Summer Symbols

Summer in Sioux Lookout, as in everywhere else in the country, is a ripe time for celebrations. In the Indian Country that surrounds and runs through this little town, it is also a season of important commemorations, three of which straddle the flag-waving and fireworks of Canada's patriot day.

First, June 11 marked the fourth anniversary of the Canadian government's official apology for a century-long policy of extracting Indian children from their families (sometimes for years, sometimes forever) so as to extract and do away with their Indianness. Most of us did not then, and cannot ever, realize the importance of "The Apology" to those for whom it was meant. It seemed, beyond contrition, to promise a renewal of relations between the state and Indigenous peoples. Four years on, the message was recalled with an early morning ceremony, one of hundreds that were no doubt held on dusty fields and washboard roads like the one upon which we circled. This road had led to one of the residential schools that gave Anishinaabe youngsters their first and lasting taste of western education, western authority, western perversion. Now a small gathering of former students sat around a drum and sang in the rising sun, in the language of their survival. We remembered then, in the sharing of sad and hopeful stories, what the Prime Minister had said in 2008:

The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. The burden is properly ours... You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey.

But the old children still wondered, as did all of us gathered there in soft communion, standing in the very heart of this country but feeling a long way from silent Ottawa.


The second summer occasion in Indian Country came on June 21, which has been declared National Aboriginal Day. It is a day that passed without notice during most of my years in urban centres, but which is a fairly big deal in a place like Sioux Lookout, where half the population is indigenous. A chunk of main street was transformed into a pow-wow ground, complete with tipi and grandfather drum, and kids were taught how to make bannock and twist their tongues around Anishinaabemowin by a local elder. The centrepiece of the day's celebration was the signing of a friendship accord between the town of Sioux Lookout and the nearby Lac Seul and Slate Falls first nations. The dignitaries sat and withstood pulses of summer rain, proud that after a century of uneasy, informal coexistence, they were finally committing to a kind of mingled well-being. A small wet crowd smiled and clapped, as sincerely hopeful as its leaders. Finally, one of this region's luminous heroes, Garnet Angeconeb, was honoured with a Queen's Jubilee Medal (no irony intended). He is one of the few former residential school students I know personally, a man who has chosen not hide the wounds it inflicted upon him, but rather, in a courageous display of broken wholeness, forge this pain into forgiving, life-giving purpose.



The third occasion took place on July 6, at Lac Seul's annual Treaty Day. Since 1873, this has been a chance for the two signatories to Treaty 3, in this case Her Majesty and the Anishinaabe living around this large and intricate lake, to get together to recall and make good on promises made. A red-serge Mountie presides over the issuance of five dollar bills to all community members (an amount that has not kept up with inflation), and today a group was reenacting the goods-giving as it would have happened in the 1920's. A canoe laden with tea, kettles, and other consumerables, accompanied by the crimson cop and a fussily-suited Indian Agent, scraped onto the shore at the site (known as Archie's Landing after a since-passed resident), where the chief in bowler hat waited for the delegation. Formalities complete, a crowd began to form a loose queue in front of the annuity table, which took half the afternoon to wind through the whole gathering of eligibles. The rest of us sampled a contemporary free lunch (baloney sandwiches and bannock) and cheered on a few eager teams competing in canoe races (the chief versus Sioux Lookout's mayor was a favourite). Later, a minister called up every couple who had been married more than twenty years, to be recognized by scattered applause and personalized certificates of achievement.

Garnet, meanwhile, shuttled about the bumpy ground on his mechanized scooter. He was affable as always, but had a lot on his mind. "I'm running on empty" he confessed to me with a smile. He had only conceived of this ceremony a few days before, and the preparations had been hurried. But as three o'clock approached, and the last of the honoured couples had accepted their gift bags, Garnet grew visibly excited at what he had planned. Giddy as a child, even.

Those who count residential school among their lived experiences are known as 'survivors'. Survivors, not just of the sadistic acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse that an untold number endured, but of the uniform and inescapable agenda of the state's attempted reengineering of their humanity. All of the survivors who were present - about thirty folks who were mostly in their 50s or older, along with a few who looked surprisingly younger - had been presented earlier in the day with ribbons in the four colours of the Lac Seul Nation. All wore them pinned prominently against their chests.

Now, Garnet led this weathered troupe towards the big drum near the lakeshore, to circle for speeches and an honour song. Younger relations followed along to provide chairs for weary legs. Then Garnet announced that very soon we would be hearing the sound of a float plane. He dwelled upon the sound - the same sound that had signalled when children were swept out of the community for school, would now alert the gathering that children (albeit not the same ones) were returning home. Garnet's voice quivered as he described how two planes would circle, land on the nearby lake, and, at last, deliver their precious passengers back.

They were, of course, later than expected. But when a distant drone did finally take shape in pontoons and fuselage, even the oldest survivors stood and came down to the beach, where several kids, dressed in the uniforms they might have worn in the 1950s, bounded up the dock to our cheers, and no few tears.