and Elwood Jimmy - Speaking My Truth
and Elwood Jimmy - Speaking My Truth and Elwood Jimmy - Speaking My Truth
and cloths. First Nations people don’t have to pay. I do. James put his handson papâmihâw asiniy and held them there for a long time. Did he give orreceive? We learned what we could about where papâmihâw asiniy fell.Could we find this sacred place? James was tired, weary from the battleand non-recognition. He collapsed in exhaustion at Rib Rocks. I rested. Wefound what we think is the site of papâmihâw asiniy’s landing, high on a hill.Prairie sage grows there.We will not show it in photographs.James prayed and made offerings. I joined him. We returned to the land atMurray Lake. The plants he has watered, lubestrok, came in small seeds in mygreat-grandmother’s pocket from Ukraine. It has grown large and strong. Weate from this plant and in the fall seeds are gathered so that it can be plantedagain. Each seed a choice, an action, a gesture of planting, a bending down tothe land. James wrote my great-grandmother’s story. He put the word Ka kissis kach e whak,2 Saskatchewan, in her mouth, a meal of river moving swiftlyaround a bend, a meal of land, a province.I acknowledge to you, Elwood, that my family’s relocation dislocates FirstNations just as we had been dislocated from our homes over all of thosecenturies. I acknowledge that with this awareness comes responsibility.Without taking responsibility for my privilege and for the acts of mygrandparents I too become complicit in the ongoing systemic effects ofcolonization, racism, and non-recognition of the inherent rights and theextraordinary knowledges of First Nations, the laws of being specific to theirnations and to the diversity of individuals.By many accounts spread over centuries, papâmihâw asiniy grows heavierwith time—heavier in McDougall’s farmyard, heavier in Winnipeg, heavier inToronto.Heavier with the burden of theft by the people who claim to own it andpresume they can ‘loan’ it?Heavier with the power and strength of a people, a power and strength—likepapâmihâw asiniy—temporarily on loan and one day restored?Coming to Canada gave my family possibilities to thrive, to diversify, andbecome more complex and innovative in the choices each member couldmake to create their own lives. These possibilities came at a great cost toyou from a First Nation as immigration overcame the Indigenous, as plantsand animals were destroyed or pushed aside. The choices for First Nationsbecame truncated and limited within paradigms that were not their own.64 | Sandra Semchuk and Elwood Jimmy
This stole strength. This stole identity. Marshall Forchuk is a descendent of aUkrainian internee during WWI in Canada. Ukrainians, Serbians, Croatians,and others with Austro–Hungarian or German passports were imprisonedbehind barbed wired like animals, called enemy aliens, and forced to labourfor no reason other than where they were born. Forchuk said he learned fromhis father who escaped the camps,“You can steal my house, you can stealmy car and you have taken nothing. But if you steal my identity like we didwhen we put First Nations kids into residential schools then you have reallystolen something.” Ukrainians have only recently become white throughassimilation, another loss of culture. All those centuries under duress we heldour culture sacred. With wealth and security we too are losing culture andlanguage—and, as James would say, our medicine bundles.Privilege has come at too high a cost. Ukrainians in Canada became respectedpolitical leaders and professional in every field. Yet our silence about theinjustices done to us re-forms too often in our silence in speaking out againstthe ongoing effects of colonization against First Nations and Métis. Do wehave many of the old terrors of speaking out against authority and abuse? Arewe unconsciously afraid of reprisals, being hurt in a less obvious way? Hasit become normalized to become perpetrators by denying the truth, creatingongoing suffering? This is not how we think of ourselves. We think of ourselvesas good people. Now we think of ourselves as people who have education,power, and authority—not as people who have been made crazy by theviolence and abuse of others. Yet we are still in the cycle of violence … politeand legal violence.Within a contemporary context, papâmihâw asiniy synthesizes a numberof very basic and universal concepts and laws of being. It also magnifiesthe challenges regarding the navigation and negotiation of the relationshipbetween the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous—the world views, the people,the animals, the minerals, the plants—that define and mark the story of thisplace.Elwood, I watch over and over in nature the violence and community buildingof plant and animal colonization, the unthinking ways in which plants andanimals both dominate and cooperate in order to survive, create communities,and create endless adaptations. Can we think, I wonder, about what we aredoing and make choices that embrace the richness of the diversity of nations,the deep wealth that creates possibilities for the planet as it has for us?Can we acknowledge that we are a part of nature, all my relations’ pointsof views, the knowledges that First Nations have always shared freely withthose who were attentive? We are not, as we would believe, the generous ones,Cultivating Canada | 65
- Page 1 and 2: Sandra Semchuk (with James Nicholas
- Page 3 and 4: Cultivating Canada | 55
- Page 5 and 6: Cultivating Canada | 57
- Page 7 and 8: ‘On Loan’: Thoughts on stolen s
- Page 9 and 10: Cultivating Canada | 61
- Page 11: eaking the prairie wool and clearin
- Page 15 and 16: Notes1 Elwood Jimmy acknowledges th
<strong>and</strong> cloths. First Nations people don’t have to pay. I do. James put his h<strong>and</strong>son papâmihâw asiniy <strong>and</strong> held them there for a long time. Did he give orreceive? We learned what we could about where papâmihâw asiniy fell.Could we find this sacred place? James was tired, weary from the battle<strong>and</strong> non-recognition. He collapsed in exhaustion at Rib Rocks. I rested. Wefound what we think is the site of papâmihâw asiniy’s l<strong>and</strong>ing, high on a hill.Prairie sage grows there.We will not show it in photographs.James prayed <strong>and</strong> made offerings. I joined him. We returned to the l<strong>and</strong> atMurray Lake. The plants he has watered, lubestrok, came in small seeds in mygreat-gr<strong>and</strong>mother’s pocket from Ukraine. It has grown large <strong>and</strong> strong. Weate from this plant <strong>and</strong> in the fall seeds are gathered so that it can be plantedagain. Each seed a choice, an action, a gesture of planting, a bending down tothe l<strong>and</strong>. James wrote my great-gr<strong>and</strong>mother’s story. He put the word Ka kissis kach e whak,2 Saskatchewan, in her mouth, a meal of river moving swiftlyaround a bend, a meal of l<strong>and</strong>, a province.I acknowledge to you, <strong>Elwood</strong>, that my family’s relocation dislocates FirstNations just as we had been dislocated from our homes over all of thosecenturies. I acknowledge that with this awareness comes responsibility.Without taking responsibility for my privilege <strong>and</strong> for the acts of mygr<strong>and</strong>parents I too become complicit in the ongoing systemic effects ofcolonization, racism, <strong>and</strong> non-recognition of the inherent rights <strong>and</strong> theextraordinary knowledges of First Nations, the laws of being specific to theirnations <strong>and</strong> to the diversity of individuals.By many accounts spread over centuries, papâmihâw asiniy grows heavierwith time—heavier in McDougall’s farmyard, heavier in Winnipeg, heavier inToronto.Heavier with the burden of theft by the people who claim to own it <strong>and</strong>presume they can ‘loan’ it?Heavier with the power <strong>and</strong> strength of a people, a power <strong>and</strong> strength—likepapâmihâw asiniy—temporarily on loan <strong>and</strong> one day restored?Coming to Canada gave my family possibilities to thrive, to diversify, <strong>and</strong>become more complex <strong>and</strong> innovative in the choices each member couldmake to create their own lives. These possibilities came at a great cost toyou from a First Nation as immigration overcame the Indigenous, as plants<strong>and</strong> animals were destroyed or pushed aside. The choices for First Nationsbecame truncated <strong>and</strong> limited within paradigms that were not their own.64 | S<strong>and</strong>ra Semchuk <strong>and</strong> <strong>Elwood</strong> <strong>Jimmy</strong>
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