From the Ashes Read online

  CONTENTS

  Indigenous Affairs

  Prologue

  LOST AND ALONE 1979–1987

  A Little Boy’s Dream

  Road Allowance

  Hornet

  Trash Pandas

  A Father’s Love

  The Red Baron

  The Pact

  Monster Rescue

  The Beast

  Touch of Home

  Godzilla

  Leeroy and the Brown Pop

  Robin’s Eggs

  Attaboy!

  Little Thief

  Supremacy

  Heart Attack

  Not a Picture in Sight

  The Fake Italian

  FALLING APART 1988–1996

  My Fabricated Persona

  Oddball

  Just Like the Rest of Them

  The Most Important Thing

  Canada Geese

  Cheese Slices

  Drive

  Birdsong

  Jack Him

  A New Family

  Tradition

  Troublemaker

  The Strongest Brother

  Choice

  Premonition

  Berries

  Opening Up

  Pride

  Banana Split

  THE STOLEN STREETS 1997–2008

  Windigo

  Adrift

  End of a Friendship

  Rou Garous

  Never the Same

  A Gust of Molecules

  Suburban Wastelands

  Family Wedding

  Crack

  Canadian Streets Greasy with Indigenous Fat

  Caught Up

  Rat

  Aftermath

  A Bottle Full of Pills

  Smitten

  The King of Somalia

  Life at Gunpoint

  We All Fall Down

  Western Door

  Cast of Horrors

  Turning Point

  Indestructible Pink Dress

  Solitary Confinement

  Sharing the Love

  Bibles Behind Bars

  Audrey

  Dynamite

  Push-ups

  Inception

  The Messenger

  Steak Knife

  Random Dude

  The Process

  The Meaning Is Gone

  Salvation and the Soup Kitchen Lady

  RECONCILIATION 2008–2017

  Fighting the Darkness

  Dawn of the Bronze Age

  Running on Glass

  At Last

  A Plain Piece of Paper

  A Push

  The Cleanest Bachelor in the World

  The Other Half of the Solution

  Bravery

  Follow Your Dreams

  The Fines Are Fine

  Finding the Courage to Stand

  Indian Turned Métis

  In the Custom of the Country

  Amends

  Sixteen Letters

  57 Years of Love

  When Walking Is a Prayer

  Epilogue

  My Soul Is Still Homeless

  Missing Person

  Acknowledgments

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to the families whose loved ones are taken, or disappeared, or lost to them. Those forever watching for their loved one to return home. I watch and wait with you.

  It is also dedicated to Indigenous children who grew up with no sense of themselves through projects like the Sixties Scoop, residential schools, adoption, or other such separation from their nuclear family during which they were robbed of their Indigenous identity through no fault of their own.

  The pages of this book speak to the damage colonialism can do to Indigenous families, and how, when one’s Indigeneity is stripped away, people can make poor choices informed by pain, loneliness, and heartbreak, choices that see them eventually cast upon the streets, in jail, or wandering with no place to be. I dedicate this book to you. I walk with you. I love you. I know the loneliness and frustration you endure.

  Lastly, I dedicate this book to my wife, Lucie, who loved me back into the circle. This also goes out to my brothers, Josh, Jerry, and Daniel; my mom and dad; and to my grandparents, who gave me a fighting chance. Our circle is strong; our fire burns; this book is but a torch from the hearth of our clans, and is hopefully enough to light the way for others to follow.

  INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

  at night

  alone

  when the dope sickness set in

  and the begging became too humiliating

  I’d wander from the ByWard Market to the Centennial Flame fountain on Parliament Hill

  looking for respite from my addictions.

  ashamed

  i sat with my back to the Peace Tower

  thrust my hand in the cool fountain water

  fishing out the hoard of coins thrown by tourists and passersby.

  the RCMP who guarded the fountain

  always saw me coming

  from way down at the bottom of the Rideau Hill

  near the Milestones and Château Laurier

  but he never stopped me.

  instead he’d sit and wait for me

  watch as I shovelled wet change into my pockets.

  then, before I got too greedy,

  rush out and chase me away.

  he always let me escape.

  we both understood what was going on

  why I was there

  stealing from the Centennial Flame.

  PROLOGUE

  The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.

  Matthew 11:12

  THE DEAD SILENCE SCREAMED DANGER.

  Frenzied squeaks of jail-issued blue deck shoes on sealed cement followed by wet smacks, fast pops, loud cracks, and finally a dull thud confirmed it. A guy lay crumpled on the range floor, our range quartermaster told us. He wasn’t conscious. His legs were seized straight, quivering uncontrollably. He had pissed and shit himself.

  We didn’t need to see it with our own eyes. The unseen, the unknown, in jail is often worse than the seen, the known.

  The next day, after cell search, I heard that he had died en route to hospital.

  Someone said he’d stolen a bag of chips from another inmate’s canteen, but who knew?

  Who cared?

  It was jail justice. The thief got what he deserved. According to us, according to society. At least that’s what I told myself. All I knew for sure was that I didn’t know anything and I hadn’t seen anything. I’d only heard it, but I wouldn’t even tell the guards that much. I had to survive, and the only way you did that was by keeping your mouth shut, turning your head away.

  What was I doing here in jail anyway? Why had I put myself in the midst of this filth, this horrible violence?

  The answer was simple.

  I did it to save my leg—and my life.

  LOST AND ALONE

  1979–1987

  A LITTLE BOY’S DREAM

  I had this tiny bag

  Had it since my family fell apart

  It was red and blue with an Adidas logo on the side

  And a golden zipper—the zipper of all zippers!

  I had this tiny bag

  I took it everywhere with me

  When we moved with Dad

  Hopped out windows at night

  When we ran and ran

  On to our next place.

  I had this tiny bag

  Grandma asked me to unpack it

  But I wouldn’t do it.

  She asked many times after that

  But I kept it filled with all my things

  Tucked away

  Under my bed


  Just in case.

  I had this tiny bag

  It had my old life inside

  When I finally got the courage to get rid of it

  I left it on my bed

  Then jumped out my window

  Down two stories

  But the grass broke my fall.

  “Why did you do that, Baby Boy?” Grandma asked.

  “Because I always dream of dying,” I said. “And I can’t take it to heaven with me.”

  ROAD ALLOWANCE

  MY KOKUM NANCY’S PALM FELT leathery in mine as we walked alongside of the train tracks. Stands of poplar swayed and bent in the wind, and she stood still for a second to catch her bearings and watch the flat-bottomed, late-spring clouds slouch by. She mumbled, then began thrusting her gnarled walking stick into the tall brush ahead, spreading it open, looking for flashes of purple or blue. Purple was a clear sign that the pregnant Saskatoon berry bushes were ready to give birth and ease the winter suffering of bears, birds, and humans.

  Berries, Kokum said, knew well their role as life-givers, and we had to honour and respect that. We did that by knowing our role as responsible harvesters, picking only what we needed and leaving the rest for our animal kin so they could feed themselves and their young. That was our pact, she said, and if we followed it, they’d never let us down.

  My kokum wore brownish-yellow eyeglasses the size of teacup saucers, but her eyes could still see things my three-year-old eyes couldn’t. I always tried to search out berry patches before she did, but she always got there first. Always.

  As we waded deeper through the rail-side grass and reeds, a vast fleet of mosquitoes and gnats lifted from the ditch floor and enveloped our heads. A few flew into my mouth, choking me. I coughed and batted at the air.

  “No, Jesse.” Kokum grabbed my arms and held them. “They are our relatives. Never do that!” I’d never seen her angry before, but she was now.

  As the black cloud intensified around us, she drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and spoke softly in Michif. She pointed to me and our half-full pail of berries, and then to the rat-root plant that protruded out of her dress pocket. Her voice sounded like warm summer air swooshing over the open prairie right before rain comes, and reminded me of when I’d accidentally disturbed the hornet’s nest behind the smoke shed. There was no anger in her voice then. The plume of insects hovered mid-air for a second, then flew skyward and dispersed. Just like the hornets had done.

  I looked at her in amazement, and my mouth opened but no sound came out. I strained to hear any buzzing, but there was only the call of a loon far in the distance followed by the shuffle of Kokum’s moccasins.

  “Oh, my silent one,” Kokum said. “I just told them we have a job to do.” Her brown face cracked into a smile. “I asked them to visit us later, if they must, but for now we need to concentrate.” She brushed a few strands of hair from my face and hoisted me over a puddle. “Or maybe they’re right, maybe it’s quitting time. Let’s get back, chi garçon; we have enough to make a good bannock.”

  I loved Kokum’s bannock more than anything—even harvesting with her, listening to her stories, or hearing her sing. She made it whenever we visited. We lived in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, about an hour’s drive away from my grandparents’. Their cabin was in Erin Ferry, near Debden, just south of Big River, between the old Highway 1 on one side and the new Highway 55 on the other. The CN Railway cut right up the centre of the road allowance, connecting Debden to Big River and on to the rest of Saskatchewan.

  My grandparents’ log cabin wasn’t like any other place I knew. Mom told us that her dad, Mushoom Jeremie Morrissette, had made it by hand from the surrounding aspen hardwood after our family lost our homestead in Park Valley, a few kilometres away. It took him one season to fell the trees, strip them of bark, and build it, and another half season to chink in the cracks with mud and moss, waterproof the roof, and make it ready for winter living. Nobody else had a neat house like my kokum and Mushoom, way out in the country in the middle of nowhere, with no water or electricity.

  Mushoom said there weren’t many people like us anymore, rebels who fended for themselves—maybe a few Arcand relatives down the road, but that was about it. The rest had sold out and got farms or went to the city to find work. He didn’t own his land; it belonged to the Queen of England.

  “She doesn’t mind us being here,” Mushoom said. “And it lets me hunt and trap freely and be my own boss, which I like.”

  He told us stories about how our people once had lived in large communities in handmade houses just like his all over Saskatchewan, living off the land, but that was before the government attacked us and stole our land during the resistance, before our clans fell apart.

  I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. I tried imagining villages of our people living like he and my kokum did, in their little log house, all squished onto little pieces of land owned by the Queen, and I couldn’t. But there were beaver, muskrat, deer, bears, elk, and fish everywhere; forest, streams, and rivers all around to play in; and no neighbours for miles and miles.

  “If someone tries to push us around, we just pick up and move somewhere else,” Mushoom said. “We live like this to be free, like our ancestors.”

  I understood that.

  When Kokum and I came back from berry picking, Mushoom was standing at the front door of the cabin. The elk-horn buttons that fastened his beige leather vest strained to hold it together over his rounded stomach. Kokum made all of Mushoom’s clothes from animals he trapped and materials she traded for in Debden on her monthly visit to town.

  “Where are Blanche and Sonny?” Kokum called to him, her brow wrinkling. My parents’ car had been in the dirt driveway when we left to go picking, but now there was just my mushoom’s plump horse drinking from the trough at the side of the house.

  “They went into town. Should be back soon. Fire’s ready, though.”

  Kokum nodded, picked up a pail of rainwater for the washing, and nudged Mushoom aside as she carried it inside. The smell of burnt hardwood licked all around my grandfather’s bald head as he bent down to hug me. The press of his fancy vest against my exposed belly felt like thousands of soft pebbles. Blazes of prairie roses, windflowers, big bluestems, hyssops, leadplants, and asters decorated his clothing in beaded patterns that Kokum said were passed down to her from her Michif-Nehiyaw ancestors—mothers to daughters—for over two centuries.

  When Mushoom played the fiddle at night, I loved watching moonbeams flickering over his beads—it looked like he was wearing rubies and diamonds all over. And when he tapped his feet to the rhythm of reels he told us were passed down from his grandfather’s grandfather, the light lulled me to sleep.

  Mushoom Jeremie and Kokum Nancy (née Arcand) Morrissette, in their road-allowance home in Erin Ferry, Saskatchewan.

  Josh and Jerry were inside the cabin playing on the floor with the wooden toys Mushoom had carved for them while we were out. Jerry’s was a captain’s sword, and Josh’s was a little marionette man that jigged when you held the stick that protruded out its back. Mushoom could carve things in five minutes flat. Jerry always got the best toys because Jerry was his favourite grandson, being his namesake and all.

  Sometimes Josh and I would get jealous of Jerry. He crawled all over Mushoom’s stomach and they both bellowed until tears came out of their eyes. Or Mushoom would take Jerry into the woods to show him his traps and a thing or two about snaring rabbits. He never did that with us. He’d hug us, but it wasn’t the same. Jerry even kind of looked like him: stout, thick-legged, and broad across the shoulders. He was like Mushoom, too: powerful, strong-willed, and stubborn.

  Josh was tall and thin. Out of all of us, he looked the most “Indian,” or at least that’s what Mom would say when she brushed his long black hair in the morning. She always took her time with Josh, and I could see that he was her favourite. His skin was much darker than Jerry’s and mine, and he looked more like Mom than Dad. Korean or
Japanese almost. Everyone was proud of Josh. He was the oldest and smartest and talked the most, and whatever new clothes we got from our aunts and uncles went to him. I’d eventually get them, but not until after Josh and Jerry.

  I was much smaller and skinnier than both my brothers and had blond shoulder-length hair. My skin looked like my father’s—pinkish cream. People were always saying, “He looks like a little white boy” or “You sure he wasn’t switched at the hospital?” Mom said it didn’t matter, because I was special. She said that I was the largest of all her babies, a little over ten pounds when I was born in 1976—as long as a carnival hot dog with a huge oblong head—and the doctors were shocked when I came out.

  “You didn’t make a sound,” Mom said. “No screams or whimpers or nothing, just a wet plop sound.”

  I stayed quiet my first three years. The most noise I’d make was a cry or an incomprehensible squeal of excitement.

  “Look here,” Mushoom said, as he placed me on the floor with my brothers. He pulled a small wooden knife out of his back pocket. It was just little enough for me to grasp. I waved it in front of him, and he jumped back. Jerry charged at me, coming to Mushoom’s rescue. Mushoom scooped him up before he could impale me with his wooden sabre.

  Heat and the smell of lard radiated from the wood stove. Kokum opened its door to chuck in a few logs, and the muscles on her arms rippled. She was strong. One time a dog almost bit Josh near the road and Kokum threw a cast-iron skillet at it with one flick of her wrist, like a ninja star. The skillet whistled thirty feet in the air and the dog ran into the forest whining and never bugged any of us again.

  I watched her as she wiped the dirt off her hands and put rolled-up bannock balls in the skillet. As they hissed and spit into the air, I could hear my parents’ car screeching to a stop outside. They were fighting, like always. Mushoom said something to Kokum in Cree. I thought she was going to toss the frying pan, oil and all, out the door at my dad. She just wagged her head, though.

  Mom leaned in the front door and announced, “We’re going home, boys. Pull your stuff together.”

  Dad didn’t come in. I peeked out the door. Music was blasting from the car, the windows were rolled up, and the inside was flooded with smoke.