Speaking to grade nine students at Northern Lights Secondary School
I was connected to that good feeling when I was very young. I went to a preschool here in Moosonee, when I first arrived here. And there was a nun. She spoke French, but I could understand her English very well. She told me, “One good deed a day.” I said, “ What is ‘deed’?” And she said, “Do something good for a person once everyday.” “Okay.” And for some reason, it just stayed there. I couldn’t wait for school to finish that day. I ran home, I went to help my mother. You know, at that time we didn’t have running water. We didn’t have electricity. We didn’t have lights. We had to get water from the creek in the summer time and we had to melt our snow for water in the winter. It was in the winter time [when] she told me that, so I went and got some snow. And I could feel that I felt good.
We were always taught to help. We seen lots of sharing. Somebody came to your tent: “Can I borrow your dogs?” “Here you go.” “Get some wood?” “Okay.” Or, “Can I borrow your canoe? I want to go set a net”. But you know the payback comes when that person catches something, or kills it, they bring you some. And it was a good way. How you call that? Barter system.
There was no money at all before the white people came. There were no stores. What the people were doing were just exchanging things, eh. They were helping each other, just like I said. Borrowing dog teams, borrowing a canoe. You kill something, you give something to that person who helped you. You’re just exchanging help. Help, help, help, all the time, to all of us. You help me, I’ll help you. Nowadays, we’re not living in the bush, but we are living in a community. We use money, but we can still help people that are less fortunate than we are, you know. We can give them something. And we are starting to see that happening, like the refugees being brought over into Canada. That is helping. And food banks supported by rich and well-to-do people. That is helping. Simple, daily helping is also effective.
I’d like to share when people had nothing: no vehicles, no trains, no skidoos, no chainsaws. People were living off the land, eh. People respected everything they saw. They just took animals they need, they didn’t take more. Like maybe, if they saw ten, there’s three of them, maybe they only take three birds, you know? And that’s one each for the three of them. The rest, they let them go because that’s all they need for that day. And we were always taught never to throw away anything that we kill. If there is left over, give it to somebody else.
Our transportation was mostly dogs. I was just thinking about this this morning. When they first brought horses to the missionaries, and they’d look at that big horse and they’d call it a ‘big dog: mistatim’. Small dog: ‘atim’. I was thinking about how the horse wouldn’t be able to do what a small dog could do, ‘cause it would have to travel in swamps, but a horse would get stuck. The dogs have to swim, have to cross rivers on thin ice, they need narrower trails. The dogs pull the canoe along the banks; they run along the banks with a long rope. They pulled the canoe with the passengers in the boat, just guiding the boat so it don't drift to shore. And in the winter time we had sleighs, and sometimes the runners would be covered in mud, and leveled smoothly with an axe, or a plane, if there was one, and plane it down flat, smooth. And they put hot water on it and glaze some snow on, hard packed snow. And you could puts lots on [a sleigh]: put a canoe on there, all your belongings, your tent, food, children, and the dogs can pull that. That was our way of travelling.
There was always something to do, you know? My parents taught me, “You sit there, do nothing, you are going to go crazy.” Now, in the professional field, they say boredom is not a mental illness, but our relatives used to say it’s “the first sign you are going to go crazy. It’s the first sign you are going to do something stupid.”
So if you can understand the true meaning and purpose of boredom, you pretty well have it made. If you do don’t know how counteract boredom, in a healthy way, boredom will lead you to pacing, anxiety, frustration, depressions and it can continue to ideas of suicide.
When we moved away from the old, original way of living, moved from Attawapiskat to Moosonee, we didn’t know anything about ‘reserve’, that we were on the reserve, because I was too young to know about that. When I came to Moosonee, I heard my parents say so many times, “You have to learn to work, so you can survive, so you can live.” Now we’re moving out of the reserve and my father’s got a steady job. He’s considered a Non-Indian and we’re not allowed to fish, to hunt because we’re away from the reserve. I started feeling real bad and guess what happens when you start to feel bad... you start saying, “Well what am I going to do? I can’t go fishing, I can’t go hunting, I’m too young to carry a gun, too young to work. I’ll be 16 and I don’t have my cards, my social insurance card.” In my mind, I keep thinking, ‘I should be helping my mother and my father because that’s what they taught me, what I heard all the time.’
I started to feel worthless, you know, because I can’t do anything that I’ve been taught. So I hang around with my friends. And there was no law yet: the cops weren’t around, or they were just starting to arrive. I sat around with my friends and we talked about not being able to hunt, not being able to do anything, and we start stealing. That’s how I began to get in trouble. We went and broke into a box car at the train station, took some stuff to feed ourselves. Doing something for ourselves. We were hiding those things from our parents, eh, and we thought, ‘As long as they didn’t know, we were okay.’ But I could feel that we were doing wrong.
What I couldn’t understand is that there is a spirit in me and that spirit has feelings. That is why I feel guilt when I do wrong. At first I might steal something: feel good. After a while, something gets me: I feel guilt, I feel regret. Why do I feel different? ‘Cause there’s something else inside that’s telling me I’m doing wrong. All these are tied together, all these feelings. You know, when my sight is bad, I go see the doctor, get glasses. When I’m hungry, what do I do? I eat. Now why do we stop there when boredomness surfaces? Why don’t we keep track on how boredom surfaces and how boredom subsides? We need to know how to keep boredom from surfacing.
There was word in Cree: ‘kochihta’. It only means ‘try’ eh, try. Try to do something. Go visit your granny. Go and help somebody.
You have to experiment. That what my parents were trying to tell me. But there’s no word in the Cree that says, ‘experiment’; it just says, ‘kochihta’ - ‘try’. But ‘experiment’ means to ‘try and see what happens.’ And when you try, try to connect to that good feeling, you will feel that. Try to do it daily. That’s how your confidence is going to go up, you know, really go up. That’s why people, when they don’t help, when they don’t try, when they don’t share, they don’t make their spirit feel good. When you make your spirit feel good, you feel high (... a normal high, not a drug high).
When I went to boarding school, everything was done for us. The washing, the dishes, the cooking... The only time they ever got me to help was when they punished me, eh. And they didn’t know I liked helping; they didn’t know that. So when I was helping, I was feeling good. They thought they were punishing me, but I was feeling good. It just worked the opposite for me. And they thought they were punishing me, but they were giving me something that made me feel good.
Another thing was that I was never allowed to graduate from residential school because I was talking to the authority about them things that were happening. I didn’t know that they were hiding the abuse, eh, child abuse. And when I talked about these things to the main authority, they would threaten me: “You’ll get the strap, don’t talk like that, that’s not a good way to talk about others.” I was about nine or ten, and there were some that were younger than that. I didn’t mind too much when I was physically abused, but the emotional abuse was painful. What I heard and what I witnessed, that’s what I couldn’t... I couldn’t stand. It hurt me more to see another child being slapped around, being knocked around, especially the younger ones, eh.
If you don’t listen, you don’t help, you don’t do certain things for others to help them, you don’t share your belonging with your friends, you’re going to feel bad. If you did bad to other people, bad things will happen to you. This is what happens. Like karma. It just comes back to you. And when you do good it comes back.
When your teacher says, “Bring this chair”, help them. Take the chair over, take advantage of those things. You don’t [listen to] people who say, “You brown noser, you’re always helping” Don’t worry about that, they don’t know that they should be helping. They are ignorant about something that is really good, that they need in their lives.
The teaching I try to pass on is that emotions are universal, everyone has good and bad feelings. Cultivate the good feelings by monitoring how you are feeling, changes within your heart. Good and bad feelings are cultivated in the heart, but choices to do good or bad are made in the mind.
You try that when you go home. Try to help your mom or whoever you are staying with. Help around the house. When we think just of ourselves, when we play computer, we don’t help with dishes, we don’t clean our room, that not helping at all. When you connect to that good feeling, you will know that there is a way to bring happiness to yourself, for yourself.
