and Elwood Jimmy - Speaking My Truth

I have witnessed icons of cultures and civilizations destroyed in New York andin Baghdad as attempts to break people, but this theft you speak of is different.Papâmihâw asiniy is not an icon … not a symbol. “It has pim ma tis i win, lifeitself,” as James would tell me, “It is at once animate and inanimate.” How can I, agranddaughter of Ukrainian and Polish immigrants know this as you do? Howdo I hear the prophesies without my mind being clouded by guilt? Or denial andskepticism? How do I protect myself from the truth of how white history betrayed me,made me complicit in terrible historical wrongs?Medicine men and Elders foretell visions of plague, the loss of the buffalo herds,famine, and war with the removal of papâmihâw asiniy.All the visions of the medicine men and Elders come to fruition within a decade.Much of the work that James and I did together in dialogue was done here atMurray Lake in Saskatchewan. When the drought came, buffalo bones andteeth revealed a buffalo jump here. James carefully returned the bones to thelake. A dream told him to. This home is across the road from where Big Bearwas born on Jackfish Lake. We canoed there to honour him. A great featherrose vertically in the sky. James told me that day that Big Bear, a visionary andan orator and one of the leading chiefs among the buffalo-hunting northernPlains Cree, knew from the prophesies that the buffalo would disappear whenpapâmihâw asiniy was taken. Big Bear, James said, knew what his peoplewould face. Although the chains were not yet around his feet, around hiswrists—although he had not yet been charged with treason against a nationnot his own—Big Bear knew that the white man would force his Cree nation offtheir land. To this day his people have not received even a reserve.Elwood, I know this has been no peaceful settlement. Prince Rupert’s evocationof “terra nullius” was a sham. Your people were here. Treaties were signedunder duress of possible extinction.Throughout the twentieth century, aggressive Western expansion continues torelocate and dislocate intact collective-based communities of First People andtheir connection to their land, their spirit, their culture, their power.The accompanying migration and agricultural practices of non-Indigenouspeople transform the land and its use.My Dad, Martin Semchuk, asked me, “Can you imagine what this land wouldbe like if we had not arrived?” He gave a damn and did what he could to subvertcolonization even while participating in it. As Ukrainians we came as pawnsof the British to occupy the land, to lay the foundation of a nation by breakingthe land. We made the land ours, like the old country, rich with agriculture by62 | Sandra Semchuk and Elwood Jimmy