rose to his feet and, willing himself not to run, pushed open the big door and walked away.

  His mind was numb, almost vacant, the way it often was when these things happened, but then a voice sounded in his head.

  Live The True Life.

  “What do you mean?” George asked

  Find the old ones. Learn their ways.

  George reached for the wolf head pendant and caressed it with his fingertips. Do you mean I should go back to the reserve? Is this the way you have found for me … the path upon which I should tread?

  There was no reply.

  A wry smile lit his face. He had spent his whole life learning how to become part of a society that didn’t want him. He had been taught to despise his own people, and now here he was, caught between two cultures, fitting in nowhere. But he was no longer captive to the school’s teaching or punishment. He was free to return to his roots and to his wicked ways. He could learn the old language and the old ways, perhaps find some wisdom and make some sense out of life. At school they had taught him he was uncivilized and unchristian. But he had found nothing civilized or Christian in them. They spoke of love; Christian love; brotherly love; the love of God. But they were filled with hate!

  And greed.

  They destroyed everything around them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  George was shocked when he saw his mother. She bore no resemblance to the faded image he had in his mind. Of course she had aged, but it was more than that. There was no light in her eyes. Her hair hung in matted strands and her skin was sallow. She smelled of alcohol and sweat. StarWoman was not unique. There were many others on the reserve just like her.

  At first she didn’t accept that George was her son. He too had changed, and even when he convinced her that he really was Mishqua Ma’een’gun, she refused to call him George, but that was fine with the young man. George wanted to learn from the elders, and since none of them spoke English, George needed to improve his Anishnaabemowin.

  Almost a year passed before he felt confident enough with the language to ask his mother about his father’s death.

  “The government man came here that spring to register more children for school,” StarWoman said. “Lali had not even seen four summers! Your father told the man that she was too young, that she must stay with us one more year. But the agent said your father was wrong, that Lali must go to school in September. HeWhoWhistles went crazy!

  “The man had a fire-stick. This was not the first time your father had looked into its mouth.”

  Red Wolf was surprised. “When was the first?”

  “Do you not remember? It was when the white man said you must go to their school.”

  Red Wolf had forgotten the incident that happened so long ago, but his mother’s words jogged his memory and a picture came to his mind.

  “Were you screaming and fighting the white man?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “And did they almost shoot Father in the back?”

  “Yes! The man was going to shoot me. Your father covered me with his body so the burning stone would hit him, not me. He was very brave. In the end, the white man walked away without firing … perhaps the Ancestors heard our prayers.

  “Your father protected me that day, but he could not protect you! You went away to Bruce County School. He never forgave himself. It was the biggest regret of his life … that he could not protect you.”

  Red Wolf felt shaky inside.

  “When the white man came to register Lali for school and your father saw the fire-stick, he acted fast. He knocked it from the man’s hand with a swift kick, so he could fight the man on equal terms. The man was bigger than your father, but anger gave your father strength. He was fighting against all of the injustices that had been forced upon us, the loss of our land, and especially the loss of you, Mishqua Ma’een’gun.

  “Before long, the man lay on his back, groaning. Your father picked up the government fire-stick. He pointed it at the man’s head. He held it there a long time. Long enough for us all to see terror in the white man’s eyes; long enough to hear him beg and plead for his life; long enough for us to smell the stench as his bowels released. And then your father pulled the trigger.”

  Red Wolf felt as if he was hit in the gut with a club. Did his father kill the Indian agent, the one who had intimidated him and called him Horse Thief? He tried to remember the last time he had seen the man. It was before Father Thomas had told him that his father had been hanged.

  “The man that Father killed —” he said, almost scared to ask the question “— was he the man who called me Horse Thief?”

  “Yes, of course. You didn’t know that?”

  Red Wolf was astounded. He barely heard the rest of the words his mother spoke.

  “Your father waited for the police to arrive on their horses,” StarWoman continued, her voice quivering. “He didn’t try to run away and hide. He gave himself up without a fight, admitting that he had killed the man. They took him away and I never saw him again. All these years and it still hurts me.”

  She pulled herself together. “I found out later that the lawmen did not speak Anishnaabemowin, or even Algonquian. They spoke to your father only in their tongue. HeWhoWhistles had wanted people to know why he had killed the man. But the lawmen couldn’t understand his words, so his voice was never heard.

  “And of course Lali still had to go away to school. I haven’t seen her since the day they took her from here. They said they were giving her to a white family because I was a drunk.” The words caught in her throat. “I don’t know where she is.”

  George wanted to hold his mother and comfort her, but he had learned to deny his emotions a long time ago. He turned from her and walked away. He was outside the cabin when he heard her wail. The high-pitched keening tore at his heart and although he didn’t rush back inside and hold her in his arms, his own tears started to fall. He walked into the bush and wailed.

  Years earlier, when Father Thomas had told him that his father was dead, he had not mourned the way he did now. The grief shocked and bewildered him. He felt as if someone had reached inside and grabbed a vital part of him, tearing it away and leaving an open wound. He had always believed that HeWhoWhistles had not loved him enough to fight for him, and now the truth was almost too much to bear.

  He imagined his father swinging at the end of a hangman’s noose. He doubled over and gagged. “How could they do that to you? How could
they take your life like that?”

  George shuddered.

  George had planned to farm the treaty land that was rightfully his. He needed a few tools to get started: a saw to clear land, and a plough, and harrow. He didn’t need an expensive horse like Daisy, just an old work pony or a mule. He’d been told that farmers could buy agricultural equipment with an interest-free government loan. George straightened the wrinkles out of his old school clothes once again and polished his boots. With bare wrists sticking out from the jacket, bare ankles protruding past the trouser legs, and buttons that were severely strained across his chest, he went to the bank. He was told to get out before the police were called. Indians were not allowed to apply for loans.

  Soon George was no different from the dispirited people on the reserve, numbed from reality by alcohol, sleeping until noon. He had no friends, not even among those who had also suffered the residential school experience. They were men and women living lives of individual pain, with spouses they didn’t know how to love, and babies they didn’t know how to nurture.

  And each September more children were taken away.

  One evening George was talking with a newly arrived graduate from Bruce County Indian School. Within seconds George knew that he didn’t like him. He was too disdainful of the people on the reserve.

  “I’m not going to be here long,” the young man explained. “I’m going as far as I can from this godforsaken place, perhaps to York.”

  “Why did you come back here, then?”

  “To try, one more time, to get Mother to accept Jesus.”

  George laughed. “Father Thomas is still giving the boys that job, eh?”

  “Yes,” the young man replied seriously. “Mother has resisted the gospel all these years, but she’s not well. Who knows how much longer she has.”

  George’s humour was thinly disguised by his solemn and urgent demeanour. “You must save her before she goes to the Hell-wiigwam!”

  The young man missed George’s cynicism. “That’s right,” he answered. “The only way our folks are going to be saved is if we save them. Evil is all around them here. Just today I heard about this very old woman who lives deep in the forest. She shuffles around banging a hand drum and singing, if you can call it that. She howls like a wolf to the full moon! She eats roots and leaves and berries. Lives in a wiigwam like a real old style Indian!” He guffawed derisively. “The old crone thinks she’s Medicine Woman!”

  George didn’t hear the boy’s scathing laughter. In his mind he was at his grandmother’s side, his tiny hand engulfed by hers, walking through the deep forest, searching for plants that made good medicine, sniffing for herbs to season meat and make tea, digging roots to dye porcupine quills, collecting acorns.

  “Who is she, this Medicine Woman?” George asked.

  “The mother of that man who was hanged years back.”

  George’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. They say she lost her mind after the hanging. She went into the forest and never came back. She lives like a wild animal, a savage.”

  George rushed back to his mother’s cabin to question her about the grandmother he had assumed was dead.

  StarWoman was dismissive. “The mother of HeWhoWhistles has not been seen for many winters,” she said. “She is surely in the Spirit World, with HeWhoWhistles and Grandfather and the Ancestors.”

  “People have seen her! She is still alive!”

  “I think not, Mishqua Ma’een’gun.”

  Grandmother was alive! George knew it. “Where is her wiigwam? Do you know?”

  StarWoman closed her eyes and George waited, hoping she would say more, but soon her head lolled onto her chest and she snored quietly.

  George wanted to shake his mother awake, but he sat patiently and gazed out the open door. Suddenly a dog stood in the doorway. There were several dogs on the reserve. Some looked like wolves and were the result of cross breeding between the wild and the tame. But this one was different. George didn’t recognize the animal and yet there was something familiar about the thick mottled grey undercoat, the long guard hairs of burnished red, the bushy tail, and the amber eyes.

  He walked toward the dog, speaking soft words of greeting. The animal sniffed his outstretched hand and licked it. George dropped to one knee and sank his fingertips into the thick fur. Memories started to rise: memories of a wolf who was once his friend. The feelings were disturbing. George could feel his heart expanding in his chest. He didn’t know what to do.

  He stood back and looked at the dog. Both ears were pointed upward like two triangles, but then he cocked his head to one side. With a faint yip and a look of curiosity on his face, the left ear bent in half and keeled forward.

  Tears pooled in George’s eyes, spilling over and coursing down his cheeks. There was nothing he could do to stop them. He threw his arms around the dog’s neck and buried his face in the thick, warm fur.

  And he remembered.

  He remembered the way he had felt when he had buried his face in Crooked Ear’s fur. He remembered his mother, the way she had been, not as she was now, her excitement the day he had stopped paddling the canoe in circles and propelled it in a straight line. She had jumped up and down, beaming with pride.

  He remembered spearing his first fish and hearing his father cheer.

  George’s tears flowed into the dog’s fur. He had never cried tears like these. Eventually he raised his head and the dog licked the salt from his tear-stained face.

  He felt different, as though part of him was dying. But at the same time he was alive in an unusually vibrant way. In a flash, he knew exactly what was happening.… George was leaving! George would soon be gone! And Mishqua Ma’een’gun was returning.

  He kissed his sleeping mother lightly on her brow, tucked the wolf head pendant safely inside his shirt and headed to the door.

  “I’m going to find Grandmother,” he told the dog. “Do you want to come with me?”

  The dog bounded ahead.

  Red Wolf smiled and shouted after him. “Do you have a name?”

  The dog paused and looked back, his left ear flopping in half.

  In the language of The People, a name sounded loudly in Red Wolf’s head.

  Son of Crooked Ear.

  THE PEOPLE

  The Anishnaabe nation has lived in the vast forests of the Great Lakes region for thousands of years. In their own language (Anishnaabemowen) the word Anishnaabe (plural Anishnaabek) means The True People. To the rest of the world they are more commonly and collectively known as Ojibwey (Ojibway, Ojibwe, Ojibwa). This is the name they were given by others.

  Prior to European contact, historians estimate that between 500,000 and 2 million people lived in what we now know as Canada, just a small percentage of the estimated 100 million who lived in the Americas. Spread over an enormous landmass, belonging to many tribes and nations, speaking different languages and dialects, these Canadian indigenous people shared a remarkably similar fundamental worldview. Their way of life was firmly rooted in the relationship to their Creator, the environment, and all living things. They shared their possessions, respected their elders, loved their children, and governed by democratic council. They were good custodians of the land, water, and resources that sustained them. Yet Europeans of the time regarded the Indians as savages who occupied valuable land, and who, for their own good, needed to be converted to Christianity.

  The Canadian government decided to solve the “Indian problem” by assimilation. The Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 laid the foundation, followed by the British North America Act in 1867, and the Indian Act of 1876 that legalized and detailed the Canadian government’s system for controlling and assimilating Aboriginal peoples. Sections 113 to 122 of the Indian Act legally took away the rights of parents, giving the government total control of the children. And for more than a hundred years, Royal Canadian Mounted Police enforced the law, authorizing and enabling government employees, known as Indian agents, to
remove children from their homes and incarcerate them in residential schools, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

  Between 1840 and 1984, when the last school closed, 100,000 First Nations children had passed through, or died in, the Canadian residential school system. During the peak years of the mid-twentieth century, there were 76 residential schools across Canada. The government delegated the day-to-day running of the schools to four major churches: Roman Catholic, Church of England, Presbyterian, and United. The government paid the churches a stipend for each child. The churches were thus empowered to change Indian culture without societal checks or balances. This freedom set the scene for blatant abuse.

  Not all children were abused in the now infamous residential schools, although in the twenty-first century, when the silence is finally being broken, it appears that many were. But even those who were treated with kindness still experienced traumatic separation from family, community, language, and culture that had far-reaching effects. The government’s policy was, in effect, cultural genocide.

  Native American children in the United States endured a similar fate. Between 1878 and 1930, as part of the U.S. Government’s Indian Policy, children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools to be educated mostly by missionaries. As in Canada, these children were given new names, were forbidden to use their own language, and were taught Christian, European-American culture. They received only a basic education that focused on manual skills.

  In 2008 Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, made an apology to former students of the residential school system. “The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history. Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country. The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language.”