Heather's Narrative

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

4. Heather (from a Cree community in Saskatchewan)

I'm 16 and my name is Heather. My mom gave birth to me in Regina, but I've lived in this town all my life. I live with my mom and dad and my little sister who's nine. My mom is half Saulteaux, half Cree and my dad is white. My mom is a teacher on another reserve and my dad owns a restaurant in town.

I go to school here in town. I get up around 6:30 or 7:00, depending on my mood, and am usually at school by 8:15. I play basketball or volleyball until 9:00 and then I go to my classes. I go out to lunch with my friends. After school I baby-sit my sister, watch TV and then, when my parents come home, we have supper and talk about our day. After supper, I sometimes meet my friends for coffee and then come home, do my homework till 1:00 and go to bed. On Friday night, I usually go out with my friends to a party somewhere. If there's drinking, then I might drink a little too, but if my parents knew, they'd be pretty mad. At some parties, people might be doing drugs somewhere — it's usually marijuana as far as I know. I've tried it, but I didn't really like how it made me feel.

On Saturdays I sleep in, then in the afternoon I usually go to Regina with my family and shop for groceries, go to a movie or the mall or just visit people. I don't have my licence yet — I wish I did though! On most Saturday nights, I just hang out with my friends at one of our houses or go to a party, if there wasn't one the night before. I sleep in again on Sunday and just lay around the house or maybe go to the ski hill if it's winter.

Our family usually goes to church on Sunday nights. Going to church is probably the most important activity that I do with my family. It's the only thing that we do together on weekends that we can always count on. My mom believes in the Aboriginal traditions, but she also has the Christian faith. Christmas is also an important thing we do as a family. The whole family comes together at my grandma's house. I call her Koke'um — that's the Cree word for grandma. Christmas is really special, because my whole family's there. It's just good to see them, because they live all over the place.

The people who are most important in my life would probably be my mom, my best friend and my history teacher. My mom is important, because she's my mom. We're not getting along that good right now, but she matters to me a lot. She's mad at me, because I'm not doing that well in math. My best friend is always there to listen to me about my boyfriend or whatever. My history teacher and I are good friends. He's really understanding and fair. He's white, but he understands a lot about the treaties and Aboriginal culture. Right now, he's worried about me, because my marks are going down.

You'd think I'd have more time for school since there's not too many things to do here. But I like going to the ski hill, because we have fun there doing things like snowball fights and boarding. You can also learn new tricks from people. We go to the coffee shop or the restaurant. There's a place that just opened up and one of my friends works there. It's just a place to hang out and we feel comfortable there. We sometimes go to the ice rink to watch hockey. I also belong to 4-H¹⁸ and we do stuff like go to Fort San, make clothes, go to rodeos, snowboard or go to dances.

I go to powwows a lot. We've gone to a few powwows through school. We go to the Treaty Four Powwow¹⁹, if our teacher decides to take us.

In the summer, it's called "the powwow trail" and you just go to powwows all around the province, the country and even in the United States too. Our whole family goes.

Since my mom is part Cree and part Saulteaux, she taught me how to dance powwow. I'm a jingle dress dancer²⁰. It comes from the Ojibway, and the Saulteaux are a branch of the Ojibway. My mom taught me how to do that when I was around three. I used to dance a lot, but now I feel kind of shy getting up there.

My quin'eh (godfather in Saulteaux) teaches us about the culture and why the powwows are important. He says it's the way we speak to each other, how we unite that makes the powwow important. Most of our family lives in the United States or across Canada, and we don't get to see each other much, so powwows give us a chance to get together. Sharing with the family is a really important part of our culture. We share things like food, because we have lots of potlucks. I learned how to make bannock at school. Bannock is fried bread and I make that for the potlucks sometimes. When we get together, the older people share stories. Or if it's just kids hanging out, we share about the summer, boyfriends, things we've learned at school.

I don't know how to speak the Cree language. It would make more sense for me to speak it if the people around me could speak it, but there aren't many people around me who do. There's no Aboriginal language instruction at our school. I would take it if they had it. There were classes for a little while when I was in elementary school, but it didn't work out too well. The teacher quit and it got all messed up. I can say some things in Saulteaux though. My mom talks to us in Saulteaux all the time. When I have kids, whenever they're with their koke‘um (grandmother), she's going to talk Saulteaux to them so they know it. My mom thinks that's a good idea too. My koke‘um went to residential school²¹ and all her sisters (except for two of them) totally forgot how to speak Saulteaux. That's all they knew before they went to residential school. But my koke‘um didn't forget. She was actually a Saulteaux teacher when she was younger. She told me that it's really important that we don't lose our language, because it's a part of who we are.

I don't know as much as I'd like to about my culture. I talk to some Elders like my koke‘um (she's been going to some "sweats"²² lately) and I learn things from my mom and my aunties. I have an Indian name which my quin'eh gave me. How it worked for me was my parents asked him to name me and he couldn't name me until he had a dream or a vision about what he should name me. My quin'eh had a dream that he gave me his name in Ojibway — Wauwaushkaesh — it means "little deer."

In my culture, what makes a good person is helping another person when they need help. You always have to respect your Elders too. Also, I don't really want to say it, but it's true: some people look at people, who have more money, as good — like if you live way over on the other side of town, the poor side, then you're not a good person. The people I look up to a lot are some of my teachers at school — like I said before. I also look up to my auntie, because she's fit, fun, stylish and has always been there for me. My auntie and me love to dance hip hop at home. We'll choreograph together for the hip hop classes that she teaches. I also have some older friends that I look up to. They're not afraid to say and do things. They can teach me things like carving and tricks at snowboarding, and they don't treat you like you're little.

The environment is important to me, because we need everything to survive — to keep going. That's another thing that I was taught. My quin'ehsaid that as Indians we have special ties to the land; we're connected to it. He was taught that each people were given a different sphere of the universe to look after and Aboriginal people were given the land. He also said that this is our land. We should take care of it and do our best not to ruin it more than it already has been.

There are two kinds of communities for Aboriginal people. One is their cultural community. You know how I said they're private about a lot of things? Well, their cultural community is like their family or their reserve and they keep this part of who they are to themselves. And then there's "the community" which is the surrounding area or the town. To me personally, community means home, because of friends and family. I also think that Aboriginal people are a lot more involved in their community than non-Aboriginals. For non-Aboriginal people, "community" is their town and that's it.

Non-Aboriginal people have a lot of perceptions about Aboriginal people and cultures, but I think that the average Canadian doesn't know a whole lot about us. The people around here might know more, because we intermix with them all the time. But for a long time, there have been a lot of people who just don't care to know; they don't seem to mind being ignorant. There's a kind of segregation here since the reserve is segregated from non-Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people could do a lot about it. I think a lot of times we're very private about a lot of things and maybe if we weren't so private then people would learn more.

The media have done a lot to distort ideas about Aboriginal people and their culture too. They show things that aren't true. I remember I was watching a cartoon and there was a bunch of Indians running around going "woo woo woo" and we don't do that. It made me laugh. Also they show a lot of Indian people to be all spiritual and mystical and you know, always talking about the Great Spirit and the land. Not everyone is like that. My dad, before he got married to my mom, he thought something totally different about Aboriginal people, because of what he was taught by his parents and even in school. Things like we were really not doing anything, living on the reserve, being lazy and being drunk. I think a lot of people think that Indians live in teepees, ride around on horses and hunt for every meal. A couple of years ago in California this girl asked me: "Do you live in a wigwam or a teepee or whatever you guys call it?" I was like: "No, I live in a house!"

There's not that much racism in the school where I go, but sometimes you can feel it from the students. For example, if the kids at school were asked about us, some of them might say something racist. Maybe they think this way because they met one person who gave them a bad impression, so that's how they think about all of us. They might also get it from their parents. I take Aboriginal studies at school. There's only one girl in my class who takes it who's not Aboriginal. I don't know why more non-Aboriginal kids don't take it. There's a teacher at school who doesn't like me or my friends. I think he's sexist and racist, because the teacher won't say anything to the few white kids in my class if they're talking, but if my friends and I even whisper for a couple of seconds, he'll snap at us. It makes me mad, but he just brushes it off. It makes me feel bad when I see things like that. Overall though, I usually feel pretty comfortable in my school.

There are other places where there's more racism. My mom told me when she went to school, the white people and the Aboriginal people didn't talk at all, they just fought. It's not like that now. We talk with each other. Still, when you're walking down the street some old woman will just look at you. Or when you go into a store, the people will watch you and come up to the aisle you're in and try to pretend that they're not watching you. It either has to do with the fact that we're young or we're Aboriginal or both. It makes me mad! I just leave right away. It makes me feel uncomfortable to think that there are people who don't like me because I'm Aboriginal. I hang out with different groups, but one group of friends that I hang out with would fight other kids if they said anything racist to us. Most of my friends are Aboriginal. That's just how it happens.

The ideas that non-Aboriginal people have about us aren't accurate, because they don't know the real people. To help people understand us better, I would have someone come live with me for a little while. I'm quite normal and I think it helps if you know someone personally. I also think it would be good to have someone go around to schools and talk to kids about our culture — maybe an Elder. I think this would help change non-Aboriginal kids' ideas about Aboriginal people. One time wouldn't be enough though. We don't live in teepees, we're not drunks. We have jobs and we go to school.

If friends came to visit, I'd take them and introduce them to my other friends. We would go to the beaches and powwows like Treaty Four or Standing Buffalo. We have really big powwows here — they're fun. If they were into sports, I would also take them to open gym night at the school, or go snowboarding or skiing. I'd also maybe take them to Fort San. It's haunted! I stayed there this year on Halloween. There's a ghost there that looks like a maintenance guy that a lot of people have seen. One of my friends swears she heard his tools the night we stayed there!

My plan is to try to be a role model. I'm going to go to university and become a lawyer. That'd show people that not all Aboriginal people are living off of the government. In four years, I think I'll be at the University of Regina. I think some of my friends will be there too. One of my friends wants to be a photographer, and another one wants to have a basketball career. Anyway, school is important. You need education to go out and get a job, make money and survive. Also if you're educated I think you're less likely to be ignorant about other people, and their cultures and beliefs. I want my education and I don't mind going to school. Honestly though, I can see some of my friends still living in town in four years and doing things like working at A&W® and drinking all the time. They probably think they're not smart enough to go to university. I don't know if I'll stay here or not. It's so small here and there's not much to do. But I might consider living here, because if I become a lawyer, I want to help Aboriginal people with the justice system, and there's a lot of Aboriginal people around here.

In social studies, we're talking about human rights violations. My teacher talks about four methods of acculturation of peoples: annihilation, segregation, assimilation and accommodation. For example, annihilation was what the Nazis did to the Jews; we studied that for a whole month. We also learned about segregation like blacks in the American South. Assimilation happened to Aboriginal people when they went to residential schools, but we didn't learn about that at all. We didn't even talk about it even though there's so many Aboriginal students at our school. People should know what went on in their own country.

Whether or not I consider myself to be a Canadian is a really complicated question. There's two arguments to this. Some Indians say that "we're the only ones that are 100 percent Canadian," but as an Aboriginal person, you really have to ask yourself whether you want to call yourself a Canadian or not. If you do, you have to remember that the Canadian government has done a lot to Aboriginal people that was meant to make us become like Europeans. For example, in residential schools, my koke'um told me you couldn't speak Saulteaux or you'd get beaten; you couldn't see your parents — things like that. We didn't have voting rights²³ for a long time. We also lost a lot of our culture. It's complicated. This country isn't based on Aboriginal people's beliefs. I don't really know if I'd call myself a Canadian. I don't know what else I'd call myself though; like if I go to Europe, what am I supposed to say?

One of the biggest challenges in our community is kids getting into trouble. I have a couple of friends who were charged for drugs and alcohol recently. There's a lot of drugs in town too. When a 15-year-old knows exactly where to go to get drugs, that's a problem. In the future, drug use could become really big among kids. They've known for a long time that alcohol is a big problem on the reserve. So many people have died in car accidents or at parties, because of violence.

If I were in charge, I would make a place for kids to hang out. If there were more things to do, then maybe teenagers wouldn't be getting into so much trouble. The community should find things for the kids to do in town, like a pool hall or an arcade. If I could design a place, it would have pool tables, arcade games, air hockey and a place to just sit and have coffee. I think there's going to be a skate park in a little while. I'm not that interested in it, but a lot of other kids will like it. If we had a good leader in our community, they would care about the youth. They would also have to have good communication skills and be able to understand the kids and what they're going through. They would know how to talk to everyone. Like most people I know, they might know how to talk to a certain group of people, but they don't know how to talk to others.

If I could send a message to non-Aboriginal people, it would be not to judge someone on how they look, because you don't know them until you talk to them. We're not really that different. We want a lot of the same things. We see the same things as important and we go through a lot of the same things. Just because our skin colour's different doesn't mean that we're different on the inside.