Yo yo yo team!
It’s so pleasant to hear of all of your adventures, and I can’t wait to hear from those who have yet to write. I think this blog is already a successful idea! And I love having a due date, even though I’m sure I’ll never hit it.
At Ella’s request, my recent experiences come from the great dusty North, whose spirit has graced our nascent blog. Right now, I’m in Neskantaga, but the place I called home for three weeks, and of which I’d like to speak, is a semi-scorched peninsula which juts out into Wunnumin Lake. The reserve takes its name after the lake and houses no more than 700 people. But before you Haligonian, Torontonian, city folk, scoff and jeer at the deadening quiescence of such small towns, I beseech you to do as my fellow Northern counsellors and I have done: put down your cappuccinos, postpone your “soirees” at the theater, and remove those cosmopolitan lenses which blind you from the more modest, more humble, ways of existing. Then, perhaps, you can fathom something of what my Northern counsellors and I have experienced, albeit probably not ;)
Now as some of you know, my hypothesis going up North was that kids are kids despite race, credence, colour, and all those other identities which differentiate them from one another. Some of you might protest that this is not a hypothesis, but rather a tautology, and would never stand up in the courts of science since it cannot be verified or disproven by experience. But though it is the most auspicious hypothesis I ever could have made (eheheh), the meaning of the tautology, kids are kids, remained to be discovered. What would kids being kids look like? What is an example of kids neither behaving as Jews nor as First Nations, but as kids? And, reciprocally, what would be those defining, insurmountable differences between the little kinder from Camp Shalom and the awashish from Wunnumin Lake? Well, one of the barriers which I encountered, despite being assured that it had long since been broken, was language.
Like Pik, where Mark is staying, Wunnumin Lake is unique in that the children learn their native language, Oji-Cree, before learning English. In fact, they don’t even begin learning English until Grade Two! This is not to say that the little kids don’t know any English; they pick it up here and there at home. But even though we could communicate with them somewhat, it was an entirely different thing trying to run a literacy to camp with them. (Just to give one example, for about a week we had been teaching them the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and then asking them to sound them out, until it dawned upon us that their unwillingness to answer was due to the fact that they did not understand the meaning of the word “sound.”) On top of the language barrier, our Northern counsellor was friends with many of the parents who happened to have three year old children with F.A.S, and she insisted that they come to camp even though the recommended age is five. But despite all these hardships, the improvements among the children were striking(ly heart-warming).
Another thing I was not used to coming up so casually and frequently with the little Jewums from Camp Shalom was death. No doubt, working at camp for four years I had experienced one or two serious conversations about death or suicide, but it was precisely the solemn air which always coloured the atmosphere – which always made it familiar and navigable. If it did not have that solemnity, it was typically a kid stating a fact about the death of a relative who they never really knew, or a program concerning Jewish history in which death came off more as a statistic rather than a tragedy. In Wunnumin Lake, however, I was struck by kids speaking casually about the death of close friends and relatives, as if they were adults who had already passed through the stages of mourning, comfortable with death as fact of life and their loved ones as a memory. This hasn’t been any different in Neskantaga either.
Naturally, then, the expectations of my ears had to alter, but so too did the assumptions of my mouth. Asking kids where their parents were, to go get their parents, to tell their parents, always naively assumed a parent. I was not aware of my impertinence until one kid told me frankly that they had no parents. Since then, I’ve adopted the word guardian, though it does cause one or two children to raise their eyebrows in confusion.
So what, then, did show me something of the kid-ness of kids? Well, candy was something that Jewish bo-bos and First Nation awashish go bananas for. But rather than initiating communication with sugar (like the bible camp *cough* *cough*), I reached into my pocket and pulled out something I had long since forgotten: the high-five. O’ bless the high-five! What wise goddess hath sculpted our hands to only yield the sound of thunder when they join together?! She must have been to both lakes, Wunnumin and Muskoka, to know the need for a communion beyond the spurious sounds of words! And indeed, is there a more immediate recognition between two strangers than when they violently clash hands in perfect unison? Of course, with children, one’s resources would soon be drained if one solely relied on the simple high-five. They would slap your hand, revel in the moments pleasure, and soon be on their way, ready to slap any cursed hand they found. But by simply raising your hand higher, and then still higher, the kids will line up in droves, reaching with all their might for that satisfaction they felt, like Tantalus reaching for the fruit.
But enough about the children. Let me talk about reserve life in general. Absolutely mind blowing is the cost of food. Just to give one example, my co-counsellors and I decided to order the children a watermelon for snack. When the watermelon arrived, we discovered it was $41. $41!!! We toyed with the idea of having a countdown to watermelon day, but dropped it considering all food cost an exorbitant price anyway. But forget food. How much does a gram of weed cost?! (Don’t worry fellow counsellors, WE DIDN’T SMOKE ANY.) $50!!!!!! A 26 of Bacardi costs $300!!!!!! I know! These places need roads, yo! ;)
As for Wunnumin Lake in particular, we learned about a week into our stay that the community had been gravely affected in the early 80s by an Anglican Priest by the name of Ralph Rowe. Our Northern counsellor told us that Ralph Rowe had sexually abused most of the adult men when they were young. He had also sexually abused many of the men in Neskantaga and other communities in Northern Ontario. He was put on trial in Wunnumin Lake in 1994 and sentenced to six years of jail time, though he only wound up serving four. As far as I know, he has been convicted of further sex crimes, but they have not resulted in additional jail time. His sex crimes gave a lot of colour to the context of the community, as well as our presence. However, it did not inhibit me from participating in virtually every community event I could.
Within the first week, I was fortunate enough to join a hockey tournament and meet a lot of the fellas my age. Over the course of four days, my team of two girls and two other guys managed to come in 3rd place out of eight teams in an epic match that ended 21-20. Despite the joy of a modest victory, I had no idea we would playing full contact. My inner triumph was thus often joined by an external decrepitude, and followed by a warm, hot bath. The aches and pains of my body told me the other players had kept true to their word: they would not let the white guy off easy ;)
I was also fortunate to be in Wunnumin Lake for the week long, annual summer festival! Though in the past they’ve had the Dixie Chicks playing (WAH WAH!), it was still a merry old time. Virtually every family transformed their house into a hotel for people flying in from other reserves. The big attraction was the $50, 000 BINGO on the last night. But BINGO was hardly the only opportunity to win money; every event surrounded money. Whether you were running, canoeing, or participating in the slingshot competition, there was always a substantial cash prize. And for those who prefer family events, balloon drop, in which balloons filled with money were dropped from a cherry picker, succeeded in including the young as well as the old. (Although, there were some young casualties who were hurt in all the brouhaha. My co-counsellor, for one, suffered extensive scratches and bruises to her face and thighs at the hands of old Gogos and young miners. Many said the aerial drop, in which the money descends from a plane[!!!], is much better, albeit still violent)
I myself succeeded in leaving the festival with over $300, but hardly as a result of my own intentions. You see friends, an older woman approached me insisting that I participate in the Rock & Roll dance competition. Initially, I refused. The thought of dancing in front of the whole community was mortifying. But eventually, my co-counsellors, one of whom was a dancer, succumbed to her blandishments, and I was hard put to resist.
Hours before the dance I spent perfecting my routine out of nerve-racking anxiety. With the aid of dance step you-tube videos, I honed my footwork, sharpened my buttocks, and exercised my pelvic thrust to hip-breaking potential. I had no idea who the other dancers were, including the other four members of my team. The only thing I knew was that I would be competing against my two co-counsellors who happened to be placed on the same team. Fear mounted me like a dog, my friends, and I was a bitch in heat.
However, when we got to the dance floor right on time, which was about two hours before the dance actually began, we quickly realized that the other participants were either over 50, or intoxicated kids forced to dance by their parents. The rest of the kids our age were saving themselves up for the freestyle dance competition the next night. They considered Rock & Roll to be lame – but they had no idea just how lame it could be.
Feeling more confident in light of the competition, I flaunted the repertoire of dance moves I’d amassed in front of the computer screen. Between the “shuffle,” “the cowboy” (which I somewhat regret performing), and every Grease move I could remember, my team quickly ascended to the finals. Of course, the rest of my team contributed to our success. If it wasn’t for stomping Joe ( a nickname I gave him, which I don’t think he liked) or sizzling Suzie (she definitely didn’t like that nickname), we never would have made it. But low and behold, who else had made it to the finals? My co-staff. The dancer of the two busted out the splits, and my other co-counsellor finished with the “shake your tail feather.” Quickly recalling the lessons of my you-tube instructors, and mustering up all the courage I had, I descended to one knee and performed the “prayer” when all seemed lost. But it wasn’t enough to win. After long deliberation, the judges were undecided. They turned the competition into a two on two, calling from our team Joe and Suzie. Joe stomped like he’d never stomped before, and Suzie continued to sizzle, trying no harder, no less. Needless to say, we emerged victorious. And while I received a large sum of money, my dance moves lost me a lot of cred from the friends I’d earned. Nonetheless, our last night was a beautiful one.
With our three best friends, we stayed up till 5:30 in the morning and watched the sun rise. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful place. I'm happy to have been to Wunnumin Lake, and I'd be happy to be there again. Of course, there’s still much more to say, but I hope these words will fulfill something of your memory of me, as your words have stirred to life my memory of you.With Love from the North,
Jacob
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