Thursday January 28, 2021

Yet They Thrive

I worked at the toy factory for over 33 years. I was older than many of my co-workers (some of them by over 40 years) and because of that fact, and that I wasn’t born nor raised around here, I was always ‘strange’ to them. I could’ve fit in if I had been more sports-minded or was in tune with thier multi-generational worlds, but by this time I was entrenched in my own age and thought of things differently. We may have been co-workers, but with one or two rare exceptions, we never became close friends.

There was one individual, a Canadian, with whom I worked closely; a man thirteen years younger than I, who, for a majority of those years, we were often teamed up on work projects for the reason that we both worked hard; neither slacked off and let the other carry more of a load. I learned things from him and he learned things from me. He got along good with people, whatever age or gender; one reason being that he either liked you or he didn’t, and was brutally straight about it.

During these early years of our employment, he was seemingly critical toward Canadian First Nations people from the nearby border town communities of southeastern Manitoba, and southwestern Ontario where he was from originally. He would mimic their speech patterns punctuated with French phrases and call them lazy. I never really thought much about it, as it often seemed just in fun, but as the years went by, I realized it was a litany of racism. He had a French surname, and as I learned much later, his wife was a First Nations woman.

Our friendship had grown to a point over the years where we had visited one another’s homes, got to know one another’s families, and eaten meals together. Our children were about the same age. I had met his folks; talked to his dad, learned about them, and their lives.

I had been reading about Indigenous people for years by that time, cultures different from my own, residing around me, all of which I wanted to be less ignorant. I could see that many of the people who were born in this region of northwest Minnesota, as anywhere else, had their prejudices and regarded Indigenous people as invisible -- or impossible.

This disparity he displayed, began making me think. Each story or event involved a person or group of people, he called lazy, and were unemployed he said because of lack of ambition, not for lack of work. They were people who he thought took advantage of the welfare system, had become dependent on it, and acted deserving of it. He had no time for them.

Finally, I spoke up, when he started down that path for the hundredth time, I said, 

“Wait! What are you doin’? I remember that you told me that your dad and his brother were taken away to ‘go live with the nuns,’ and that they were made to work hard. They worked in the garden, and that the nuns got vegetable soup, but all the kids got was the water. Your dad and his brother ran away and but stayed away from their home where they knew others would be looking for them. They hid out and were helped by people around them for a couple years until your dad was old enough to get a job.

“You bad-mouth First Nations people when, if anyone knows a thing or two about Canadian fur trade history, and especially the French, whose language you liberally spout here on occasion -- the First Nations Indigenous people inter-married with them, ay?

“The fact your dad and his brother were sent ‘to live with the nuns’ is likely they were children who were torn from their family and sent to residential school, where they were beaten when they spoke their language, beaten when they ever did anything wrong, were abused, and worked like slaves.

“Your dad and your uncle escaped, scared for their very lives as Indigenous children.

“You facetiously imitate your niece’s and nephew’s speech, in a song-song way, “Is my dad there?” Or you disrespect an older person asking for something you think he doesn’t deserve because he hasn’t got a job; he’s on welfare. Aren’t these people your relatives? Family? Your wife, your children, -- you -- First Nations? Correct me if I’m wrong here. You’ve never been one to hold your tongue.”

The man nodded, then smiling ever so slightly, said “I hate it that you know so much about this stuff. When Dad and his brother went to live with the nuns, it was just something they did back then . . .”

“Riiii-ight . . .”

A few weeks later, we had returned from lay-off over Christmas, and gathered in a break-room just before our shift started. A co-worker about my age was talking to the Canadian.

“Well, I’m Polish,” the co-worker said, proud of the fact his great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Poland, a couple generations ago. 

“If you were born in the United States, but live in Canada, what’s your nationality? Are you Canadian or American?”

The Canadian said, “I have dual citizenship. I’m both Canadian and American.”

The co-worker said, “What? That’s not a nationality! You can’t be both!”

And the Canadian said, turning to look at me, “I’m French-Canadian Indian. ”

“Really?” the older co-worker said with sincerity in his voice. “I didn’t know that.”

The Canadian’s seemingly racist attitude toward others of his own cultural ancestry may stem from the indoctrination of residential school, although he may have never attended one. He did attend a Catholic high school in Ontario in the 1970s. His behavior may have been an effectual display of the success residential schools had severing family and cultural ties across the generations; fomenting in the minds of many of those people who attended residential schools, that they were good citizens, and those who didn’t, were lazy or unemployable. As residential, or boarding schools, existed in both Canada and the United States 1870s-1996, and 1860-1978, respectfully; this phenomenon isn’t unknown.

In 2001, I was given the privilege to know an Anishinaabe elder residing near Cass Lake, Minnesota, whose mother had been in a residential school from early childhood to young adult, and had been so changed by the experience that she had denounced all family and cultural ties, including recognizing her own parents. The elder learned of her White Earth reservation family from an aunt, whom she didn’t know she had, just at a time when she needed the support of relatives the most.

As a non-Native, and student of Minnesota history, I took great interest in her story. She was kind enough to allow me to learn a little of the early years of her life and how it was for her to become an American Indian Culture Educator on the reservation restoring Native pride when it was something she, herself, was totally unaware. With help by people of the reservation, she laid the groundwork for a program that never existed before, and that she went onto develop and teach for over twenty years; an amazing feat, I think.

Her stories also shed some light on what re-becoming Anishinaabe involved, a story so compelling I’ve thought of it all these many years and have always felt the Native community should make something of celebrating her life; something wholly compiled and produced by Native writers and artists. 

http://www.anishinabek.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/An-Overview-of-the-IRS-System-Booklet.pdf.