White Guy
I grew up on a farm 50 north of Lloydminster, nestled in a fertile crook in the North Saskatchewan River. My family's farm is big now, one of the few left in the area, and those farms left are either defunct or still growing. Less than 10km north across that same river sits the Onion Lake First Nation, a place I only visited twice in the 17 farm-bound years of my youth. I never had a single friend from Onion Lake, except for the blessed feeds of HBO and ESPN they rebroadcast from the Reserve.
First was Muffy, a girl in my kindergarten class. She was different from the rest of us. Like most prairie towns, my class of 25 was full of white people, mostly anglo-saxons and one Iranian refugee, and Muffy. In grade six we were joined by a girl from Hong Kong. Anyway, with Muffy, I knew she was different but didn't understand why her skin was a different colour. I didn't connect her features with the Reserve, and the Reserve's existence was all I knew about the First Nations. I was not a very sociable kid and never got to know her, but I recognized her as a fellow outcast. I avoided her for fear that I would be further alienated from the class by her friendship. By Grade 2 she was gone. She had moved away and I remember regretting not getting to know that girl who looked different from us.
Next was the C---l family, A-----a and D-----e and their youngest brother, Darren. In that way that rural places work, through overheard adult conversations and school-bus rumours, I had gleaned a vague understanding of their family tree. Their family was a mix of Cree and Metis and white people. Remarriage meant that the first generation of kids from their mom was Metis, and the second group of kids was full-blood Cree. Despite the fact that the whole family spoke three languages, Cree, English and French, they had a bad reputation in the school and D----e dropped out. My mom was good friends with one of the oldest kids, K--y, whose second marriage was to one of the C--lls. She was probably the most intelligent person I knew as a kid. Later I babysat for them and borrowed books from her massive attic library.
In school there was this weird relationship with the people who everyone called Indians. At the time the First Nations kids even called themselves Indian. We had to differentiate them from people from India by saying "you mean from India?" I would guess that one guy in my class was either partially black or Metis, but neither he nor his family ever owned up to it; instead he was one of most vicious racists in the class. First Nations were made fun of in the same way that the kids made fun of Tracy, the girl from Hong Kong. Racial names were attached, they were accused of being stupid. Adults branded them as being bad kids, to be avoided, though Darren was better behaved and smarter than most people in my class, and by my graduation he was one of the more popular kids in school. He dropped out that year, in Grade 11. I was school bus friends with Darren but it didn't run very deep. It's not like we talked about our feelings or how he really felt when someone called him an Indian or a Nigger. I always felt a weird sense of guilt about what he had to experience but, then, I never did anything about it, either.
He was the end of it until I left and went to University. I had a good Cree friend there - just one - who sat on the Students' Union. He was Cree, too, and he had great stories about transforming his life by getting in touch with the elders at the Native Centre. It ran a little deeper, because we drank together and worked together. Then I left University and met a Metis guy in Toronto.
I don't know how important the final count is. The point is that as a white guy, I feel a profound sense of alienation from First Nations people. So today, when I had a long call with Calvin from the Youth Centre at Onion Lake, I kept blustering on the phone about why I wanted the First Nations and Onion Lake to be a part of this film. I know this is part of the story: I need to reconcile the prejudice that informed so much of life on the farm. If I am to integrate this experience into myself, I have to face up to it. There was an unexplainable gap between the Aboriginal history we learned about in school (all two weeks of it) and the Indians we knew (all three of them).
Can I do that by spending a few days interviewing people on the reserve?
First was Muffy, a girl in my kindergarten class. She was different from the rest of us. Like most prairie towns, my class of 25 was full of white people, mostly anglo-saxons and one Iranian refugee, and Muffy. In grade six we were joined by a girl from Hong Kong. Anyway, with Muffy, I knew she was different but didn't understand why her skin was a different colour. I didn't connect her features with the Reserve, and the Reserve's existence was all I knew about the First Nations. I was not a very sociable kid and never got to know her, but I recognized her as a fellow outcast. I avoided her for fear that I would be further alienated from the class by her friendship. By Grade 2 she was gone. She had moved away and I remember regretting not getting to know that girl who looked different from us.
Next was the C---l family, A-----a and D-----e and their youngest brother, Darren. In that way that rural places work, through overheard adult conversations and school-bus rumours, I had gleaned a vague understanding of their family tree. Their family was a mix of Cree and Metis and white people. Remarriage meant that the first generation of kids from their mom was Metis, and the second group of kids was full-blood Cree. Despite the fact that the whole family spoke three languages, Cree, English and French, they had a bad reputation in the school and D----e dropped out. My mom was good friends with one of the oldest kids, K--y, whose second marriage was to one of the C--lls. She was probably the most intelligent person I knew as a kid. Later I babysat for them and borrowed books from her massive attic library.
In school there was this weird relationship with the people who everyone called Indians. At the time the First Nations kids even called themselves Indian. We had to differentiate them from people from India by saying "you mean from India?" I would guess that one guy in my class was either partially black or Metis, but neither he nor his family ever owned up to it; instead he was one of most vicious racists in the class. First Nations were made fun of in the same way that the kids made fun of Tracy, the girl from Hong Kong. Racial names were attached, they were accused of being stupid. Adults branded them as being bad kids, to be avoided, though Darren was better behaved and smarter than most people in my class, and by my graduation he was one of the more popular kids in school. He dropped out that year, in Grade 11. I was school bus friends with Darren but it didn't run very deep. It's not like we talked about our feelings or how he really felt when someone called him an Indian or a Nigger. I always felt a weird sense of guilt about what he had to experience but, then, I never did anything about it, either.
He was the end of it until I left and went to University. I had a good Cree friend there - just one - who sat on the Students' Union. He was Cree, too, and he had great stories about transforming his life by getting in touch with the elders at the Native Centre. It ran a little deeper, because we drank together and worked together. Then I left University and met a Metis guy in Toronto.
I don't know how important the final count is. The point is that as a white guy, I feel a profound sense of alienation from First Nations people. So today, when I had a long call with Calvin from the Youth Centre at Onion Lake, I kept blustering on the phone about why I wanted the First Nations and Onion Lake to be a part of this film. I know this is part of the story: I need to reconcile the prejudice that informed so much of life on the farm. If I am to integrate this experience into myself, I have to face up to it. There was an unexplainable gap between the Aboriginal history we learned about in school (all two weeks of it) and the Indians we knew (all three of them).
Can I do that by spending a few days interviewing people on the reserve?
posted by Jared at 5:23 PM
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