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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780889774391 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Regina Press |
| Publication date: | 09/24/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 180 |
| Sales rank: | 824,890 |
| File size: | 423 KB |
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Firewater
How Alcohol is Killing My People (and yours)
By Harold R. Johnson
University of Regina Press
Copyright © 2016 Harold R. JohnsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-88977-439-1
CHAPTER 1
PART 1
KAYÂS: A LONG TIME AGO
WÎSAHKICÂHK'S LOST STORIES
kayâs, one day Wîsahkicâhk was watching television, and he saw an Indian story on there. But the story didn't seem right. It was all mixed up.
He went to check the original.
He had it somewhere.
The Creator gave Wîsahkicâhk a whole bag of stories back at the beginning of time and he told Wîsahkicâhk, "Here, look after these, the people are going to need them to know how to live a good life, and they are going to need them when things get difficult."
But Wîsahkicâhk couldn't find them.
Man, he was in trouble now.
He lost the stories the Creator gave him.
So he went looking for them, and he saw Buffalo, way off in the distance, just one by himself. Wîsahkicâhk walked over to him and said, "Hey, paskwa mostos, my brother. Have you seen that bag of stories the Creator gave me? I think I lost them."
Buffalo shook his big shaggy head. He said, "Nooooooh, sorry, Wîsahkicâhk. I don't see much anymore. They keep me here in the park and people come to look at me. I don't get around like I used to. Nooooooh, I didn't see where you left your stories."
There was Wolf, running away from him. Wîsahkicâhk shouted, "Hey, mahikan! My brother, stop, wait. Why are you always running away?"
Wolf stopped and came back. "I try to stay away from people now. Every time I come close, they shoot at me or try to poison me. What can I do for you, Wîsahkicâhk?"
"I lost that bag of stories the Creator gave me. You didn't happen to see them, did you?"
"No, sorry, older brother," Wolf answered. "No, I'm sorry, I never saw your stories."
Wîsahkicâhk kept looking. Next he saw Bear digging around in a garbage pit. He shouted down to him, "Hey, maskwa, my brother. What are you doing down there?"
Bear answered, "This is where I eat now. There's no forest left, there's no berries."
"Oh well, I guess that's the way it is. You didn't by chance happen to see where I left that bag of stories the Creator gave me, now, did you?
"No, sorry, Wîsahkicâhk. I never saw them. But maybe you never lost them. Maybe someone stole them like they stole my claws and my gall bladder."
That made sense to Wîsahkicâhk. Of course, someone stole them. That must be what happened. That's how they ended up on that television.
He looked up and there was Bald Eagle flying. He yelled up at her, "Hey, mikisîw, my sister."
She circled around and around and slowly came down. When she landed in a tree just above Wîsahkicâhk, he said, "Sister, you can see far. You can see the future and you can see the past. Did you see who stole that bag of stories the Creator gave me back at the beginning of time?"
"Yes, I did, Wîsahkicâhk," she answered. "While you were watching television in the twentieth century Fox stole your stories."
"Ohhhhh yeah. That makes sense."
So Wîsahkicâhk went looking for Fox and he found him, and Fox had that bag of stories. He was dragging it around. Wîsahkicâhk knew he could never catch Fox. Fox was too fast, he could turn too quickly, and if Wîsahkicâhk chased him, maybe the stories would get hurt.
So he followed him and he found one of those stories. It had fallen out of the bag. Fox had dragged that bag of stories around for so long that he had worn a hole in it.
Wîsahkicâhk picked up that story. It was almost dead. Its fur was all matted and dirty, and it was hardly even breathing, It just lay there in Wîsahkicâhk's hands with its eyes closed. It was the Dream Catcher story.
Wîsahkicâhk brushed the dirt off it and he blew on it. Blew a little bit of life on it.
Slowly that story began to revive.
Wîsahkicâhk blew on it some more.
Finally that little story opened its eyes. It wasn't completely strong yet. But Wîsahkicâhk had a plan.
He used that story to make a whole bunch of dream catchers. They weren't very good because the story was so weak. But they were good enough. He sold them and he sold his buckskin jacket that he didn't wear anymore, and he sold his moccasins, and he used that money to buy the biggest big- screen TV he could find. Then he took that big-screen TV into the forest and he plugged it into a currant bush.
And then he hid and waited.
Sure enough.
Along came Fox.
Curious Fox. He stopped to watch that big TV, and when he was completely hypnotized by it ... Wîsahkicâhk stole back the bag of stories so that the people would know again how to live a good life.
CHAPTER 2PART 2
HOW ALCOHOL IS KILLING MY PEOPLE
1. SO THE STORY GOES
tanisi ketayayak. Hello, Elders.
tanisi nimisak. Hello, my older sisters.
tanisi nistîsak. Hello, my older brothers.
tanisi nisimisak. Hello, all my younger brothers and sisters.
tanisi kakithaw niwâhkomakinak. Hello, all my relatives.
There is something important to talk about, something we have left out of our conversations, and now it is destroying us. There is a story that has been going around for a long time. The story is about the dirty, lazy, drunken Indian. The Queen's children have been telling this story about us ever since they came here. We were told this story when we went to residential schools, and though the media has somewhat toned it down as of late, this story is still repeated, and it is a story that we also tell to ourselves. It is the same story that is told about original peoples all over the world.
We once told our own stories about ourselves wherein we were the heroes. We were great hunters, providers, even warriors when need be. We were wise grandmothers and medicine people. We told stories about ourselves and about mithosin kitaskinâw — our beautiful land. The stories we told about ourselves and our beautiful land in fact had real effect. The stories connected us to the land and connected the land to us, and we became the same story.
But then the Queen's children came here and asked our ancestors if they could share this beautiful land with us. We adopted them in a ceremony of Treaty and they became our cousins. Our name for them is kiciwamanawak. It is a word that has no parallel in their language. It means all of us are cousins to all of them. kiciwamanawak brought their own stories with them here. They brought the Jesus story and the money story, and they brought the alcohol story.
2. WHO AM I TO SPEAK?
My name is Harold Johnson and I am Cree from northern Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory. I want to share with you the little bit that I know about stories, and about alcohol and how the two work together to destroy us. I have not been asked to speak. No one said, "Harold, what do you think?" I speak as a citizen of the Woodland Cree peoples. I speak because what I am about to say is important for the people. I apologize if I speak out of turn without being asked. But I cannot sit silently any longer. Too many people have already died. There is too much suffering among our people. I have stood at too many gravesides and said goodbye to too many friends.
I grew up here on this land, the son of a trapper and fisherman.
I have spent time in the Canadian navy, worked as a logger and miner, raised a family, and have grandchildren. Twenty-five years ago I got tired of mining and went to university and studied law. I received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a Master of Laws degree from Harvard University. I have worked on the defence side of criminal law and now I am employed as a Crown prosecutor in Saskatchewan.
I speak, however, only to my people, the Woodland Cree. I have no right to speak to anyone else. But if you hear my words and if these words help you, then take them and use them in a good way. If you cannot use them in a good way, then leave them here.
In our tradition a person does not speak, does not interfere, until he or she has been asked. We are not preachers. We do not proselytize. We do not take medicine to sick people and tell them, "Here, drink this. It will make you better." We each have our own understanding of our unique place in the universe. We get to our place of understanding through ceremonies, through suffering, through rationally interpreting our experience on this planet in relation to our own internal message.
Saulteaux Elder Danny Musqua once explained it to me like this: "You were a pure spirit traveling across the universe, just a dot of blue light, and you came across the Creator. The Creator was both spirit and physical at the same time. You said, 'I want to be like that,' and you came down to this earth to experience being physical and spirit at the same time. While you are here, you should focus on the Creator all the time. Never let anyone come between you and the Creator and never come between someone else and the Creator."
We each know that our life experience is ours alone. We each have our own interpretation of our place and our purpose here, and no one has a right to interfere in our understanding. We know that we each have our own understanding of our relationship with Creation.
We know that if we have medicine and someone needs it, it is up to them to ask for it. It is said that if they want it, they will crawl to come and get it. "Medicine," in our understanding, is not just roots and flowers and plants. It is much more than that. Medicine is in the rocks we use in Sweat Lodge ceremonies. It's in that Sundance Tree. It's in our thoughts and our actions.
We know that if we go around preaching and handing out medicine without being asked, there will be consequences, and maybe we won't like the results. Everything balances itself out eventually. The man who puts on a show — "Look at me! I am a great healer! I am a wise man! I am, I am, I am!" — will someday find out that he is just a man like everyone else. He will get knocked down.
I do not want to be the man who gets knocked down. But to those who say that we must be asked before we do anything, I reply: If you see an elderly woman fall into the campfire, do you wait for her to ask you for help? Or do you try to get her out of the fire as quickly as you can?
I cannot stay silent any longer. I cannot with good conscience bury another relative. I have now buried two brothers who were killed by drunk drivers. I cannot watch any longer as a constant stream of our relatives comes into the justice system because of the horrible things they did to each other while they were drunk. The suffering caused by alcohol, the kids with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), the violence, the poverty, the abandoned children, the mental wards and the emergency rooms, the injuries and the illness and the loss of hope and the suicides have all piled up within me to the point that I must speak.
I must speak because so few are speaking. Our political leaders, our chiefs and councillors, the Assembly of First Nations, the Indian federations, the tribal council — all seem so silent. kiciwamanawak have turned and looked the other way. Their governments are silent, their churches are silent, their schools and hospitals are silent. Even their police officers who have to deal with alcohol everyday do not speak up. kiciwamanawak cannot speak about us and alcohol. They cannot use the words Indian and alcohol in the same sentence. If one of them were to speak up, they would be called racist and accused of stereotyping. Given the history between our peoples, racist is not something kiciwamanawak want to be called.
Why don't our leaders speak? Are our political leaders too embarrassed to say anything? What are they afraid of? Are they afraid that if they say something about the devastation caused by alcohol, people will point at us and call us names for being drunks? Are they afraid that someone will say, "See ... it's true, they are just a bunch of dirty, lazy, drunken Indians"? And why don't we speak? Are we embarrassed and afraid too?
I apologize, niwâhkomakanak, I am about to drag this filthy, stinking subject out into the light where everyone can see it. It is my hope that the light kills it. I am going to speak without being asked because no one else is speaking and the silence needs to be broken.
If they point their fingers at us and say mean things about us, oh well, it can't be any worse than it already is.
3. THE DRUNKEN INDIAN STORY
When kiciwamanawak first came to our territory, they brought the Jesus story and the alcohol story and the money story, and we traded animal pelts with them for their money and their alcohol.
Ever since kiciwamanawak got here, they have been telling stories about 'the drunken Indian.' During the height of the fur trade, kiciwamanawak brought 50,000 gallons of liquor into our territory every year. More than a third of the freight in the North West Company canoes was ninety-pound kegs of rum. When they got the firewater here, they diluted it with water and traded about 250,000 gallons. Our population at the time was about 120,000 people, including women and children.
Duncan McGillivray worked for the North West Company. In his journal, dated 1794–95, is the following description of our people at a party:
Men, women, and children promiscuously mingle together and join in one diabolical clamour of singing, crying, fighting &c and to such excess do they indulge their love of drinking that all regard for decency or decorum is forgotten — they expose themselves in the most indecent positions, leaving uncovered those parts which they carefully avoid in their sober moments, and the intercourse between the sexes, at anytime but little restrained, is now indulged with the greatest freedom, for a chastity is not deemed a virtue among the tribes, they take very little pains to conceal their amours, especially when heated with liquor.
Daniel Williams Harmon, a puritanical fur trader who also joined the North West Company in the early 1800s, went up to Dene territory and wrote in his diary:
To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women and children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At some times, ten or twelve, of both sexes, may be seen, fighting each other promiscuously, until at last, they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish, which they hold in their hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To add to this uproar, a number of children some on their mothers' shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes, are constantly bawling, the older ones, through fear that their parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befall them, in the fray. These shrieks of the children, form a very unpleasant chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents, who are engaged in the squabble.
Another story from a fur trader of that time tells:
Every one knows the passion of the savages for this liquor, and the fatal effects that it produces on them. ... The village or the cabin in which the savages drink brandy is an image of hell: fire [i.e., burning brands or coals flung by the drunkards] flies in all directions; blows with hatchets and knives make the blood flow on all sides; and all the place resounds with frightful yells and cries. ... They roll about on the cinders and coals, and in blood.
Alexander Henry the Younger, yet another early Canadian fur trader, wrote: "We may truly say that liquor is the root of all evil in the North West. ... The Indians continued drinking. About ten o'clock I was informed that old Crooked Legs had killed his young wife. ... By sunrise every soul of them was raving drunk – even the children."
In 1788 Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography as follows:
As those people are extremely apt to get drunk, and, when so, are very quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbade the selling any liquor to them; and when they complained of this restriction, we told them that if they would continue sober during the treaty, we would give them plenty of rum when business was over. They promised this, and they kept their promise, because they could get no liquor; and the treaty was conducted very orderly, and concluded to mutual satisfaction. They then claimed and received the rum; this was in the afternoon: they were near one hundred men, women, and children, and were lodged in temporary cabins, built in the form of a square, just without the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the commissioners walked out to see what was the matter. We found they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; they were all drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colored bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell that could well be imagined; there was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodging. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no notice. The next day, sensible they had misbehaved in giving us that disturbance, they sent three of their old counselors to make their apology. The orator acknowledged the fault, but laid it upon the rum; and then endeavored to excuse the rum by saying: "The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything for some use, and whatever use he designed anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he made rum, he said, 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with,' and it must be so." And, indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the sea-coast.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Firewater by Harold R. Johnson. Copyright © 2016 Harold R. Johnson. Excerpted by permission of University of Regina Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Map: Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan,Preface,
Acknowledgements,
PART 1 — KAYÂS: A LONG TIME AGO,
Wîsahkicâhk's Lost Stories,
PART 2 — HOW ALCOHOL IS KILLING MY PEOPLE,
1. So the Story Goes,
2. Who Am I to Speak?,
3. The Drunken Indian Story,
4. A Little Bit More History to Help Put It in Perspective,
5. A Time before Alcohol Killed Our People,
6. Going to the Graveyard,
7. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the Supreme Court,
8. Four Models,
9. The Trickster in the Story,
10. Being Frank: Exposing the Problem,
11. Costs of the Alcohol Story,
12. Employment,
13. The Story We Tell Ourselves,
14. The Story kiciwamanawak Tell Themselves,
15. Addictions,
16. The Land,
17. It's All Only a Story,
18. Banning Alcohol,
19. Treatment,
20. Leadership,
21. The Storyteller,
22. Healing,
23. Community,
24. The Sober House and the Sober Community,
PART 3 — LETTERS FROM OUR SCOUTS, THE ARTISTS,
A Letter from Tracey Lindberg,
A Letter from Richard Van Camp1,
PART 4 — NIYÂK: FOR THE FUTURE,
Wîsahkicâhk Returns to Find Out He Is Story,
Appendix: Treaty No. 6,
Notes,
Glossary of Cree Words,
Sources and Further Reading,
About the Author,