Seasons of My Life as a Little Girl, Part I
(A series about life before, during and after residential school.)
SUMMER
Summer days by the river are etched in my mind, forever fresh, not like the yellowing Kodaks that my grandmother kept in a shoebox. My memories are seeped in sunshine. The hot
midday sun glistens off the river, causing the mist over the marshes to dissipate. The breezes are warm, with the scent of ripening apples. Daisies and clover flourish on the banks. Above in the cherry trees, a blue jay scolds the wild horses that have come down to the beach to drink.
My big sister and I, in homemade cotton dresses and bare feet, skip along the riverbank, high above the waterline. Two little Ojibway girls, not worrying or caring that soon we will be removed from this place forever, and that this acreage, which has been in the family for generations, will become band land, and in essence, we will be homeless strangers in the place of our birth.
When you are ten and eleven, property, birthright and home are not concepts that concern you. My grandfather said the land was ours and we would get it when he died. The river, deep and crystal clear, was there when I was born and I saw no reason for it to change. The wild horses would disappear in the winter and come back with babies in the spring. The rhythm had been established before I was born. That was how it was.
Autumn
The nights are getting cold and the trees are changing colours. Soon we will be going back to school. That means leaving early in the morning and arriving back home in the evening. It is a long walk and the bullies at the corner, big mean boys, will torment us, often bloodying our noses or fattening a lip.
I live with my mother, grandfather, sister and some younger siblings. We are considered poor, but I will discover, once at school, there are other families who struggle to keep food on the table. The animals have been trapped out, big game is far in the interior and the store on the mainland is not as generous with credit as it once was. Anyway, my grandfather is blind and cannot hunt, although he does plant a garden every spring.
I like school, and I enjoy being in a one-room classroom. The teacher assigns reading to the higher grades as she teaches new things to the younger kids. She then gives us assignments and goes on to a higher grade in the next row. I always hurry through my work so I can listen to the other lessons. I learn about General Wolfe and the Plains of Abraham, about presidents, prime ministers and kings. I hear of Indian wars, but never Indian heroes. I invent some. As we skip and run the four miles home, I sing the songs I learned in school and tease my humourless older sister. In my child’s mind, this too will never end.
Winter
Winter means frost on the windowpanes and a wood fire burning in the big stove in the kitchen. Sometimes clothes are drying on a clothesline behind the stove. The fragrance of baking bannock greets you at the door. Our house is bare, except for essentials. At the time, to me, it was a palace.
Misho (mishomis), my grandfather, would cut the wood, haul the water and buy food with his pension.
I don’t remember the last time I saw my father. He left a long time ago to find work on the American side of the border. Maybe he is still looking. I know he used to write for the newspaper in town and played guitar and piano by ear. He was always very angry. Mostly because he could not get work except in the fields or factories. Someone said he quit the local town newspaper when they refused to publish births and deaths of people on the reserve, because they were not citizens or real people.
Before my father left, I remember evenings when men from around the reserve would come over and talk. Perched out of sight at the top of the stairs, I heard words like "unceded," enfranchised" and "relocation."
They talked about how some people sold their Indian status for money so they could vote. I understood that the land we lived on was never ratified in a treaty and that our little tribe could be forced to move if the white people needed or wanted it. It made no sense. It seemed wrong that someone could have so much power over another's life. It was an adult issue, but it stayed in my mind. I knew I could never marry out of the race or sell my birthright if it meant giving up being Ojibway.
One day, I wrote a poem about the river and gave it to my mother. She tacked it to the wall above the stove in the kitchen. She did not know about magnets on the fridge door and we did not have a fridge, anyway. I remember the first time I tasted Jell-O. It was on a snowy evening when Misho and my mother returned from the general store across the river. My big sister, who went with them to help carry home groceries, bought Jell-O. She made it in the kitchen, following directions on the box and then placed the bowl in the snow bank in the yard. It froze before it gelled. It tasted like Popsicles.
Spring
The snow disappears from the forests and the meadows. The wild horses are returning. As are the geese, honking overhead in their V-formations, sometimes stopping overnight in the nearby marshes. Trilliums will soon flood the woods behind my Uncle Andrew’s property. I can hardly wait for school to be out. I am a full inch taller than last April.
We hire a white farmer from across the river to plough the field for my Misho’s vegetable garden. My sister, who is bossy, insists on lettuce, along with the potatoes, corn, beans and squash. Soon we will be busy pulling weeds and scaring away the crows. Soon we will be enjoying the first small white potatoes.
On languid afternoons, I would watch silver airplanes high in the sky, no bigger than pebbles. They were far away and would quickly fade into the blue. Airplanes became personal one day when I was playing in the field by the river. A small crop duster came out of nowhere and buzzed down right over where I stood. I ran home, screaming and crawled under the bed. I would not be coaxed out and fell asleep in the cool darkness.
The river is warming up after being frozen solid enough to support the old rez cars. The starlings are quarreling in the cherry blossoms. The red-winged blackbirds are busy in the marshes. Fat, slippery tadpoles swim in the creek that runs from the river into the woods. Soon the forest floor will boast a dazzling carpet of wild flowers and rich green ferns. And my little dog is plump with puppies.
Life on the river is good. The rhythm was established long before I was born. That is how it was in the life of a small Ojibway girl.
Ramona Kiyoshk, Ojibway, is an award-winning journalist
and former residential school student, who
enjoys travel and is a passionate advocate
of animal rights, the arts, literature,
and lifelong learning.
