creative forces

 

Blog # 123…November 2021

 Not often am I moved to laugh out loud while I’m sitting quietly reading but Tomson Highway got me going with his memoir Permanent Astonishment. It starts with his unexpectedly early arrival (recounted to him by his older sister Louise) in a rough tent while his family were on the road so to speak, checking their trap lines in northern Manitoba.

Throughout the book, we travel with Tomson on many trips by canoe and dogsled to fish, hunt and gather the berries and plants that contribute to survival on the edge of the Arctic circle. He introduces us to the Cree language and we meet his family and friends – Samba Cheese (the Cree version of Jean Baptiste) Father EggNog (Egenolf), many folks called Gunpowder or Mosquito and a handful of Moony-asses (non-Native people).  His love for the place and the people is strong and contagious! 

A trip by plane at age 6 takes him to the Guy Hill Indian Residential School, joining his older sisters and brothers, who’ve all gone with their parents’ agreement and encouragement. We hear gruesome stories of the scoop of children from their parents' arms by priests, nuns and Mounties, all horribly true I’m sure, but we see a more nuanced view of one school through Tomson’s eyes, or one might say. his rose coloured glasses. His 9 years at the school sound almost idyllic: reasonable meals, warm comfortable beds, sports, art and music, with the usual mix of teachers, strict, kind, supportive or harsh. And a sexual abusing Brother, who visits the dorms after dark, mentioned briefly, almost as an afterthought.

Tomson opens a window into a world we long to know and understand, giving us a glimpse of weather, meals, tent furnishings, family relationships, schoolyard bullies and a range of community characters, some of whom may sound familiar from our own lives. This helps to take away the sense of "otherness" but also is in danger of diluting the serious effects of colonialism on indigenous people. Presenting a comforting view of community life and describing his residential school as a rather pleasant place where he and other native children could get an education and learn to play a sport or the piano. obscures their purpose. They were designed deliberately to extinguish their culture and render them unable to right the injustices of having their land taken. And most of the schools weren’t at all like Guy Hill!

It’s astonishing that indigenous people and their culture have survived to give us. as well as Tomson - Mary Simon, Kent Monkman, Drew Hayden Taylor, Michelle Good, Murray Sinclair, Wab Kinew, Lisa Richardson, Jody Wilson- Raybould, Richard Wagamese and Alika LaFontaine (anesthetist president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association), As well, there are many less visible nurses, electricians, lawyers. artists, clerks, mothers and fathers, teachers – going about their lives amongst us, contributing to society - others struggle on the margins.

Tomson’s book tells an unusual and entertaining story - his own story. It’s important, while enjoying it, not to let it divert our thoughts from recognizing the wrongs that have been done to indigenous people and working towards righting as many as we can.

Without consciously thinking about it, I’ve read Canadian authors almost exclusively over the past few months…not hard to do when there are so many on international lists of best things to read. I’d intended to cover them in this post, but got caught up in issues around Tomson’s book, so you can look forward to Canlit in December, in time for Christmas.