33. Life in Winnipeg
Once she settles, Ali's life evolves. She learns about planting crops from the Indians and thus the productive and pretty victory garden that surrounds her house. She buys a pair of goats to produce home milk and to produce baby goats.
The Cree Indian girl, Nikah, is home help and Ali educates her up. The Huguenot French Eadie works in the city weekdays 9 to 5 as French-language secretary. And Pierre and Guy go to Father Tim's walking-distance, one-room school. Father Tim teaches in English and his course gives grammar-school skills up to 6th grade in a mixed ages class. Ali also teaches there 2 hours a weekday and she sometimes goes into Winnipeg by bus to the University where she has connected with a psychology Professor who is interested in her linguistic experiment. And she meets with the local Cree tribe and spends weekends, with Guy and Nikah studying the Cree Indian life.
34. Ali's Advice for the Indians
After getting hands-on experience living with the Cree Indians on weekends and after asking Father Tim's permission, she drops his Father title. "Tim, these Indians are going to be world losers as long as they keep the reservation mentality."
"Ah, Miss Ali, ye mean the lack of ambition to go out and compete with whites, don't ye?"
"The problem is not just ambition. A Cree child needs to acquire tools for modern life, like speaking, reading and writing proper English so his Indian doesn't show. And the ability to read literature and science. And trips to the big cities where they will be unidentifiable as Injuns. You know, the skin color isn't that different and the Injun look isn't that different."
"The parents would not like to hear ye, a blonde, blue-eyes tell their children that, Miss Ali."
"Well, we don't have to say it directly. Just start to teach them the tools I mention. And organize a school tour every 6 months."
"It takes money the Church don't have, me dear lady."
"But I have. At least for the school here, Tim."
"Well, that is kind a ye. And I do not disagree with your point."
"Tim, it is a basic problem with all minorities. Each gets drowned in its own inferior culture - look at the US southern blacks with their slave mentality and soul food and religion and unschooled ignorance. There should be no sentiment against getting rid of an ethnicity which chains you to second-class citizenship and makes you a member of the mass."
Tim chuckles, "Ye talk like a Marxist, me lady. Well, I am not against it."
35. Nokomis
Ali's studying the local Cree Indians leads her to the oldest person of the community, the ancient Nokomis, who claims to be 114 years old and Ali is struck by the coincidence that 114 years crosses one-million hours of a life. Wow! She thinks, This is a once in a lifetime. I must make the most of it.
The Indian girl, Nikah takes Ali to the edge of the Cree community, where forest pines loom and gloom. There stands a lone teepee.
Nikah says, "It is the home of Nokomis." They kneel at entrance and Nikah shouts into the dark interior "Mother Nokomis! It is I, the girl Nikah of the tribe; I have a visitor, a young woman come from afar to learn your wisdom. May we enter?"
"It is my pleasure to receive a guest,"replies a voice surprisingly strong. They enter. Nokomis does not like too much lighting, Nikah has explained. She has eye cataracts that cause glaring with too much light and can only see her guests in a darkened room. She lights 3 candles. Ali sits, with Nikah on left across from the ancient one, whom, she notes, is in Indian dress sitting at low table. Her skin is leathery and brown with several horizontal deep creases across the brow and diagonally on the face. Nokomis smiles and shows front teeth, which, Ali learns later, are dental bridges made by a Winnipeg dentist. Her hair is Indian black, tightly pulled back into a rear knot.
After shaking hands Ali makes a donation of a hundred-dollar bill and also a box of soft chocolates. Nikah who is not necessary as interpreter but present to introduce Ali as friend of the Cree, says: "Mother Nokomis, this woman - her name Miss Ali - came to Winnipeg because she did not want to have her baby in the land of the American whites. She studied our area and thinks it is good for New People like she. And she would like to hear your stories of life before the White came."
Nokomis, impressed by the 100-dollar and satisfied Ali is well introduced by another Cree Indian, agrees. So each weekend Ali will visit and hear a story of the old days and ask questions. As Ali is leaving she recalls a poem she'd learned from her Uncle Guy as a child.
Where we go to work each day
Indian children used to play-
What we call our native land,
Where the shops and houses stand.
Indian children used to play-
What we call our native land,
Where the shops and houses stand.
Once were woods with Indian people.
Sundays free of priest or steeple
Sundays free of priest or steeple
Only wigwams on the ground,
And at night a forest sound.-
And Ali thinks, I am going to experience another culture totally different from anything I have experienced. Recently she has read a story by the young writer Ray Bradbury, And the Moon be Still as Bright, about an early expedition of Earth explorers to planet Mars and the disgust of one sensitive explorer as he watches his fellows mess up Mars's natural beauty and he realizes that if allowed to colonize they will destroy the rare and beautiful Martian culture and landscape so he decides to kill them. From the stories of Nokomis, Ali understands Bradbury's renegade explorer. And the poem recurs in her mind every time she meets Nokomis, and a silent tear forms inside.
36. Indian Children before the Whites Came (Nokomis speaks)
"When I was a child no white man existed for us. We lived in teepees. My tribe's area is now Winnipeg. I lived with my father and mother and a brother. Indian people do not have children as whites do - like pigs breed. We lived off hunting, fishing and small crop; not poor but not enough to support more than two children each family. Our child numbers were kept low by avoiding sex at fertile time, which we had a rough idea of, and by dropping newborns in the river during hard times. We had no Christians then to tell us our morals - we lived naturally happy, doing what was needed.
"For a child, the life was helping the mother at home. At age 10 the boy followed the father. We Cree children did not play much. We had ceremonies - sun dances, rain dances, spring and autumn equinox, harvest festival - when the adults left us to ourselves and we ran in the forest and swam in the river.
"Was I happy then? I never thought about it. We children were busy most of the time with necessary things like helping mother tan the hides, make leather, prepare meat and plants as pemmican for winter,
"We did not have school. Mother taught us what she knew till age 10 and then, for the boy, father took over to make him into a man for the tribe.
"We did not have leisure. We all worked to do what is needed for the tribe to survive.
"When the Whites came, I was 13. They killed most of our men, took the women for labor and sex, and created half-breeds who became alcoholics. They made us Christian and taught us we were bad. They put us in the dirty houses. It was horrible." Nokomis stops, her eyes wet. "But, my dear young woman. I do not blame individuals. It is the clash of cultures." She stops. "Well, that is a very heavy burden to talk of. So let us eat. I will teach you about real Indian food."
She turns to Nikah. "My dear child, you know where everything is here. Please cook up some pemmican stew - I have deer jerky and blueberries and herbs, and I like olive oil even though it is not our authentic Indian oil for the stew. And bring me the blueberry wine with glasses to drink it."
Once Nikah busies herself, the ancient woman pours 2 glasses of the very dark red wine, commenting with a smile, "Nikah is too young for wine."
First she toasts with Ali and takes a slow deep continued swallow and Ali does too. Feeling the powerful wine. Nokomis says,"The people send me a helper each day. Now it is after hours so she is back home." As the wine loosens her reserve she goes on. "You are probably interested in how it was with sex for us Cree girls before the Whites came." She takes another long swallow and finishes off the wine in her glass.
"We were not sexual like Whites. The daily activities of staying alive left us little time. And we had no popular entertainment - no books, stage, radio and movies; nothing to teach us to fornicate with each other or play with our bodies. When a girl or boy came of age, the mid teens, at the equinox sun dance festival time, we had the Run and Find game. The evening of full moon was used. Late in afternoon all the unmarried teenage up to the age 20's girls who desired to be in the game assembled on the edge of our teepees and at a point of the sun's lowering toward horizon they ran off in all directions into the forest. An hour after, the young men from age 17 to 25 who were not mated and who had assembled on the same spot, ran off after the girls. Each one stayed separate, going in a different direction. We Cree are good at picking up the trace of a human and many of the young men followed it. And some caught a girl. If a man got a girl, they could spend the night in the forest and he might hunt a rabbit and she gather herbs and fruits and they might make a fire and live for a day in forest. And they could do what they desired with each other. But it was always according to mutual desire. However, because we had no other outlets for sex, most healthy young men and women if one met another during the game, would experiment with each other. Girls had been taught by mothers, and boys initiated into adulthood by older men so there was no ignorance what to do. Then, after the night and day together, the couple separated and returned to each one's teepee and if the girl became pregnant and had a healthy baby, then the girl and the man who impregnated her would become mates and the community would build the new couple a teepee to make a family. Everything was based on mating producing a good first child - no religion or morals. And all for the collective good of the community.
Nokomis tells more stories and Ali writes them down. For next, click 13:37 Back in the Bronx - Communitas
And at night a forest sound.-
And Ali thinks, I am going to experience another culture totally different from anything I have experienced. Recently she has read a story by the young writer Ray Bradbury, And the Moon be Still as Bright, about an early expedition of Earth explorers to planet Mars and the disgust of one sensitive explorer as he watches his fellows mess up Mars's natural beauty and he realizes that if allowed to colonize they will destroy the rare and beautiful Martian culture and landscape so he decides to kill them. From the stories of Nokomis, Ali understands Bradbury's renegade explorer. And the poem recurs in her mind every time she meets Nokomis, and a silent tear forms inside.
36. Indian Children before the Whites Came (Nokomis speaks)
"When I was a child no white man existed for us. We lived in teepees. My tribe's area is now Winnipeg. I lived with my father and mother and a brother. Indian people do not have children as whites do - like pigs breed. We lived off hunting, fishing and small crop; not poor but not enough to support more than two children each family. Our child numbers were kept low by avoiding sex at fertile time, which we had a rough idea of, and by dropping newborns in the river during hard times. We had no Christians then to tell us our morals - we lived naturally happy, doing what was needed.
"For a child, the life was helping the mother at home. At age 10 the boy followed the father. We Cree children did not play much. We had ceremonies - sun dances, rain dances, spring and autumn equinox, harvest festival - when the adults left us to ourselves and we ran in the forest and swam in the river.
"Was I happy then? I never thought about it. We children were busy most of the time with necessary things like helping mother tan the hides, make leather, prepare meat and plants as pemmican for winter,
"We did not have school. Mother taught us what she knew till age 10 and then, for the boy, father took over to make him into a man for the tribe.
"We did not have leisure. We all worked to do what is needed for the tribe to survive.
"When the Whites came, I was 13. They killed most of our men, took the women for labor and sex, and created half-breeds who became alcoholics. They made us Christian and taught us we were bad. They put us in the dirty houses. It was horrible." Nokomis stops, her eyes wet. "But, my dear young woman. I do not blame individuals. It is the clash of cultures." She stops. "Well, that is a very heavy burden to talk of. So let us eat. I will teach you about real Indian food."
She turns to Nikah. "My dear child, you know where everything is here. Please cook up some pemmican stew - I have deer jerky and blueberries and herbs, and I like olive oil even though it is not our authentic Indian oil for the stew. And bring me the blueberry wine with glasses to drink it."
Once Nikah busies herself, the ancient woman pours 2 glasses of the very dark red wine, commenting with a smile, "Nikah is too young for wine."
First she toasts with Ali and takes a slow deep continued swallow and Ali does too. Feeling the powerful wine. Nokomis says,"The people send me a helper each day. Now it is after hours so she is back home." As the wine loosens her reserve she goes on. "You are probably interested in how it was with sex for us Cree girls before the Whites came." She takes another long swallow and finishes off the wine in her glass.
"We were not sexual like Whites. The daily activities of staying alive left us little time. And we had no popular entertainment - no books, stage, radio and movies; nothing to teach us to fornicate with each other or play with our bodies. When a girl or boy came of age, the mid teens, at the equinox sun dance festival time, we had the Run and Find game. The evening of full moon was used. Late in afternoon all the unmarried teenage up to the age 20's girls who desired to be in the game assembled on the edge of our teepees and at a point of the sun's lowering toward horizon they ran off in all directions into the forest. An hour after, the young men from age 17 to 25 who were not mated and who had assembled on the same spot, ran off after the girls. Each one stayed separate, going in a different direction. We Cree are good at picking up the trace of a human and many of the young men followed it. And some caught a girl. If a man got a girl, they could spend the night in the forest and he might hunt a rabbit and she gather herbs and fruits and they might make a fire and live for a day in forest. And they could do what they desired with each other. But it was always according to mutual desire. However, because we had no other outlets for sex, most healthy young men and women if one met another during the game, would experiment with each other. Girls had been taught by mothers, and boys initiated into adulthood by older men so there was no ignorance what to do. Then, after the night and day together, the couple separated and returned to each one's teepee and if the girl became pregnant and had a healthy baby, then the girl and the man who impregnated her would become mates and the community would build the new couple a teepee to make a family. Everything was based on mating producing a good first child - no religion or morals. And all for the collective good of the community.
Nokomis tells more stories and Ali writes them down. For next, click 13:37 Back in the Bronx - Communitas
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