The Reason You Walk: A Memoir

PROLOGUE

If you were to enter the centre of the sundance circle, then you would understand the beauty of what happens there.

The shake of the cottonwood trees in the breeze … the swing and sway of prayer flags of every colour tied to the branches … the chorus of cicadas singing a perfect soundtrack for the sweltering heat … the feeling of hundreds of supporters standing on the edge of the circle watching you.

THE HOT SAND was starting to burn my feet. The sun’s radiance had burrowed deep into my skin, turning it a dark carmine-brown. My dried sweat left a thin layer of salt on my body. I could taste it as I licked my lips.

We had been dancing and fasting in this circle since long before dawn.

Chiefs and headmen formed a procession and walked to the south side of the arbour, where I stood. They took my father’s war bonnet from its perch and raised it toward the sky. The dozens of eagle feathers splayed around the headdress like a halo, each representing an act of valour, while the intricate patterns of glass beads caught the light of the sun. The PA system crackled.

When they brought the war bonnet down from the sky and placed it on my head, war whoops and ululations rose from those around the circle. They had made me a chief.

The sundance leader laid down a small box, opened it, and withdrew a treaty medallion. Placing the medallion in my hands, he reminded me of the significance of the treaty relationship: the commitment to share the land with newcomers. On one side of the medallion was a profile of George Washington. The other showed two hands shaking. One hand was European. The other was Indigenous. We are all treaty people.

I nodded and thanked him. I was surprised by how heavy the medal was in my hands.

I turned my gaze to the earth. It had been two years since I was here last. I had strayed off the red road I had been taught to walk as a boy. I had turned my back on Ndede,* my father. I had hurt many people, including those closest to me.

As the son of a hereditary chief, I had always known I would someday rise to this rank, but I assumed that day was far in the future. Perhaps it would arrive after I had achieved something great. Instead, it came when I was at one of the lowest ebbs of my life. My community, my family, and my father responded by giving me a second chance. That which was broken, they tried to make whole again.

All of this took place more than a decade ago. It was not the only time my father would pass something to me that I would commit to carrying into the future.

In the last year of his life, Ndede would go on a remarkable journey of hope, healing, and eventually forgiveness. The journey would take him to the greatest heights of some of the world’s most powerful institutions. Yet, in the end, it would resonate on the most basic level of existence that all of us share.

More than any inheritance, more than any sacred item, more than any title, the legacy he left behind is this: as on that day in the sundance circle when he lifted me from the depths, he taught us that during our time on earth we ought to love one another, and that when our hearts are broken, we ought to work hard to make them whole again.

This is at the centre of sacred ceremonies practised by Indigenous people. This is what so many of us seek, no matter where we begin life.

This is the reason you walk.

*Ndede means my father in Ojibwe, a term my sister Shawon and I used growing up to refer to our dad. The e here sounds similar to the e in the word egg. Written phonetically, Ndede sounds something like in-DEH-deh.

PART ONE

Oshkaadizid

Youth

1

A CLOUD FLEW LOW across the shimmering waters of Lake of the Woods. Waabanakwad—Grey Cloud—a tall, lean Anishinaabe man, studied this bit of mist as it floated by. He broke off a knot of tobacco in his hand and placed the offering on the water. Then he craned his neck upward so that when he spoke, his words rose up into the sky.

Ahow nimishoomis, miigwech kimiinshiyin ningoozis owiinzowin, the man said in Ojibwe. Oh, grandfather, thank you for giving me my son’s name.

Newborn twin boys lay nearby with their mother, Nenagiizhigok—Healing Sky Woman. They nursed in the lodge nestled along the line of trees on a point just north of Turtle Narrows. They had arrived early that morning. Waabanakwad knew they were a beautiful gift. He thought of what a blessing it was that his little family was there on his trapline, on land that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him.

Tobasonakwut, he said to himself. Low Flying Cloud. He watched his son’s namesake drift past and disappear into the fog that obscured the far shore. He crouched by the water seeking another vision, a name for his other son.

The leaves of a poplar rustled softly in the wind. The water lapped near Waabanakwad’s feet.

That must have been when a small bird landed close to him, cocking its head from side to side, studying Waabanakwad. When Waabanakwad smiled at it, the little apparition jumped into the air. He swooped toward the ground before his wings found their lift and he flew away into the mist.

Bineshii, Waabanakwad said. Little Bird. He liked the name. His eyes crinkled as a smile spread across his face.

He offered the rest of his tobacco, invoked the spirits of the four directions, grandmother earth, and the grandfather of us all, then walked back to his lodge. He had named his sons, and Nenagiizhigok must have beamed when she saw Waabanakwad return to their home.

The smiles would soon vanish. While still infants, both boys were struck by scarlet fever, but the Anishinaabe medicine helped only Tobasonakwut. Bineshii lived up to his namesake. He touched the ground in this world only briefly before taking flight and leaving us for the spirit world.

Years later, when he became a gichi-Anishinaabe—a giant among his people—Tobasonakwut was told by an elder that he had lived such a rich, intense life because he had experienced not just the rewards and challenges that were rightly his own, but also the pain, joy, and heartache that rightly belonged to Bineshii. Tobasonakwut had experienced enough for two lifetimes. This is probably why the Anishinaabemowin word for twin is niizhote, or two heart. Not two hearts, but a duality embodied in one sacred bond. This is what Tobasonakwut would be told by an elder much later in his journey. Even further down that road, those two hearts would become one again. But that would not be for a very, very long time.

First, there was the business of being a kid.

WHEN STILL A YOUNG GIRL, Nenagiizhigok had been playing one day with her siblings and cousins near Sii’amo Ziibing, not far from where her son Tobasonakwut would be born a generation later. It must have been a warm summer day, probably in the morning, when the sun was beginning to bring heat to the forest shade.

The children chased each other, their laughs echoing along the rocky shore. When one of them broke off and ran up a gentle slope into the forest, the others, Nenagiizhigok included, followed. Soon they were in pursuit, slaloming through the pine trees, red-pine needles on the forest floor a soft cushion beneath their moccasins. Though they shouted and giggled, their footsteps were softer on the earth than any of us today could imagine. They broke into a clearing in the woods where tall grasses grew, hiding a swamp beneath them. Beautiful flowers danced among the grasses, swayed by the gentle breeze, and the children were drawn closer and closer, away from the trees.

In a dreamlike state, entranced by the purple and pink blossoms, they kept moving forward. Just then, a soft cascading sound rose up all around them. A thousand tiny rattles shaken at once.

Nenagiizhigok and the others stood frozen as scores of dragonflies ascended from the reeds all around them. The beautiful creatures began to arc and tilt, flying circles around the heads of these little Anishinaabeg.

Slowly, and gently enough to preserve the wonder in the children’s minds, the little insects began to sing. It was a calm, soothing melody that traced the contours of the paths they flew through the air. The tones rose to a plateau, hung in mid-air, and then softly landed at a new low. The tiny insect helicopters repeated this pitch before starting their song cycle anew. There was no end, only this beginning—new music.

Many years later, Tobasonakwut heard his mother, Nenagiizhigok, sing this melody to him. She and the other children, now parents, named the lullaby Kopichigan. He would hear it as he sat in a tikanaagan—a cradleboard—while his mother picked blueberries in the August sun, and he would drift off to sleep. He would hear it at night, rocking in a swing suspended above his parents’ bed. And he would hear it sung to him when he was put down for a nap.

"Mehhh, mehhh, mehhh …" his mother would softly hum. The gift from the dragonflies worked its way into Tobasonakwut’s heart, mind, and spirit. It was a song that came from home. From mother. From earth.

AS A YOUNG BOY, Tobasonakwut lived the happy-go-lucky life that little Anishinaabeg always have in what is now Northwestern Ontario. He had a smile on his face and a slingshot in his back pocket.

Summers were spent at a spot on the Aulneau Peninsula called Neyangaashing, a village built around a Midewin lodge used by the Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwe. From his parents’ home, Tobasonakwut would scale a nearby hill, climb the rounded rock face, and look out over the shimmering waters of Lake of the Woods. He would see fishers passing by in their boats, including his father, heading out to set a net. In August, he and his brothers would sit there and eat blueberries.

One summer day, Tobasonakwut came across a strange sight. He was walking back to the Midewin lodge when he saw an Anishinaabe man on his hands and knees like a four-legged animal, a leash around his neck. The leash was tied to a post set so deeply into the ground that it did not move when the man pulled on the leather strap. The man was sobbing to himself, unaware of Tobasonakwut watching him. Tobasonakwut was witnessing someone on a vision quest, the man sacrificing his hunger, his thirst, and even his dignity to move closer to the spirit world. It was the first time he had seen such behaviour. It would not be the last.

Things were changing for Tobasonakwut and his people. The Anishinaabeg were being relocated from villages like Neyangaashing to reserves like Big Island and Onigaming, where Tobasonakwut’s family was moved. They were told the land where they’d worked their traplines for so many generations did not belong to them. Their traditional way of life gone, they were ordered not to leave the reserve, and they were not permitted to join the new economy being created around them.

Nothing was the same, including the marriage of Waabanakwad and Nenagiizhigok. Waabanakwad began to spend more time away from the family he loved. Perhaps it was a way for him to reclaim some of the autonomy that had been taken from him. Perhaps he was just chasing women. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Whatever the cause, Nenagiizhigok was left alone with her children and grew distressed and despondent. When Waabanakwad reappeared after a long absence, the parents would argue in front of their sons, leaving them with unsettled feelings. Colonization is not a good backdrop to family life.

Yet both parents loved their children with all their hearts. Waabanakwad took young Tobasonakwut with him to his brother’s house, where they would listen to 78s of the Carter Family on the reserve’s first record player. Nenagiizhigok, for her part, would tell the children stories by the wood stove all winter long.

One morning, Nenagiizhigok dressed Tobasonakwut a little more deliberately than usual. She made some pakwezhigan— bannock—and boiled water for tea. When a respected elder arrived, Tobasonakwut was given the bread and tea and led by the elder to the lakeshore, where a canoe waited for them. The elder paddled the canoe south toward Cyclone Point.

On the way, they came to a rock face that cast an eastward gaze. They paddled to it and pulled the canoe ashore. The old man unwrapped the bannock and poured out two cups of tea. He loaded his ceremonial pipe with tobacco and lit it with a match. He invoked the four directions, mother earth, and the grandfather of us all. The medicine man prayed for the little boy who sat before him. He asked the spirits to be gentle on him. Then he gave the boy bread and one of the cups of tea.

They sat and ate in silence for a time. Then the elder told Tobasonakwut he would become a leader and a spiritual person among the Anishinaabe. For this reason, Tobasonakwut needed to go on his vision quest at a young age. The quest would prepare him for his life’s work.

As he chewed the cooked dough, it dawned on Tobasonakwut that this was his last meal before the fast would begin. He must have chewed a little more slowly and listened to the elder a little more closely after that.

The elder instructed him to climb into the open mouth of a nearby cave. He was to remain there for four days.

The boy did as he was told. Cold, hungry, and thirsty, he spent four days alone in the cave. He heard the rain fall, he heard the snakes that shared the cave with him slither past. He cursed his family and the elder who had brought him there. He was lonely and miserable and promised himself he would never force his children to fast as he was fasting. But he did not break his fast. He honoured his commitment. He completed his quest and he saw his vision.

After four days, the elder retrieved him. They smoked the pipe together and ate some food. As the old man paddled them home toward Onigaming, Tobasonakwut occasionally turned back to study this person who had left him in that cave. He must have noticed that the old man looked as if he had just spent four days in the bush too. When Tobasonakwut arrived home, Waabanakwad encouraged him to leave tobacco under a tree and give thanks for the vision he had received.

2

SO IT WENT. The years that followed were filled with laughter and love, arguing and pain. Life was good, but life was hard. It is the Anishinaabe way.

Yet there was something else, something lurking just out of view that haunted Tobasonakwut’s family. It was a deep-seated fear that lay in wait behind the next tree or over the next hill, just as the Windigo, the ice-giant-cannibal with the banshee scream, haunted their ancestors. And, as with the Windigo, the adults dared not speak its name.

The fear became reality one late-summer’s day when a man in a black robe arrived to demand that Tobasonakwut come with him.

In that instant, Tobasonakwut’s childhood ended. He was placed on a truck with other Anishinaabe children and driven to St. Mary’s Indian Residential School outside Kenora, Ontario. He would spend most of the next decade in this institution—run by the Oblate order of Catholic priests—a subject in a large-scale experiment in social engineering, the goal of which was to kill the Indian in the child.

As soon as he arrived, Tobasonakwut’s hair was cut short and he was stripped of the name given to him by his father. The priests and nuns replaced it with a number—54—and an Irish name: Peter Kelly. He was even stripped of the language he had spoken all his life, a language passed down through untold generations of ancestors. Speaking Anishinaabemowin within earshot of his new custodians earned him a beating with a ruler or a belt. In the classroom, he was expected to speak English, but outside that room his keepers spoke French to their charges.

A while later, Tobasonakwut was called by a nun to her room, where the woman raped him. While riding him, she told him, That’s all your people are good for, is just fucking. That was only the first occasion. Other sexual abuses followed, committed by men and women, both while Tobasonakwut was alone and with other children. Throughout his years at the residential school, Tobasonakwut and the other children were referred to by the teachers and staff as maudit sauvages.

Tobasonakwut returned to his family at Onigaming for the summer of 1947. As those halcyon days drew to a close, and when the wild rice harvest was completed, Waabanakwad gathered his family for a feast before the children went back to residential school. He showered them with candies and sweets he had bought in nearby Nestor Falls. He led them in traditional songs on his big drum.

The priest arrived to take the three eldest boys—Tootons, Tobasonakwut, and John Pete. Little Tobasonakwut was still singing his father’s songs as they drove back to Kenora. He was interrupted when the priest pulled the car over, dragged him from the vehicle, and beat him, telling him, Never sing those pagan songs again.

That October, Waabanakwad was struck by a car while crossing the highway near Onigaming. Seriously injured, he was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital. It was there, with his sons standing by his side, that Waabanakwad sang his death song. It was a slow, beautiful, and haunting song without words, only vocables to carry the melody. When he completed his song, he asked his wife, Nenagiizhigok, to make sure his sons remembered it. She kept her promise: it is still with his descendants today.

After he died, Waabanakwad was brought to St. Mary’s to be buried in a cemetery in the shadow of the residential school. During the funeral, Tobasonakwut insisted on standing next to his father’s coffin, in accordance with Anishinaabe tradition, instead of kneeling as his Catholic keepers had taught him.

Following the service, an assembly was called, and Tobasonakwut was ordered to come to the front of the group. A nun told him to hold his hands out, and he was strapped repeatedly for his transgression. Years later, Tobasonakwut would speak about how he felt at the time.

I resolved that I’m not gonna cry, he’d say, the edges of his mouth pulled downward. If that’s your best shot, you don’t know what I’m going through in seeing my father being buried. And this physical pain that I’m feeling? That’s nothing compared to—his voice cracked as he jabbed his heavy fist toward his chest—to what I feel.

He would say this some six decades later, when he was a man looking back on his life from the high hill of old age.

But on that day in 1947, the young Tobasonakwut had no one to explain himself to, and no choice but to suffer this injustice in silence. He would take the tears he wanted to shed for his dead father and bury them deep inside, somewhere out of reach of the priests and nuns. He would take the anger at the unfairness of being beaten while the earth on his father’s grave was still fresh and use it to push his emotions down even further. There was stress and grief, and the realization that his one true protector was gone. Now there would be no one to save him from this place. All of this was buried. Perhaps his heart hardened. Maybe his spirit petrified. That is what little children did in order to survive residential school.

DURING HIS TIME AT ST. MARY’S, Tobasonakwut became close friends with a boy named Miigoons, who had been renamed Louie by the priests. When Miigoons’s father had died, he was abandoned by his mother, who suffered from inconsolable grief after the passing of her husband. Tobasonakwut’s and Miigoons’s beds were next to each other, and they shared a box at the foot of those beds which housed all of their earthly possessions.

One Sunday afternoon after mass, Tobasonakwut and Miigoons were playing with their toy trucks near a gravel pile on the school grounds. A non-Native man with light-brown hair, dressed in a blue suit, walked over to the boys. As the man approached, Miigoons stood and looked sheepishly at his shoes. The man led Miigoons away toward the cemetery.

Tobasonakwut raced to the top of a nearby hill to get a good vantage point. Arriving at the summit, he saw a group of non-Native men standing in a circle smoking cigarettes and passing around a flask. His eyes were drawn to what appeared to be a pile of clothes in the middle of the circle. Just then, the pile moved. It was Miigoons. One of the men picked the scrawny boy up by his shirt and punched him in the stomach. The boy collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

Tobasonakwut ran back to the school for help. Finding the principal, he explained what he had seen in a mixture of Anishinaabemowin and English, not knowing much of his second language yet. The father principal stalled and said he would catch up. Tobasonakwut returned to the hill, but Miigoons and the men were gone.

Tobasonakwut would not see Miigoons for a week. One of the other priests, one who spoke Ojibwe well and was kind to the children, came to Tobasonakwut and told him, Miigoons ginoonde-waabamig akoziiwigamigong—Miigoons is in the hospital and wants to see you.

Tobasonakwut was driven to a nearby hospital, where he found his little friend in bed. Through Miigoons’s hospital gown, Tobasonakwut could see that he was bandaged from his belly button to his sternum. He asked what happened, but Miigoons refused to answer. He did say that his ribs were broken and that he could hardly breathe. Tobasonakwut asked why he had been sent for.

I want you to have my little toys and my trucks, Miigoons replied. I want you to take care of my shoes and my boots and my jacket. Everything in that box by our beds I want you to take care of, including my comic books.

Then the priest returned for Tobasonakwut and drove him back to St. Mary’s. When he got back to the residential school, Tobasonakwut moved Miigoons’s things into his side of the box, just as his friend had asked.

A few days later, a nurse told Tobasonakwut to drag Miigoons’s mattress outside into the sun and cover it with a powder.

What happened to Louie? Tobasonakwut asked.

He won’t be coming back.

What happened to him?

He’s not coming back, the nurse repeated.

"Giiniboo na?" Tobasonakwut asked in Ojibwe. Had his friend passed away? At the time, he did not know the word die. The nurse had no idea what he was saying.

The priests insisted that Miigoons had died of tuberculosis, but Tobasonakwut knew the truth: his friend had died of his internal injuries, injuries which likely would have