and Elwood Jimmy - Speaking My Truth

eaking the prairie wool and clearing the land. We brought our animals, ourplants, our beliefs, our fears, and our hopes for a new beginning, a chance tosurvive, to exist. Ukraine’s existence was denied. We did not see what was hereso much as we saw what we had lost and what we had been continually losingfor centuries. We attempted to recreate our homeland because that was whatwe knew, what we desired, and what sustained us, nourished us. It was whatwe had fought for, lost our lives for, suffered for … experienced rape, torture, anddeath. In 1885, when Poundmaker averted the massacre of his people, routedOtters’ militia and forced them to flee, serfdom for Ukrainians was abolishedby the Austro–Hungarian Empire. We were yet indentured to the land, pawnsof other nations who took the grain we produced as payments for the small bitsof land that could not easily sustain our children, our grandchildren, and theirgrandchildren into the futures. We were still slaves. We had to buy our own landback from the conquerors.Here we expanded. I was told that your people were forced to contract ontoreserves and use passes to go off reserve. On your reserve, given by Treaty 6,Thunderchild Reserve, the land was taken yet again and sold to foreign buyerswhile your people were yet again forced off, dislocated onto poorer land. Howdid this affect your mother’s life, your life, Elwood?There are few ecologies on earth as utterly transformed as Saskatchewan—this time by the plough. We wrote our names on the land with the seeds webrought. Wheat created a monopoly, expanded at the expense of local flora,fauna, and knowledge.We did not know that like the Scottish who experienced the Clearances inScotland and came for a new life in Canada, we were complicit in creating theechoes of the old violences here in the new country. We were after all invited,lured to come with promises of free land.Whose land?In 1972, papâmihâw asiniy—a connection between earth and sky, betweenCreator and Creations—makes a return engagement to the Plains region, thistime on loan to the Royal Alberta Museum from the United Church of Canada.I know you liked James, Elwood. You were one of the last people to speak withhim while he was alive. He respected you and was grateful for how you treatedour work.James and I witnessed papâmihâw asiniy in forced confinement at the RoyalAlberta Museum. Offerings are made there—tobacco and sweetgrass, sageCultivating Canada | 63