I
INNOCENCE
There are silences in this life that can open up and swallow you whole. You tumble into them, senseless and disoriented. The sudden lack of direction leaves you immobile, foot-stuck, and mute, language suddenly a guttural rasp in the voice box. As I stood in that small copse of trees and watched John make his way back down the hill I wanted to shout that I wasn’t ready for this. I needed more time. I didn’t know enough. I was scared. But I couldn’t find my voice. My throat was dry and coarse with desperation and I took a big swallow of water to ease it. The further away he got, the more alone and isolated I felt and the bigger and emptier the world seemed. When he got into his car and began to pull away I waved my arms at him, but he either didn’t see me or was content to leave me on that hill.
I watched his car until it disappeared and then I slumped down to the ground. There was the first chill of an evening breeze and the shadows thrown by the sun were suddenly deeper and longer. It would be evening soon. I looked around at the view that had seemed so friendly before this day but now was heavy with unseen dangers. I was scared. More scared than I could recall ever having been. Without a fire at night I would have no way to prevent anything from coming into that circle. I was afraid to be hungry. Four days without food is a long time and even though we’d had a really big meal before coming to the hill, the thought of being hungry for days frightened me. I was afraid my water would run out. I was fearful of the weather suddenly turning into a summer storm, of lightning, thunder, hail, and cold. I was afraid of insects. But mostly I was afraid that I would fail. Failure at this ceremony would mean that I didn’t have what it took to be Indian, to be Ojibway. It would mean that I belonged nowhere, that I would be alone forever.
So I sat there with all my fear and waited. It was beautiful there. The swell and toss of the foothills reminded me of the ocean and I imagined myself on the start of a long voyage. I was a mariner unmoored from the security of the pier and set free on the wild blue abandon that is the sea. It was a good thought.
Before long I settled into the silence. I began to notice that silence wasn’t really silence at all. As I sat there looking around, observing, I could hear things I had never heard before, voices of the world that I’d been deaf to, noises and shifts of sound that filled all of that great space around me. There was rustling and cracking coming from the bush below me, the sibilant whisper of wind through the trees, the rattle of gravel spilling down the cliff, and bird calls, squirrel chatter, the lowing of distant cattle, and further away the swish and hum of traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway. The more I strained to hear, the more I began to feel transported, taken back into my life. And I started to recall things, vague memories of times long before in a childhood I’d learned to block off, to refuse to revisit, to mythologize, or lie about completely.
I’d been born in surroundings like this. My life had started amidst the rough and tangle of northwestern Ontario and the sounds I was hearing were the very first sounds I heard when I entered the world in October of 1955.
My family lived a traditional life. The first home I lived in was a canvas tent, deep in the bush across the bay from the small railroad depot at Minaki. I was surrounded by family. Along with my mother and father, sister Jane and brothers Jack and Charles, I lived with aunts and uncles and their children. Our lives were spent hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering berries, smoking fish, and living as Ojibway people had for generations before the settlement of Canada. There was a part of me that remembered all of that. Not in a real way, not with clarity, but more a vague, shadowy recollection, like ghosts moving across a room.
When I closed my eyes that first night the sounds around me stirred those shadows into image and I saw canoes beached in a cove, laden down with furs and traps. The pines back of the small clearing on the shore were thick and green, moving mysteriously into jade, emerald and deeper, into brown and fading to black. There were people moving about in front of canvas tents and in the air was the tang of wood smoke. In my mind’s eye this was a happy place, and the family that worked and cavorted around those fires was a happy one engaged in a life, a way of being, that was timeless, unalterable, and real. Tears began to burn the backs of my eyes at the thought of that life and I opened them, shook my head to clear them, and looked about at the world around that hill. That was the life I’d been born to.
I never learned the truth about the reason that life ended for me. Instead I was given different versions of the story from different members of my family, stories that never quite filled the holes within them. I could relate to that. I’d never filled the holes that existed in the story of my life either. As I sat on the hill and looked around I thought that perhaps when you’re hurt it’s easier to mythologize the past than to explain it, easier to find a source of blame than a source of truth. So I didn’t know the real story of how we kids came to be wards of the Children’s Aid Society. I did know that alcohol, even then, was a titanic influence and that it was the negative energy of drink that led my brothers and sister and me into the custody of the Children’s Aid when I was still a toddler. I can’t remember that. Can’t recall the moment of separation, or the condition of my life when it happened.
But my sister can. She tells a story about how we were all together in a foster home with the Wright family on Carlton Road outside of Kenora. There was bush all around and, according to her, I really liked it there. Of course, I was far too young to know that I had been stripped from the family tree and that I was a foster child. All that seemed to matter to me was that I was with my brothers and sisters. I followed them everywhere. But they were all old enough to go to school. I stayed at home every day and Jane recalls how I loved to play in the sandbox with the one toy I had—a little red truck with one wheel missing. I played for hours in that sandbox and I loved that little red truck.
One day, she watched out the back window of the school bus as it pulled away. She doesn’t know why it was so important for her to look back that day, but she did. She watched me huddled in that sandbox playing with my truck until the bus followed a bend in the road and I slipped out of view. When they got home that night they were told that I had been moved to another foster home.
Jane says she walked outside and stood by that empty sandbox. The little boy she had watched that morning was gone, and all that remained of him was a little red truck with one wheel missing, already partially buried in the sand.
I was gone for more than twenty years and when she told me that story for the first time we hugged each other, held on for a long time, and cried.
My first clear memories are of living in a foster home on the outskirts of Kenora, Ontario. I was four years old.
We lived in a house that was less than a quarter-mile away from the bush and rock I loved even then, and where I played my first games. I had a friend in those days. I’ll call him Paul. He and his family were the only Ojibway people in the area. Their house was a small four-room shack with a big black pot-bellied stove in the middle of the centre room. The pipes from that stove went through the walls into each of the other rooms and I used to get a big kick out of seeing his father’s long johns and grey wool work socks hung over those pipes to dry. I don’t know how many days I stood leaning against the doorjamb listening to his father play guitar and sing. He had a really good voice and his hair was always slicked back like Elvis Presley’s. Of course, this was at the end of the 1950s, so he was probably right in style. I’d stand there tapping my feet and wishing that I could make music like that. The songs I heard in that kitchen had titles like “Ring of Fire,” “Wabash Cannonball,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Memphis, Tennessee.” I loved those songs. I still do. When Paul was ready we’d dash out of the house with music ringing in our ears, on the hunt for big adventures in the northern Ontario bush that started right behind their house.
I’d like to think that Paul and I were good friends. After I was taken away from that foster home years later I never, ever saw him again. But I still remember him. We were both pint-sized Ojibway boys and we both loved to run through the bush. Our games were hunting games. I remember playing hide and seek. It would take me hours sometimes to find him. I know that I too was good at hiding, and that he took just as long to find me.
We loved that bush. We loved that land. We loved it because of the freedom it represented to us. We loved it because it was always there waiting for us and always, always willing to take us just as we were. Naturally, we never used such words to define our love of the woods, and we were too young to understand the connection that exists between an Ojibway and the land. Even if we had known, I don’t think we’d have stopped running long enough to consider what it meant to us and the men we would become. We were just boys and all we knew was how much fun it could be prowling about that wide expanse of bush country.
When I close my eyes to recall those days I can still see the patterns the shadows made amongst the trees, the dappled grey faces of the boulders, and the hushed, swaying sound of white water just beyond the ridge. I felt more at home there, hidden behind a thicket of spruce, behind a tumble of boulders, or in the depths of a berry patch than I did in Kenora or the foster home.
Paul felt more at home there, too. His daddy drank too much and often beat him up—beat up his mother and two sisters, too. Thinking back about listening to music in their doorway, I remember seeing bottles on the table, and bits of smashed glass littering the carpet. I guess you’re ignorant of those things when you’re a kid, or maybe somehow you know by instinct to look past them, to wait with bated breath for the dash to the sunshine, for the chance to lose yourself again in the golden warmth of friendship. But I knew that he always felt safer in the bush. At least out there, he always knew what to expect.
We were like any other Ojibway kids. We were more than a little wild, reckless, careless, and self-centred in our play. Nothing mattered except the total freedom of running through that landscape. Years later, as I looked across the tops of the trees in the foothills, I would recall learning to find rabbits, track foxes and deer, how to recognize fresh bear droppings, and to move extra carefully after that. We learned a lot on our own.
Paul and I both loved fishing. From the first sign of melt in the early spring to the first fall of snow in winter we were mad for fishing. We learned to spear suckers in the spring after Paul saw something similar on television. We made a gill net out of baling twine we had found and we learned how to drive fish along the shallows into the mouth of that net. We learned how to read water for the best places for rod-and-reel fishing.
But most of all we learned to love the land. To love its feel, its smell, its motions, and its stillness. But we had no one to teach us, and everything we discovered we found on our own. The downside was that we never found out that Ojibway boys were supposed to learn to behave like caretakers of the land and all the life it held. We didn’t know that simply being Indian by doing an Indian thing like fishing wasn’t enough. We didn’t know that what made something the Indian thing to do were the teachings that guided the process. We didn’t know that all life is sacred and needs to be respected. We didn’t know how to offer that respect. We didn’t know this most basic of teachings because there was no one to teach us. It was only that night, after John left me alone on that hill, that I mourned the absence of teachers for two young Indian boys who only ever wanted to feel more at home on the land from which they grew.
The home I lived in was a good home. I lived with a family called Tacknyk. It’s a Ukrainian name, and that family tried its hardest to make me feel like I was a part of things. For the most part, that’s what I recall. But I always knew I was different. Being the only brown face in photographs was always a dead giveaway. Being teased by the kids at school because of my Ojibway name—they called me Wobbly Knees, Wagon Wheels, and the standard repertoire of Wahoo, Chief, Wagon Burner, Squaw Hopper, and Savage—was another solid indicator of my difference.
One summer it all became clear to me. It was to be my second summer with the Tacknyks, and by that time I’d grown used to calling Mrs. Tacknyk “mom” and referring to her daughter Cindy and son Bill as my brother and sister. On the surface, the Tacknyks were my “family,” and I’d grown comfortable with that idea. But as spring days lengthened into early summer, the family began talking around the supper table about plans for a vacation to Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. As the talk grew more and more involved, I began to hear and use phrases containing the magic word “we.” We will ride horses. We will go canoeing. We will camp out and have fires at night. I thrilled over that tiny word and began to dream about the trip. The word “we” meant that I was included, too. My excitement was almost uncontainable. As the date of our departure neared, the more excited I became. I’d never been anywhere before, and the thought of riding in the car, getting closer and closer to the fun and adventure that awaited us, was enough to keep me awake every night. Then, the day before we were to leave, I came into the kitchen after school and saw my little suitcase sitting by the door.
“Am I all packed up already?” I asked.
My foster mother looked at me from the kitchen table where she sat peeling potatoes. “Yes,” she said. “We’re taking you to stay with Stan and Bunny for two weeks while we’re gone.”
That was the first time I learned that the world can drop away from beneath your feet and that your heart can break and still keep beating.
I know that my foster-parents must have had what they thought were good reasons for leaving me behind. But no such reason can salve the betrayed heart of a five-year-old boy. That night I was driven to the other side of Kenora and dropped off with Stan and Bunny, two people I hardly knew. When the car pulled away that night, I stood in the yard waving, crying, and for the first time in my life hearing, very clearly, words in my head: “There’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong. If you were lovable you’d be going along. If you were wanted you wouldn’t be standing here. If you were good enough you’d be going with them.” I heard those words as clearly as if they were spoken to me, and my heart was broken.
They tried to make me feel a part of things after that, but I could never forget the pain of standing in that yard as I watched the people who said they were my family drive away from me. Leaving me. Still, I was just a little boy and I clung to the hope that I would fit, that I would be one of them and I wouldn’t be left alone again.
But I was.
I was adopted when I was nine years old. I’d been in the Tacknyks’ home for five years—and when you’re nine, five years is a lifetime in itself. No one told me what adoption meant. No one told me that it meant I was about to leave the land I loved so much or the only home I could remember. No one told me I was about to begin learning how to be someone else. All I knew was that I was going to a “new home.” I didn’t want a new home. I wanted to stay in the one I was in.
The last morning in the Tacknyks’ home was very hard. Every minute felt painfuly stretched. I was nervous and scared. I went for a walk and I cried as I stood in the bush that I loved and started to say goodbye to the rocks, the trees, the river. The taste of my tears was bitter and as I looked around at the bush that had been my playground I wanted to run. I wanted to run deeper and deeper into it, set up a camp on a point of land somewhere and live there. I wanted to go where they couldn’t take me away. I wanted to go somewhere that would never change, never be disrupted, never allow me to be separated from it or the things I loved. But in the end I was just a little boy, powerless and scared, and I turned around and walked back to the Tacknyks’.
I was tossing a ball absently up and down in the yard when they arrived. When they reached out to touch me I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there staring back at them, this man and this woman who were taking me to a new home. My mother and my father. I wanted to scream at them to go away. To leave me alone and let me stay in the only place I could remember. I wanted to scream that I didn’t want to go. I wanted to kick and punch and drive them away. But I was just a little boy, alone, afraid, and powerless over the big people and what they chose to do. We got in the Tacknyks’ car and drove to the Kenora train station.
Remembering the event of my leaving is like watching a scene from a movie. That’s how clear it is. But it is a movie in slow motion with each sound amplified and keen. My new parents and I were boarding the train. They were chattering away at me animatedly, as big people do when they’re trying to soothe and give comfort. To me they were just sounds. As I looked back I saw my foster mother standing on the platform, watching me leave, waving and crying. Then, as we found our berth, I looked out the window and she was standing right outside it. As the train started to pull slowly out of the station she began walking alongside it, looking at me, reaching her hands towards me and crying, crying, crying. Her face was red with tears and grief and pain. She walked faster and faster as the train picked up speed, huge tears rolling down her face, and when she reached the end of the platform and flicked out of my sight I heard myself asking, “Why? Why are you letting them do this? Why are they taking me away? If seeing me go makes you feel so sad why don’t you stop them? Why?”
But the only answer I heard were those same familiar words in my head. “Because there’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong that makes you unlovable, that makes no one want you, that makes them give you away to someone else. If there wasn’t something wrong with you they wouldn’t let you go.” I heard those words—and I believed them.
The home I went to was another non-Native home. We lived in a town called Bradford in the Holland Marsh area of Ontario. That area is famous for its production of vegetables and the land is flat and treeless, with irrigation canals and ditches criss-crossing the landscape. The water in those canals and ditches is brown. I had never seen flat land before. Flat land without trees, rocks, or cliffs and no trails to follow other than the canals of brown water. I felt like I’d landed on Mars.
But as we pulled into the driveway of my “new home” my thoughts were not of the landscape but of myself. I figured that I’d better not let them know there was something wrong with me. I’d better not let them in on my secret, or I could be sent to a place even stranger than this. I decided in the back seat of that car to say whatever they wanted me to say, to do whatever they wanted me to do, go where they wanted me to go without question or fuss. That day, that moment, when I made that decision at nine years old, was when I lost myself, when I became willing to be whatever I thought the people around me needed me to be, in order that I wouldn’t get sent away again, so that I wouldn’t be alone. That was the day I surrendered my life to fear.
My new name was Richard Gilkinson and I recall sitting in my new room trying to figure out how I was supposed to be this new person about whom I knew no more than this. How I was supposed to be anyone at all, as afraid as I was. I was in that home for seven years and I never found the answers.
But I learned to hide quite well. I hid my feelings. I hid my hurts and pain and fear. I hid the shame I felt over being who I suddenly was—the only Indian kid around, the only adopted kid, the only one who didn’t know who his parents were. I hid the anger I felt over this. I hid my resentment, and most of all I hid my fear. My hiding games were clever and no one ever found me. But then, neither did I.
The Gilkinsons tried very hard to make me feel at home. They did everything they knew how to help me feel like I was a part of things. But I had a belly full of fear. I couldn’t tell them how afraid I was to walk out the door every day and be the only brown person I saw. I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to make sense of that. I couldn’t tell them how afraid I was that there was something very wrong with me, of how I believed that if I were lovable, worthwhile, and good that my real family would have kept me. I couldn’t tell them how afraid I was that when they found out how defective and unworthy I was they would send me away, too. I couldn’t tell them about the deep shame I felt about not knowing anything about myself, my history, my culture, my people. I couldn’t tell them how angry I was over the constant teasing, name-calling, and putdowns I endured at school. I couldn’t tell them any of that because I didn’t know how. All I knew then was that if I were to tell them all of the things that I was feeling then they too would send me away.
But when you look closer there’s more. The two white faces seem amiable, eager, accustomed to this process. But the brown one’s smile is pinched, forced, ordered. Only in the eyes can you see the anxiety there. This will be my second new school in the four months since my adoption and I’m terrified all over again. I remember that morning. I walked all the way to that school as slowly as I could. I wanted to run away. I wanted to go anywhere but into that classroom where I knew twenty or more sources of agony were waiting. The photograph reveals that anxiety if you look deeply enough. I always saw it there whenever I looked at it.
The other thing you see on a more focused inspection is the sharp outline of brown on white. I was the attachment, the afterthought, a grafted limb to the family tree. That was always visible. The only negligence my adopted parents were guilty of was ignorance of the fact that I was created to be, and would always be, an Ojibway. They could dress me in all the right white clothes, send me to white schools for a white education, and try to inculcate the right white values in me at home, but I was always going to be what I was created to be: Ojibway. No amount of discipline, punishment, religion, lecturing, or preaching was ever going to make me anything other than what I was created to be. They were ignorant of that. They believed that doing their best for me, providing for me, keeping me safe, teaching me to live the way they lived would recreate me in their image. But I was never meant to be white. I was meant to be Indian and I deserved to know who I was. But I was never given that. I was never given the opportunity to learn anything about my tribe, culture, history, language, philosophy, or even a craft or skill. I was given nothing to help me learn to live as the person I was created to be.
That I was different was obvious enough to my classmates. Heading into my new school that morning I knew what to expect. The glances, the whispers, the outright finger-pointing, and the war whoops from the omnipresent class clown. Then, later, the teasing in the schoolyard, the taunts, the cruel humour of children. Later still, the fistfight with whomever was chosen to put me in my place. And later still, alone in my bed, the silent, bitter tears and the words again in my head—“See, you don’t belong here. You’re not good enough for them. You’re unlovable, unworthy, and unwanted. If they wanted you they wouldn’t treat you like this. If there weren’t something wrong with you they’d like you.”
That’s what I always saw in that photograph. I never told anyone how I felt. I didn’t know that I could. I just suffered alone until alone began to feel more natural than any other way of being.
By the time I was a teenager I was miserable. We’d moved three times. We’d lived in Bradford for three months before leaving for Orangeville. We stayed there a year, then moved to a farmhouse between Mildmay and Walkerton in Bruce County, where we stayed three years before moving finally to St. Catharines, Ontario. In every new town I went through the same agony of trying to feel like I belonged—in school, in church, in the neighbourhood. I was always the only Indian kid and I discovered very quickly that racism and ignorance has the same vocabulary no matter where you go. Name-calling, teasing, fighting, and constant putdowns were a part of my every day and I endured it all alone. I never told the Gilkinsons about any of it or how I felt in the face of it all.
I experimented. I tried leading the class in grades. I tried being the best at sports, being the funniest, the most outrageous, the most unpredictable. I tried everything I could think of to displace the fear and inadequacy I carried in my belly. Nothing worked. The more roles I played the more confused I got about who I was supposed to be, and the more confused I became the harder I tried and the more I failed. The fear of being rejected, abandoned, and isolated was stronger than anything.
By the time we arrived in St. Catharines I was thirteen. The moves left me feeling very insecure, as if my life could be disrupted at any time and I would wind up anywhere, seemingly on a whim. I was afraid to try to make friends because it always felt so terrible to have to move again and leave them behind. It felt like there was always another train station and another waving, weeping person letting them take me away again.
It was 1969. The last tumultuous vestiges of the sixties were still very prevalent in the teen culture of Dalewood Senior Elementary School where I entered Grade 8. To be cool was paramount, as I suppose it still is. Unfortunately for me there were a few things blocking my ability to achieve coolness. First, the Gilkinsons were a very frugal family. Clothes were passed down from my two adopted brothers and in an era when jeans and T-shirts were in vogue, I showed up for school in lime green dress pants, a paisley rayon shirt, and oxford shoes. My hair was still in a brush cut and the glasses I wore were what my classmates referred to as “very Jerry”—meaning the Jerry Lewis character in The Nutty Professor. I was ridiculed from the moment I stepped into the parking lot that first day.
Again, I was the only Indian. As the laughter followed me down the hallway to my home room I decided to do anything I could to stop the laughter. I smoked, swore, acted out in class, and lied about who I was. I chose to be the class clown and with every laugh I got I felt more like I was accepted. I began to believe that all I needed to do was get a reaction from people, that getting attention was the same as getting recognition. It wasn’t. My grades fell. I went from As to Ds in one term and the resulting outcry at home was loud and painful.
But most hurtful of all was Lori. I guess all of us remember our first crush. For me it was Lori. She was a hippie, or at least as close to a hippie as her mother allowed her to be. She had long, curly brown hair that she wore under a variety of hats and she favoured the miniskirts that were popular at the time. She was beautiful—big, blue eyes, long lashes, and a smile that made her seem to radiate. When she invited me to a couple’s skate at the roller rink one Saturday afternoon I almost fell over. All of the guys were after her. When we glided out onto the floor that afternoon I felt a curious mixture of being superior to every guy there and of being inferior to the beautiful and popular girl with whom I was holding hands. I became infatuated very quickly.
Lori was very “into” Indians. She had read many books about Indian people, drawn many pictures, seen many movies and television shows about them and she really wanted to “go with” a Native guy. I was the only Native person she’d ever met and she was determined to be with me. She told me all about this as I walked her home after skating that afternoon. When she asked me questions about my background and heritage I did the only thing I knew how to do: I lied.
Because I hadn’t been given any exposure to my tribal identity at home, I got all my Indian information from the same place everyone else around me got theirs. I watched Westerns on television, read comic books, and went to the movies. From these I gleaned that Indians were bloodthirsty savages with a religion that was close to voodoo. We all rode horses, wore war paint, and must have been afraid of the dark because wagon trains never got attacked during the night. We were untamed, unruly, and needed the help of white people to survive. That was the extent of my cultural knowledge.
By the time I got to school on Monday the word was already out. Guys who’d never bothered talking to me before were suddenly interested in me. Girls who’d laughed and pointed at me before began looking at me out of curiosity. I felt huge. I felt like I mattered. But no one knew that I had no clue at all about my tribe, my history, language, culture, and ritual. No one knew how afraid I was that, when Lori found out that I wasn’t really an Indian, she would drop me and I would be back to being “very Jerry” in no time at all. So I lied even bigger lies. I invented a language I called Ojibway—a guttural, grunting kind of talk with a lot of extraneous hand motions and gestures. I took great pains to write this new language down and commit it to memory. I gave Lori a name in that fictitious language. I told her about ceremonies I’d been to—the Sun Dance, the Rain Dance, the Ghost Dance. I told her about my grandfather the medicine man and the shamans from other tribes who had given me strong medicine so that I could survive in the city. I talked about life on a reservation and stories about life on the land. The more I lied the more she clung to me, and the more interest she showed the more esteem I garnered at school. With the respect came a hunger for more, and the bigger and more fantastic the lies became.
I can almost laugh when I recall that performance. Almost. As I gazed upwards at the stars that night in the foothills I remembered the collapse. Lori had kept on reading about Native life while we were together and she began to detect wide variations between what I was telling her and what the books were saying and showing. I was showing her how to do a war dance and explaining the meaning of war drums to her when she’d finally had enough.
“There’s no war drum. There’s just a drum and it’s used for many things—not just war. If you were really Indian you’d know that. But you’re no Indian,” I recall her saying. “You’re nothing but a phoney.”
She dropped me. Word spread just as quickly this time and I remember the shame and embarrassment I felt walking down the hallway to jeers and laughter. “Big Chief Full-of-Shit” was scrawled across my locker and I was alone again. All of the life I’d felt flowing through me when I was with Lori was gone and in its place was bitterness, shame, and an anger I’d never felt before. I was angry that no one, neither the Tacknyks nor the Gilkinsons, had allowed me to learn anything about who I was. They’d never allowed me to learn about my tribe, my history or culture. I knew then, in the loss of Lori, that I was no one, that all the play-acting I did was just that, that I was a non-entity because I didn’t know who I was. I heard the same familiar words in my head one more time. “There’s something wrong with you. If you were lovable, worthy, wanted, adequate, she’d have kept you. But you’re not, she found out, and now you’re alone.”
Not much changed after that. I lied even more at home, school, and church, and when I was found out in those lies I was punished, banished, or rejected outright. With each reaction I became more determined to be seen, known, recognized. I skipped classes and hung out in pool halls. And I ran away from home. I ran away because even then I thought that geography was a cure. The first time I fled it was just for one night, which I spent huddled in the cab of a parked truck outside of Vineland, Ontario. It was miserable, cramped, and cold, and I actually looked forward to going back to my warm bed.
The second time I ran away, no one even knew. The Gilkinsons were away for the weekend and as soon as they were gone I took off for Toronto. I was there for two days, hanging out on the Yonge Street strip and sleeping on the couch of someone’s “pad.” I mooched enough to get a bus ticket back home, and was there clean and waiting when my parents arrived.
When I was fifteen I had my longest run yet. I’d been putting money in the bank from a paper route I had, and I had saved more than three hundred dollars when I took off in February. I caught a bus to Miami Beach, where I found myself in the company of three old hippies who smoked dope and hung out on the beach. I loved that. There was a laid-back feeling to that lifestyle and I allowed myself to unwind from all the stress I’d created at home. For a while I worked as a busboy in a cafeteria but was let go when I couldn’t provide a U.S. Social Security Number. The money I earned was squandered on pot for my friends, movies, and lunches on the beach. I thought I would never leave. But when my new-found friends discovered I was only fifteen and a runaway, they contacted the Gilkinsons and I was flown home.
Life was horrible after that. During the weeks I’d been gone I’d got a big taste of what the world was like. I’d got a sense of the freedom that was out there, and this knowledge made me eager to escape. I couldn’t tell anyone about the putdowns I endured at high school. The words were suddenly harsher, more explicitly threatening. In the early 1970s, rock and roll was king and the youth was swaying to the message of teen rebellion in the music. Everyone wanted to be considered aloof, distant, rebellious. I was far from cool and because I was different I was singled out for abuse. I so desperately wanted the abuse to stop, for the rejection to end. With every rejection from girls, every sudden silence in the hallway when I passed, every guffaw behind my back, I became more desperate for acceptance. I remember thinking that if being a rebel is what got someone recognized and appreciated, then I would be a rebel. My experience in Miami Beach had taught me a lot about rebellion.
I was relieved to find a friend and an ally right away. Doug was as much of an outcast as I was. With a face pockmarked and scarred by severe acne, he was called “Pizza Face.” His mother and father were divorced and he and his three sisters lived on his mother’s meagre income. His clothes were culled from thrift stores and fit as badly as mine. He was tall and gangly, with a protruding Adam’s apple that jumped about in his throat when he was nervous. We shared two of the same classes and when we met one day in the smoking area—we were supposed to be in one of those classes—we looked at each other and laughed. The laughter joined us as brothers.
Soon Doug and I were going everywhere together. We’d meet on the way to school in the morning and plan our escape. As rebellious as we wanted to be, we both knew that there were certain classes that we couldn’t afford to skip. Some teachers were notorious “rats” and any unexplained absence from their classes would generate a phone call to our homes. So we had to plan. Some days our designated “skips” bracketed lunch hour and we could be free for three hours or more. It wasn’t long before we were regulars at the pool hall on Facer Street in the heart of Little Italy. The regulars there got to like us and began to trust us with little “missions.” These errands usually involved dropping off an envelope somewhere, or picking one up and bringing it back. We always got tipped well for our time, and because we never asked any questions and were reliable the guys kept us busy. It meant we always had money for smokes, pop, and treating other rebels to pizza during those lunch hours when we had to hang around the school. I learned that acceptance could be bought for a few smokes, a small loan, and an I-don’t-care attitude. I liked it.
But Doug and I were less than disciplined. It wasn’t long before we were skipping whole days, then weeks. I became expert at forging my mother’s signature. I would type excuse notes for myself during typing class, then scribble her signature on the bottom. By the end of the term, when report cards were due, I’d missed over a hundred classes.
For the Gilkinsons, academic failure and being absent from class were unpardonable sins. I knew I was in the deepest trouble of my life and faced, at best, the complete forfeiture of privileges. There wasn’t anything I could do to change the situation, so I did what I’d learned to do. I ran away forever, carrying my problems like luggage.
It was late. Looking about I could see nothing but deep shadow. Nothing but what seemed like emptiness. I felt very alone. Every sound seemed louder, closer, more threatening. I could hear strange rustles in the grass nearby, movements in the trees and motions in the air that I had never heard before. I was scared. I had only the thin skin of the blanket between me and whatever was out there. If I had had a weapon I might have felt more secure. But I felt helpless. I began to pray. I told Creation that I was afraid, and it helped. And the longer I sat there, the more I began to realize that the living things that roam the nighttime world weren’t interested in me at all. I had nothing they wanted and none of them approached very near. Unlike me, the animals had always known where they belonged, knew who they were and knew how to be themselves.
I envied them for that. I had never known any of that. My teen years were a sad mix of pain, anxiety, fear, and melancholy. I wanted so much to be included, to not feel different, that I’d ceased to care about where “in” might be. Anywhere would have done. Any group of people would have been okay. If I had been allowed to have access to my culture I might have been given teaching stories. Stories that act as guides to our selves. Stories that John told me about the animals and how they had been given the role of becoming our greatest teachers. As I sat there in that thick darkness I thought about the animals of the world and about a long story John had told me shortly after we’d met.
Before the arrival of Man, the Animal People knew each other very well and could speak with One Mind. They could communicate with each other and the Creator and there was balance and harmony upon Mother Earth.
Then, the Creator called a great meeting of the Animal People, and on the appointed day they gathered in a big circle. There had never been a need for a meeting before, and there was much talk about why the Creator would call one. No one had a clue but everyone agreed that it must be very, very important.
When they were all assembled, the Creator began to speak.
“I am sending a strange new creature to live among you,” the Creator said. “This creature will not be like you in any way. In fact, it will be unlike you and will actually fear you.”
The Animal People exchanged puzzled glances at this news. Fear was unknown amongst them.
“These strange creatures will walk on two legs, will have no hair on their bodies, will speak a language you won’t understand, and will grow up believing that they must control Mother Earth.”
The Animal People gasped. They knew without question that Mother Earth needed no control. Nature could always take care of itself. This would be a strange creature indeed.
“These creatures will arrive with the ability to dream. They will use this talent to create many things, things that will serve their belief in control but will also separate them from you. The further they move from you the more they will need you. The reason I called you here today was to ask you to help these strange new creatures. No one knows the world like you and they are going to need your advice and experience if they are to survive.”
A deep murmur spread amongst the Animal People. This was a great request and certainly not one to be taken lightly.
“You are to be their teachers. From you they will learn how to live with Mother Earth. What I ask is very important because I also want to send these new creatures out into the world with a wonderful gift. I will give them the gift of Truth and Life. You have never needed this gift because you come out into the world knowing who and what you are. But this new creature, this Man, will not know that—and you must help him.
“I want this gift to be a search, because if I were to give it to Man openly he would take it for granted and not make use of it. So I am going to hide it. For that I need your help. I need you to tell me where to hide the gift of Truth and Life so that Man cannot find it too easily and take it for granted.”
The Animal People grew excited. The Creator had never asked for their help before and they were all anxious to provide the best hiding place of all for the new creature’s gift.
“I know where to hide it, my Creator,” said Buffalo. “Put it on my hump and I will carry it into the middle of the Great Plains and I will bury it there.”
Everyone murmured at such a great idea. “That’s a strong idea, my Brother,” Creator said, “but not strong enough. Because it is destined that Man will inhabit every nook and cranny of the world and he would find it too easily and take it for granted.”
Then Otter stepped forward. “Give it to me, my Creator, and I will carry it to the bottom of the deepest ocean and I will hide it there.”
Everyone gasped at another great idea. “Thank you, Sister,” said Creator, “but Man’s ability to dream will allow him to go even there and he would find it too easily and take it for granted.”
“Then give it to me,” said Eagle, “and I will take it in my talons and fly it to the face of the Moon and hide it there.”
Surely, everyone thought, this had to be the most incredible hiding place and they were all stunned when Creator said, “No, my Brother, as great an idea as that is, it is not great enough because Man will find a way to travel there, too, and he will find it too easily and take it for granted.”
This was becoming a much harder task than anyone imagined. One by one the Animal People stepped forward to suggest hiding places for the wonderful gift. One by one their ideas were put aside. Soon the Animal People began to grow discouraged. They felt like they were failing the Creator because they could not come up with a hiding place ingenious enough for the gift of Truth and Life.
Then, a tiny voice was heard from the back of the circle. “I know where to hide this gift, my Creator,” said the voice.
Everyone turned to see who this speaker was. There was a murmur of surprise. The speaker was a mole—a tiny, nearly sightless mole that rarely spoke. The Animal People moved to allow her to step forward.
“Tell us, then, Sister, where to hide the gift,” said Creator.
“Where he is least likely to look,” said Mole. “Put it inside him. Only the most insightful and the purest of heart will have the courage to look there. Put it inside him, my Creator.”
And that is where the Creator placed the gift of Truth and Life. Inside every man and woman. And the Animal People became Man’s greatest teacher, to fulfill their agreement with the Creator.
When Man first appeared on Mother Earth, the new creature was helpless. He had no knowledge of where he was or how to begin the journey to discover his purpose. He just sat around in the shade of a tree and watched the animals. He was fascinated by the amazing display of difference. As one by one the Animal People came by to help him, the new creature sat spellbound by the parade of animals.
Man was so enthralled that he didn’t do anything. The Animal People had to bring Man food and water, or he might have perished. Man seemed content just to sit and watch. The Animal People knew that they were supposed to teach these new creatures, and they were puzzled at what seemed like laziness on the part of Man. They tried coaxing him out from under the branches of the tree he sat under. They tried sending their babies to play just beyond his reach in hopes that this might encourage Man to stand on his two feet, as was his destiny, and begin to discover the world. Nothing worked.
They sent their playful ones—Otter, Squirrel, Blue Jay—to try and get him on his feet. They sent the proud ones—Eagle, Bear, Wolverine—in hopes that he might stand in the face of such majesty. They sent the crafty ones—Weasel, Fox, Snake—in hopes they might cajole or trick the new creature up and away from the tree. Still, Man simply watched in amazement.
With One Mind the Animal People spoke to each other. This was the first crucial barrier they needed to pass to become the teachers they needed to be. But they were frustrated. Everyone came up with ideas about how to get Man on two feet and moving into the world. Every idea failed.
But one bright morning, when the sun was shining through the branches of his tree, Man saw something marvellous. From across the meadow came a floating cloud of colour. The colour danced and swooped and dipped and curled all around, inside and over itself. Man was dazzled. Closer and closer the colour came, and as it did the more excited Man grew. He began to giggle and clap his hands in glee. He began to squirm around and reach out towards the cloud of colour. As it got nearer and nearer, Man stretched out his hands towards it until finally the cloud fluttered under the branches of the tree. It was a swarm of butterflies—brilliant, glittering, shimmering. As the butterflies danced in the air around his head, Man laughed and laughed and laughed. His hands stretched out wider and wider, farther and farther towards the cloud of butterflies. Each time, the radiant swarm moved just beyond his grasp. Finally, with playful abandon, Man stumbled to his feet and began chasing the butterflies out into the meadow. He chased them all that morning, and by the time Man realized he was hungry he had grown used to walking and running on two feet. To this day, the butterflies still dance about the heads of children to remind them of the time the cloud of dazzling wings was needed to get Man up and moving.
For the next while, Man continued to watch the Animal People. Being out from under the tree made it easier for him to follow his teachers as they made their way around the world. Man watched and learned. From the animals he learned to hunt, to gather, to store, to shelter and clean himself. He learned the rules of family, kinship, and harmony, and how to honour Mother Earth. Man began to gather the benefits of living as the Animal People taught them. Life was in balance. Life was natural.
But as was his destiny, Man began to think and dream.
It wasn’t long before he was searching for his own way to do things. The simple ways of his Animal brothers and sisters seemed too easy, too relaxed. Man wanted more control. Soon he began gathering more than he needed, and greed was born. He began to take pleasure in surrounding himself with things of the world—furs, good lodges, meat—and jealousy came into being. It wasn’t long before the good hunters began to look down upon the less talented ones, and judgement was created. After judgement came anger, and with anger came fear, and right on the heels of fear trotted insecurity and resentment. Burdened with these new feelings, Man began trying harder and harder to gain things, to have things, and to exploit the world around him. He began to forget the vital teachings of the Animal People and there was a great slaughter.
The Animal People were afraid. Never before had there been killing for the sake of having. Life was sacred, and when one life needed to be given to sustain another it was done respectfully and with great honour for the one that was sacrificed. But Man was killing to seem bigger and better than the others, and was beginning to try and claim the land as his own for the same reasons. When this happened the Animal People grew afraid of Man.
But they never forgot their mission. They remembered that their role was to be Man’s teachers, and even though they took to hiding from him and keeping their distance, they continued to teach them. But Man mistook their distance for sneakiness and slyness and began using these against each other, too.
“What will we do?” asked Raccoon at yet another great meeting in a clearing in a forest far away from Man’s eyes. “How can we teach Man when he is so eager to take us for himself?”
“He is so quick,” said Crane. “As soon as we teach him another part of our way, he turns it around to suit himself. There isn’t time to show him how wrong this is.”
“He doesn’t even try now,” said Wolf. “When he hears my song he no longer tries to listen for the teaching. He only feels fear and wants to keep me away.”
“How can we teach him? How can we fulfill our mission without putting ourselves in danger? How can we help him survive?” asked Beaver.
There were again many suggestions and, just as before, many rejections. No one could come up with a way of teaching that would be respectful of everyone’s life. Finally, Bat spoke up.
“Man has learned by watching us,” she said. “Everything he knows of the world has come from us. Every bit of his knowing has come from watching, from seeing. Well, I do not see, but I have learned to listen to the world in order to find my way—to feel, to experience.
“Maybe the best way to teach Man now is to let him feel his way around the world that way, too. Let him bump into things, lose things, get confused, flutter about in the dark for a while. Then he’ll learn to appreciate seeing for what it is.”
And that is what they did. One by one the Animal People disappeared from the world of Man. They became creatures of the dark, of the deep waters, of the highest flight, the deepest burrows, the farthest corners of the forests, the steepest peaks, and remotest valleys. They ceased to speak with One Mind in case Man, in his dreaming, might find a way to speak this way, too. They separated and Man was left alone.
Loneliness was born. Before the departure of the Animal People, Man had felt comfortable and secure in the world. Now, with his teachers gone, Man became filled with a deep blue feeling in the pit of his belly. It was an uncomfortable feeling, one he did not like and wanted far away from. But instead of turning back to his teachers for guidance, Man chose to become even more and more concerned with getting and having. He seemed to believe that getting and having was the cure for the deep blue feeling in his belly. But the more he got and the more he had, the more that feeling grew.
Soon the new creatures had divided themselves into groups. Each separate group found its own place in the world and settled there. They called these places “home.” At home, Man worked hard to put great distances between himself and the deep blue feeling called loneliness. But all he achieved was to put great distances between his groups. The loneliness grew. Man told himself that the feeling came from not having enough, so he worked hard until finally he had achieved his destiny and filled every nook and cranny of the world. There were fields where forests had stood, dams in rivers and streams that once flowed strong and swift to the sea, roads where once trails had been blazed, and fences to mark where one’s home ended and another began. Man had shaped his world into straight lines. He had made things predictable, controllable, secure. Still, loneliness lived in the deep pit of his belly.
The Animal People watched all of it from their hiding places. They could sense Man’s desperation, and when it got to the point where they could not endure Man’s suffering any longer they met in a secret valley in the mountains.
“It gets worse,” said Bear. “Even though they suffer they still keep on the same path.”
“Yes,” agreed Turtle. “I have heard from my cousins around the world that it’s the same everywhere.”
“But we still need to teach them,” said Rabbit. “We agreed to be their teachers at the request of Creator and they still need our help.”
“That’s true. That’s very true,” said Cougar. “But they are so stubborn. So ready to pounce on us if ever we show ourselves. Who can teach anything when all we mean to them is food or hide?”
“Maybe we should choose,” said Owl.
“Choose? Choose what?” asked Porcupine.
“Not what,” said Owl. “Who.”
“What do you mean?” asked Buffalo.
“I mean,” replied Owl, “that we should chose one group, one Family of Man, and teach them. And maybe, just maybe, that Family of Man can reach the others.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Squirrel. “But how do we choose? And who is worthy?”
“No one. No one is worthy,” said grumpy Skunk. “Everywhere it’s the same. There isn’t anyone living according to the teachings. No one who remembers what we taught them in the beginning. None is worthy.”
“There must be someone. Somewhere,” said Woodpecker.
“Where?” asked Moose.
“This is what we should do,” said Owl, after much talk. “We will send out a scout. The scout will travel far and wide and if he or she can find one Family of Man that is still following the teachings, still living in the way we taught them in the beginning, then we’ll come out of hiding and teach them again. But if such a family cannot be found, we will disappear forever and leave Man to his destiny. Whatever that may be.”
“But who will go? Who will be this scout?” asked Honeybee.
“I will go,” said a loud, distinguished voice. Everyone looked up at the branches of a nearby pine tree to see Eagle perched there. “I will be this scout. I will fly around the face of the world and try to find one Family of Man still living in the original manner. My eyes can see far, my wings are strong. I will go.”
No one could think of a better scout than Eagle and so, after resting for a day, the great bird flew off on his search. The rest of the Animal People remained in the valley and bided their time with talk of the days before Man, and the legends and stories that had been born in that time. Eagle flew endlessly. From one part of the world to another he soared high above the settlements where Man had made homes and searched for people living according to the old teachings. Here and there he grew hopeful when he saw flashes of the guidance the Animal People had given Mankind, but time and again he was disappointed to see them display the new ways of disharmony.
Still, Eagle believed that there must still be Families of Man that were faithful to the teachings and so he flew and flew. He knew that if he failed to find people honouring the Earth and living good lives, he and his Animal brothers and sisters would say goodbye to Man. Man would be left without guides and teachers and he would fail to discover who he had been created to be. Eagle did not want that to happen, for despite their new separateness the Animal People loved Man and wanted very much for him to fulfill his destiny. So he searched and searched.
Back in the valley, the Animal People grew restless. Eagle had been gone for a long time and it was beginning to look as though no one would be found who lived in the original manner. But one day a great cry went up. Someone had spotted Eagle slowly flapping his way back towards them. The Animal People gathered themselves into a circle again and when Eagle finally swooped down to join them they were anxious for news. The look on Eagle’s face told the story.
“I’ve been everywhere,” said the tired bird. “I’ve searched from the moment I left until the moment I returned and there is no one anywhere that lives in the old manner.”
A hush fell over the circle.
“Well, that’s that, then,” said Owl.
“It’s over,” said Heron.
“We’ve no choice,” said Bear.
“Yes, yes, we do,” said Eagle. Everyone looked at him, surprised. “I will go on one more circle. We owe Man that. Good teachers never stop being teachers and we owe Man the effort to look again.”
“But you’ve been everywhere,” said Badger. “Where else can you possibly look?”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Eagle. “I’ve been looking, searching with my eyes for what my soul wants to see. But our sister the Bat said it best when we started all of this. I’ll search again, but this time I will use my feelings instead of my eyes. I will let my feelings guide me. That, after all, is the one true search.”
So off he went. The West, the “Looks-Within Place,” called to him and he flew in that direction. After a day he soared over the crest of a hill and there, alongside a stream, was a small wigwam. Closing his eyes, he breathed in very deeply as he soared over it and he felt a warm calm come over him. The more time he spent soaring over that wigwam, the more the sense of calm grew. Finally, a man, woman, and child emerged from the forest. They were carrying berries, a few fish and some herbs. When they arrived at their wigwam they made a tobacco offering and said a long prayer of gratitude for the gifts they had received that day. Eagle was impressed and settled high in a treetop to observe.
For four days he hid himself in the tree and watched this Family of Man. They prayed. They treated each other respectfully and kindly. They offered blessings back to the land. They walked gently upon the face of Mother Earth. On the fourth day, when Eagle followed them to a wigwam half a day away and saw them share their food, hides, and herbs with another family, he was filled with a tremendous joy. He raced back to the mountains to tell his brothers and sisters. There was rejoicing amongst the Animal People for the righteous family Eagle had found.
They came out of hiding. They were still willing to be the teachers Man needed in order to find his purpose on the Earth, but they were cautious. Man’s readiness to take control had worried them. They had learned the truth—that knowledge and gifts too easily gained were also too easily squandered or ignored. So, just as they had once helped the Creator hide the wonderful gift of Truth and Life so that it would be a search, they would make the teachings they carried a search as well. Learning had to involve sacrifice. That is why, to this day, the Animal People venture very cautiously into the world of Man. They still come, and they always will, but it takes a careful eye to spot them, an open heart to hear the message in their call, and a spirit ready to learn the teachings they carry.