Franklin's Narrative

Source  https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1329333584407/1329333802557#chp4

5. Franklin (from a Nisga'a community in British Columbia)

My name is Franklin, but everyone calls me Frankie. I'm 16. I'm not the only Franklin in my village; I'm not sure, but I think there are more than 10 of us named Franklin. I was named after my Uncle Franklin on my mother's side, who died just before I was born. The Uncle Franklin on my father's side is still alive.

We moved here about seven years ago from the village about 30 minutes down the road. I live in a house with my mother, my dad, my little sister, my little brother and my cousin George who comes from the same village where I was born, further north from here. George and I share a room, because there's not enough space for us to have separate rooms. He used to live in a group home here like other kids from his village, because there is no high school up there. He likes our house better, because the chores aren't as hard and the curfew isn't as strict as the group home. He goes back home during vacations, but now that a new road is being built between our villages he might be going back home on weekends too. That would be too bad because we do a lot of stuff together. George is in a grade behind me, he's only 15, but he's OK. I also have a brother and a sister who are older and don't live here.

Like a lot of the houses in our village our house is kind of crowded. But because my parents are pretty strict, we all get along. My dad is a research director with the Nisga'a Lisims Government²⁴. He's smart and works hard, and he's a good guy. My mom is a teacher; she knows how to talk to people, especially kids. They both take good care of us. They know it's better to talk than to hit and that's good for me. We don't do a lot of things together as a family but we still cook together, watch TV, go to church, go on vacations and every week take a trip to town. They all care about me.

My life here isn't too exciting but I like it. Like all kids, I have to go to school. My weekday life goes pretty much like this: I wake up, shower, eat breakfast, walk to school, eat lunch, come home, watch some TV, do some homework, watch some more TV, eat dinner, meet my friends at the store or go to the gym and play some basketball, come home, watch some more TV, then sleep. That sums it up.

All of the kids in my family, except my older brother and sister, go to the elementary and secondary school where my mom is a teacher. My older brother has finished school and works as a pilot for a company that flies cargo around northern British Columbia. My sister has a baby and lives in Vancouver. We miss her a lot and she misses us. I'm really proud of her, because she's gone back to school now. Our school is pretty big; there are a few hundred kids there and it has every grade and every subject. In my opinion, some subjects are cool and some subjects are boring, but mostly, I like lunch. That's when we can hang out with our friends and wander around the school until classes start again.

My weekends are better, because we can stay up later. On Friday nights all my friends and almost everyone else at school go to the Youth Drop-In at the community centre from 9 to 12 at night. Saturdays are spent sitting around, going fishing or going out in the bush and that's pretty cool. When Sunday rolls around my parents make me go to church in the morning, and then the rest of the day I spend watching TV, doing some homework, and watching more TV after that. I like to watch basketball and "The Simpsons." George doesn't like watching basketball, and I can't understand how someone can't like basketball, you know what I mean? So I tell him he's boring. Sometimes, we meet friends at the old water tower or hang out at somebody's house. Mainly, I like to relax.

I learn things at school, but my family and my Elders teach me a lot as well. My parents teach me right from wrong and my sister used to help me a lot when she lived with us. My Uncle Franklin (the one that's still alive) taught me a lot when I was growing up, like how to hunt, fish, make a fire and how to mow his lawn. We go fishing together a lot and my uncle knows where to go to get the best fish. Sometimes, we go to the bush to collect mushrooms. Usually, we just go for a couple of hours and in that time get lots of pine mushrooms. Personally, I don't like the taste of them, and in fact I don't know anyone who does, but I hear Japanese people love them. They pay good money for them anyway. Last fall we were getting $40 for every pound we collected. A guy I know paid off his car with the extra money he made from collecting mushrooms. He's really good at it though, because he really knows the forest. He could get almost 50 pounds of mushrooms in a day and that's a lot!

Ji ji Emma²⁵ is really important to me. She's my great aunt. She speaks Nisga'a fluently. I learn the language at school, in Nisga'a class and it's pretty cool to have a conversation with her in our Aboriginal language. I'm not fluent, but I'm learning. Some of my friends can speak it fluently though. Ji ji Emma told me about years ago in the residential schools where the kids weren't allowed to speak their language and they would get a ruler across the hand if they spoke Aboriginal words. Whenever they talked in their Aboriginal language, they got into a lot of trouble.

My grandmother told me about it too. Nowadays, a lot of people don't speak it, which is too bad, because it's pretty much the basis of our culture. There's other stuff, though, like drawing, dancing, painting, carving, hunting and fishing that are also part of Nisga'a culture²⁶. I'd say one of the problems we need to fix in our community is the loss of our culture. We're not really getting it back. We're trying to, gradually, but the Elders worry that not enough of the new ones speak Nisga'a. I guess by learning and speaking Nisga'a I'm helping to maintain our traditional language and culture.

I also have an Aboriginal name, which means bear jumps back. I don't really know why I'm called that. Ji ji Emma could explain that better than me. There was a ceremony for me when I received the name, and I had to make a speech at a big feast, which was scary, but fun at the same time. We have lots of feasts. It seems we have a feast almost every second weekend. The biggest one was when our people signed the land treaty²⁷ with the provincial and federal governments. It took us a long time to get a treaty, but it was pretty exciting when it finally happened. My dad helped with that.

The treaty was signed in our community and we had people from all over staying in our village. The gym was packed with dancers. It was really interesting to see so many people that I didn't know in our gym. I danced a little too, but not like the visitors. I felt a little silly wearing the costume that looks like a skirt.

We have feasts²⁸ for most special occasions. I guess you're getting the impression that we eat a lot. But the feasts aren't just about dinner; they are also a time when everybody gets together, like a party but for everybody in the village. Feasts require lots of preparation. The people who host the feast have to feed up to 200 people, sometimes more. We have feasts for weddings, for newcomers to our village, for Thanksgiving, naming feasts, cleansing feasts, holidays, and they can last as long as eight, maybe nine hours. There are gifts, speeches, stories, awards, more food, and more speeches. The food we eat at the feast is really good and filling; it's usually something like moose stew with carrots and potatoes.

We would have a feast for raising a totem pole, too. The most amazing thing to see in our village is a totem pole carving²⁹. It's mind-blowing to watch how they can take a plain piece of wood and create something out of it with their own hands. I remember them raising a totem pole to honour the death of one of the chiefs. It was put up near the water, along the same place where the people used to hang animal skulls to make us seem vicious, to scare away intruders.

One of the biggest feasts of all is the stone moving feast. When people die, they get a headstone, which stays at the deceased's house after the funeral. Usually, about a year or more after the death, the stone is moved to where the body is buried. This marks an end to the formal grieving period of family and friends. There is a big and pretty complicated ceremony and community feast that happens at that time. During the ceremony, a bowl is passed around for people to put money in, then the money is given back to the community for special things. People are supposed to be generous. Sometimes over $30,000 is raised by the collection. It's a big deal for chiefs and people who had a good year to make big contributions to the collection.

Eating moose or beef is usually for special occasions like at the feasts. Mainly, we catch fish. Salmon and oolichan³⁰ are pretty popular. Oolichan grease is good on toast. There are lots of ways to make the food last longer, like preserving it in a smokehouse. It's probably because we go hunting and fishing for food sometimes, that the land, the rivers and lakes are very important to us; seeing a bunch of garbage in the ditch makes me sick. We really need to clean it up. That's why when I see kids littering, I call them on it, I tell them to pick it up. Sometimes, people take too much from the land. For example, there are hunters who take more than they need. It's our land. We have to respect it and help save it.

Like I said, I learn a lot from my family, throughout my whole life, I've learned stuff from my Elders and my parents. Some of my siblings taught me things I didn't know before, but out of everyone in my family, it's been mostly my grandparents that have been my greatest teachers. When it comes to what I learn at school though, I think that if I want to continue my education after I graduate from high school, I'm going to have to move south. Everybody needs an education. Some of my cousins and my brother are all back in school after dropping out because they want better jobs. Yah, in a few years I'll probably be in college down south. I'd like to play basketball in college and maybe study to be a teacher. Maybe I'll find a job in the city, but I'll probably come back to my village and work for the community or village government. I'm not so sure what my friends will do. They'll probably go away to school and come home again when they're done. Lots of people go away then come back. My cousin George wants to go into the military, but after, he'll probably come back too. Here, everybody knows each other but in the city you don't know anybody. There are new faces everywhere and you never know what they are like. The village is predictable, and you feel pretty safe here. It's comfortable. I know everybody, it just feels right and it's quiet and peaceful.

One thing that's very important in our community is respect. And we're closer because of it. The media gives the impression that non-Aboriginal people aren't very close with their families and neighbours, because they're in a big city with too many people around, so they just keep to themselves. In our village, it's really not like that. Everybody pretty much knows everybody else. That's why it's pretty important to be yourself in a place like this. If you act like something you are not, people are going to find out pretty quick and it's hard to respect that. For me, it's home. Everybody knows me, and I've been helped out by a lot of people, like my family and friends. Even George sometimes gives me good advice. He's always around to help me out with something and he helps out Ji ji Emma, too. I think people in the village are closer to each other than in the big city. Here, it's important to be a hard worker, to help other people, and not to talk about anyone behind their back. It's important to help Elders whenever stuff comes up and treat everyone with respect. Like I said earlier, it's pretty difficult to get away with acting like anything you're not; you can't be stuck up.

I'd say everything seems to be going pretty good for all of us, especially since the treaty. But there are still problems we have to fix, like the loss of our culture that I mentioned before. Also, finding money to do the stuff we want to do isn't always easy, like raising money for the basketball team. My parents are in the Lion's Club and it does a lot of things to help the kids in our community, which is good. But, there aren't a lot of jobs in our village so quite a few people live on social assistance, while some others make big bucks quick, quit their job, and then spend it all. Some people don't know how to invest their money I guess. These are some of the problems. If it was up to me to decide what to do for our community, I'd like to pave the roads. Everything is gravel around here and it gets pretty dirty in the spring. I wouldn't mind being able to drive my four-wheeler a little faster. I'd also build a nicer house for the Elders too. It's hard for them to get around sometimes, and they need a nice place to live.

The biggest problem though, in my opinion, is drugs. We need to take out all the drugs wrecking our community, because they're a real problem. Young kids just starting high school get into a lot of alcohol and marijuana. Sure it's fun for people sometimes, but its ruining the community. It's kind of sad that so many teenagers are into it; it's like they're replacing everything good with drugs or alcohol. They're drinking away all their problems. But, having said that, I also have to say don't believe everything you hear about us. There are people who drink and have problems, but not everybody. There are good things going on here too.

I would show visitors lots of good stuff. There are always sports in the gym. I go there almost every night. I would take them fishing, or we could go up to the lookout. The view is amazing from there; you can see the entire village and all around. It's nice up there. People should come visit.

When it comes to being part of Canada, I think Canada is a pretty cool country. Education is one of the good things about living in Canada. The government helps us with some things, like education, but we also have and need self-government³¹. That's what the treaty is for. The treaty is part of being Canadian, sort of. Before the Europeans came, we already had our own self-government, we didn't have a name for it or anything, but there was an understanding and people weren't above other people. That's just how it was. Now that we have our treaty, I think things are better for our community. Now we know how to get what we need, and we can make decisions for ourselves. The treaty gives us the respect we feel we deserve.

The treaty, getting our own self-government, also made people outside our community know about us. When the provincial government held a referendum to try and stop the treaty, people learned a lot about us, because we were in the news. Before that and in general, I don't think people from the city or people who live outside our valley really paid much attention to us. I'm not saying they should, it's just that we aren't really a part of their lives and they aren't a part of ours. The treaty changed that a bit though; getting our own self-government made people know about us. Before, people knew that we were brown, and we cooked good fish. It would be nice if they knew more because they wouldn't think less of us. It doesn't matter too much, though, I guess we get ideas about non-Aboriginal people from the media just like they get ideas about us.