Indian Horse

When your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. That is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. That's what they inflicted on us.

We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.” The quote of a grandmother explaining The Great Mystery of the universe to her grandson.

I understood then that when you miss a thing it leaves a hole that only the thing you miss can fill.

I discovered that being someone you are not is often easier than living with the person you are.

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.

For my wife Deborah, for allowing me to bask in her light and become more.

I saw kids die of tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and broken hearts at St. Jerome’s.

We were taught to be God-fearing,” my mother said. “One who loves does not brandish fear or require it.

We need mystery,” she said. “Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility, grandson, is the foundation of all learning.

But there were always things swimming around in me that I could neither hold on to long enough to comprehend or learn to live with. It was like the change in the air that comes before a storm. You feel the energy build but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. That’s what it was like for me. When those times came I couldn’t talk. There was no language for it. I suppose when you can’t understand something yourself it’s impossible to let anybody else in even if you’re motivated to.

Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother.

I learned that I could draw the boundaries of my physical self inward, collapse the space I occupied and become a mote, a speck, an indifferent atom in its own peculiar orbit.

I'm twenty-three years old, I'm working graveyard in the fucking mine and I been there since I was sixteen. I'll be thee until it kills me or I'm too fucking old. I ain't got no out. I don't mind that. I got Emma and I got the kids and I got the Moose until I'm too damn old for that too. But someone reached down and put lightning bolts in your legs, Saul. Someone put thunder in your wrist shot and eyes in the back of your fucking head. You were made for this game. So you gotta give this a shot for all of us who're never gonna get out of Manitouwadge.

I understood then how hard years are to get a hold of, how elusive the life in them can be to capture and retell. I understood then too that time does not heal all wounds.

Late in the evenings I’d walk into the trees, stride through the bush until I was wrapped in it, cocooned. The stars that pinwheeled above spun a thousand light years away. Time, mystery, departure and union were there all at once. I wondered if this was what it meant to be Indian, Ojibway. A ritual. A ceremony, ancient and simple and personal. If I could have borne it with me into the day-to-day life of the camp, things might have been different.

They scooped out our insides, Saul. We are not responsible for that. We are not responsible for what happened to us. None of us are,” Fred said. LBut our healing - that’s up to us.

That school gave you words that do not apply to us,” my grandmother said. “Out here there is no need to keep the spirit bound to fear.” “We were taught to be God-fearing,” my mother said. “One who loves does not brandish fear or require it.” The old woman stopped her braiding to look at my mother and aunt, but they kept their heads down and continued with the ties. “Here in this old way you may rediscover that and reclaim it as your own.

I wondered how people could live with things set in place, fixed, their places determined by the power of the recollection they contained, the memories they held. It was what made a home, I believed; the things we keep, the sum of us.

I got out without another word and stood in the snow and watched his old car disappear around the bend. His leaving was an ache that stayed with me for days. I would never see him again.

The change that comes our way will come in many forms. In sights that are mysterious to our eyes, in sounds that are grating on our ears, in ways of thinking that will crash like thunder in our hearts and minds. But we must learn to ride each one of these horses of change. It is what the future asks of us and our survival depends on it.

Hockey is like the universe, Saul,” he said one day. “When you stand in the dark and look up at it, you see the placid fire of stars. But if we were right in the heart of it, we’d see chaos. Comets churning by. Meteorites. Star explosions. Things being born, things dying. Chaos, Saul. But that chaos is organized. It’s harnessed. It’s controlled. What you can’t see under all the action, the speed, the mayhem, is the great spirit of this game. That’s what makes you so extraordinary. You have that spirit within you.

Often, while the others were sleeping, I’d look out the window and watch the land flow by. Some nights there would be a moon, and the shadows it created were spectacular. Trees became many-armed creatures looming across the road. Lakes were shining phosphorescent platters. Ridges and scarps were fortresses capped with snow. Rivers were serpentine swaths of a deeper black. I loved every inch of it. I’d largely given up mourning the loss of my early life, those days on the land with my family. But the sadness filled me at times as we drove through the night.

My mouth would be open with glee and I would face the picture of Jesus hung there on the wall, my salvation coming instead through wood and rubber and ice and the dream of a game. I’d stand there, arms held high in triumph, and I would not feel lonely or afraid, deserted or abandoned, but connected to something far bigger than myself. Then I’d climb back into bed and sleep until the dawn woke me and I could walk back out to the rink again.

I had some once. They didn’t pan out. I don’t have them anymore.

Amid the slaps and pokes and guffaws that greeted them, I discovered that being someone you are not is often easier than living with the person you are. I became drunk with that.

They scooped out our insides, Saul. We’re not responsible for that. We’re not responsible for what happened to us. None of us are.” Fred said. “But our healing—that’s up to us. That’s what saved me. Knowing it was my game.” “Could be a long game,” I said. “So what if it is?” he said. “Just keep your stick on the ice and your feet moving. Time will take care of itself.

I felt as though nothing had changed. I felt as though the only thing I had done was quit drinking. Only the land offered me any kind of solace.

Their faces burned with zeal and joy and their breathing was like the expelled air of mustangs. The clomp of their blades made me think of hoofs on frozen ground. This was the game. This gathering of brothers, of kin, joined by the exuberance of effort and challenge and strain, breathing the air that rose from the glacial face of a rink under a bleak sun.