Document(s) 21 of 23

Dawn Martin-Hill is Mohawk, Wolf Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River. She is Academic Director of the Indigenous Studies Program at McMaster University. Interested in cross-cultural comparisons of Indigenous peoples, in particular Indigenous knowledge, Dawn Martin-Hill works increasingly in the area of Indigenous health-related issues.

Indigenous Knowledge and Power

In this chapter my intention is to contribute to the growing body of Indigenous theory and method that makes space for Indigenous women, and in the process to contribute to the struggles of the Lubicon Cree women of northern Alberta, Canada. The impact of development and colonial domination is evident in women’s life stories. So are the forms of survival and resistance of their communities.

There is a great deal of confusion and dysfunction within our communities. We are in the process of reconstructing, rebuilding, reinventing and revitalizing our nations. To continue to try to validate ourselves to the very people who almost destroyed us is to remain in a colonial mind-set. This is contrary to our goals. From an Indigenous knowledge framework it is meaningless to demonstrate precisely the impact of development on people’s social reality through a scientific, objective or quantitative methodology. We must position ourselves in the centre of our own knowledge, not speak from others’ margins to try to tell them about ourselves.

While the appalling statistics on the conditions in which Indigenous women live in Canada have been well documented by social science researchers and provide a measure of the human costs of colonization (see Frideres 1993, 1998), as a Mohawk woman I can say along with many Lubicon women that we are intimate with the experiences of these costs. In academia, as well as in policy circles, what Indigenous women experience and do is often viewed as insignificant. It is not enough to objectify. What is relevant is not so much comprehending where I or the Lubicon women are in socio-demographic terms, but where we are coming from in human terms–spiritual, emotional, psychological, social and physical. The fact that we are here, continuing to do what we do, is testimony to our strength, resilience and beauty as Indigenous women. By acknowledging the realities of Aboriginal women, by hearing our own voices, the Lubicon women and I are positioned not as victims but as survivors.

The challenge as a researcher is to provide an opportunity to learn from Indigenous women’s experience as we remain active participants with them in dismantling colonialism in real terms. I seek to contribute to this kind of Indigenous knowledge/practice by presenting life stories from the women of the Lubicon Cree Nation, and by supporting them in achieving justice. Their stories express and embody the collective and personal human costs of colonization, of resource exploitation, of their long land-claim struggle, and of government betrayal. It is through their experiences that the social impact of the dominant society’s oppression can best be demonstrated.

My Lubicon women’s-centred discourse evolves within a larger Indigenous knowledge framework. The Chair of the United Nations Report on the Protection of Heritage of Indigenous People, Dr Daes, states:

Indigenous knowledge is a complete knowledge system with its own concepts of epistemology, philosophy, and scientific and logical validity . . . [which] can only be fully learned and understood by means of pedagogy traditionally employed by these people themselves. (Cited in Battiste and Henderson-Youngblood 2000: 41)

The processes that seek to devalue this knowledge involve a systematic rhetorical strategy developed to justify the oppression and genocide of Native ‘others’ (Churchill 1997: 1–19; Jaimes 1992: 1–13). Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes,

to a large extent, [Western] theories about research are underpinned by a cultural system of classification and representation, by views about human nature, human morality and virtue, by conceptions of space and time, by conceptions of gender and race. Ideas about these things help determine what is real. Systems of classification and representation enable different traditions or fragments of traditions to then be played out in systems of power and domination, with real material consequences for colonized peoples. (Smith 1999: 44)

In contrast to ‘Western’ traditions, Indigenous methodology approaches a community as a network of kinship systems, as family. This network is not, however, limited to human society; it extends out and is inclusive of all living things. This approach is profoundly rooted in an Indigenous epistemology. The Indigenous societies of North America hold specific knowledge about their relationship to the universe. Their ‘awareness’ is complex in that it not only accounts for this world, but for the principles governing the spirit world as well. These ways of knowing involve a developed sense of the connection of kinship and cosmos that can inform behaviour and influence social action. The earth is positioned as mother, the moon as grandmother, and the sun as father or uncle. This makes kinship a general epistemological foundation that in turn demands the acknowledgement of reciprocal responsibilities and obligations between Indigenous people and their environment. This includes an understanding that human beings are not endowed with the right either to dominate others or to destroy that which is around them. This is not ‘mythology’, or even religion; it is an assumption, or truth, which is at the core of Indigenous knowledge and consciousness.

Overview of the ‘Histories’ of the Lubicon Struggle for Their Land

Histories of the Lubicon Cree struggle for recognition and for control of their land have appeared repeatedly in recent years, written by journalists, social scientists, and sometimes independent commissions, and each has documented the series of ignored Lubicon initiatives, bureaucratic duplicities, betrayed agreements, and the century-long denial of recognition of Lubicon lands and rights.

The Lubicon Cree are a hunting society from northern Alberta. They have traditionally lived around Lubicon Lake, hunting and trapping within a 70-mile radius. Although their contact with outsiders was minimal at the end of the nineteenth century, because of their isolated territory, the Lubicon elders of the time were aware that it was important to secure their lands from the encroachment by white settlers then going on elsewhere in the territory (Smith 1988; Richardson 1989; Goddard 1991; Martin-Hill 1992). Thus in 1899, with the help of visiting missionaries, they wrote a letter to the government and sent delegates to Whitefish Lake to speak with government representatives concerning their signing a treaty. The treaty with the Lubicon never materialized. The Lubicon continued to lobby for official agreements with the government for several decades. In 1939 they were successful in gaining legal recognition as a Indian ‘band’ under federal law (Smith 1987; Lennerson 1989; Goddard 1991; Mandelbaum 1979). C.P. Schmidt, an Indian agent, visited them that year and calculated that the band was entitled to 25 square miles of land as a reserve. An aerial survey took place and by 1940 the reserve boundaries had been drawn up (Goddard 1991). However, due to World War II, there was a shortage of ground surveyors and an actual ground survey never took place. In 1942, an official of the Department of Indian Affairs removed Lubicon from registered lists and then moved to reduce the recognition of the Lubicon as a band.

In response to these failures to get recognition, the elders decided the youth should learn English in order to pursue their land claim. Several men, including Walter Whitehead and Bernard and Larry Ominayak were persuaded by the elders to attend high school. Walter was elected chief in the early 1970s and began to lay the legal groundwork for the land claim just as oil exploration began in the area.

The provincial government began to build an all-weather road into the area to facilitate oil exploitation, and by 1980 there were at least ten major oil companies with over 400 wells within the territory of the Lubicon (Goddard 1991). One consequence of the resource development activities in the region was that between 1974 and 1985 the Lubicon became a welfare-dependent community (Fulton 1986; Goddard 1991).

In 1980, the members of the Lubicon band filed an action in the Federal Court of Canada, requesting a declaratory judgment concerning their rights to their land, its use, and the benefits of its natural resources. The claim was dismissed against the provincial government and all energy corporations except one (Petro-Canada) on jurisdictional grounds. The claim with the federal government and Petro-Canada as defendants was allowed to stand, and it dragged on for years. In 1988, after Lubicon band members erected a road blockade, Alberta Premier Donald Getty agreed to meet with them, and they arrived at a mutual agreement, now known as the Grimshaw Accord. The agreement allowed for 79 square miles to be transferred to the federal government for the purpose of establishing a Lubicon reserve and another sixteen square miles would be under the jurisdiction of Lubicon. The 79 square miles included sub-surface and surface rights, as at other reserves in Alberta, while the sixteen only included surface rights (Goddard 1991). The federal government agreed to accept the 79-square mile reserve, plus 16 miles, but was only prepared to provide services to members it designated as ‘Indians’, the 235 of the approximately 500 Lubicon members who were descended from the reduced band list of five decades earlier (Lennerson 1989; Goddard 1991). The Lubicon were not prepared to allow Ottawa to split their members (into those who had a federally recognized Indian status and those who were ‘non-status’), and they rejected the offer. In 1990, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found Canada to be ‘in violation of article 27 so long as historical inequities . . . and certain more recent developments [continue] to threaten the way of life and culture of Lubicon people’ (United Nations 1990).

An independent non-partisan commission was formalized in 1991 to seek a resolution to the Lubicon land claims. This Lubicon Settlement Commission of Review’s final report, published in 1993, after a year-long investigation, stated: ‘Our principal finding is that the governments have not acted in good faith’ (Lubicon Settlement Commission of Review 1993: 4).

Thus the Lubicon Cree have been victims both of globalizing corporate resource interests and of long-standing national and provincial governmental pressures that have become complicit with those corporate interests. The Lubicon Cree’s struggle for their land base and rights demonstrates clearly Canada’s unwillingness to exercise its own laws and apply them to all citizens (Churchill 1999: 208–22; Martin-Hill 1995; Dickason 1992: 390–92; York 1989: 253–7).

The well-publicized land-claims agreements in Canada, which effectively force Aboriginal people to barter away their rights in order to have the opportunity to achieve basic social justice, are thus just one way in which the governments exploit and violate Indigenous rights. Another way is by actively seeking to break communities apart, while alternatively ignoring, silencing and betraying Indigenous peoples’ attempts to seek justice. This is particularly the case with the Lubicon Cree.

What is lost in all of these Lubicon ‘histories’ is the human costs of the land claims and resistance, and this is reflected in the collective and private struggles of the Lubicon women.

The Women’s Circle Reaches Out

Within an Indigenous epistemological framework everyone’s experiences and insights are seen as critical to the whole community.¹ Everyone is considered to have important experiences and insights to share with others. Social realities are shaped through experience in different ways, and for that reason it is critical to include the diverse voices of the Lubicon. Women’s knowledge shapes and directs our understanding of their history and contemporary situation.

I first visited the Lubicon community at Little Buffalo in Alberta in the fall of 1989. I spent only a week there, but the relationship grew when Chief Bernard Ominayak visited my community, Six Nations, between Toronto and Buffalo, the following month to discuss his issues with the traditional governing body of the Haudenosaunee. The following December, I found myself on a plane with elder, chief and faithkeeper, Hubert Buck, on our way to assist the Lubicon chief and council in a ceremony. After that we traveled a dozen times back and forth to answer their calls for spiritual help and moral support. I decided to continue my work with the Lubicon, which meant continuing with the education that sponsored many of the trips. The Lubicon were the reason I continued my Ph.D. education.

In the early summer of 1992, and in the wider context of the Lubicon’s intention to restructure their community in non-Western, ‘traditional’ ways, Chief Ominayak requested that I help the women who had expressed their desire to stay involved with legal and social proceedings relating to the land claim and the well-being of the community. The women were also concerned about what would happen if the government arrested the male leaders. The Lubicon Lake Nation Women’s Circle began to meet bi-weekly, attending political meetings, assisting with speaking engagements, developing a community-oriented social service programme, sponsoring healing circles, cultural survival workshops (crafts and bush skills), teen dances, and many other community events including ceremonies. I was involved in this process, and it was often after events, especially ceremonies, when we shared our deepest thoughts, fears, and feelings, that I would write down our collective ideas and statements.

Yet the process began at our first meeting when there were expectations that we could draft a statement for the Alberta Commission of Review, which was preparing a report on the treatment of the Lubicon for the Alberta government (see above), and which was going to visit the community. When the women gathered I asked them what they would like to say to the public. The ideas started rolling in like thunder. Two and a half hours later, we had more than enough to edit into a statement. I was shocked by their anger, frustration, and outspokenness. These women had a lot to say, and, as one put it, ‘We have been silent too long. Now we will be heard and we will make them hear us!’ (Lillian Whitehead, June 1992).²

The written statement is overwhelming, a condensed version of all of their pain. They read the statement and quietly signed their names. Over twenty Lubicon women composed the statement that was to be read in public. They chose a young woman by the name of Rose Ominayak to read the statement. Several days later, we gathered at the Longhouse for the hearing. There were reporters from as far away as Germany. The presence of so many white people made the women nervous, this was entirely new to the community. Bernard Ominayak asked the women to speak first. Rose quietly moved towards the front table. Head down, she was shaking as she read the statement. She was only able to read half before she finally broke down in tears. Everyone sat in silence while she composed herself to finish the statement:

We, the Lubicon Lake Nation, are tired. We are frustrated and angry. We feel we cannot wait another minute to have our land claim settled. Fifty years is too long. In those fifty years we have watched our land and lives be destroyed by Canadian governments and corporations. Our children are sick from drinking water that oil has spilled in. They are sick from breathing the poisoned and polluted air the pulp mill has made. We are sick from eating animals, animals that are sick from disease from poisoned plants and water. Our children have nothing–they can’t breathe–even that has been taken. Their culture, the bush life, has been destroyed by development. When we were young we lived in the bush–it was a good life. Now, we have no traplines, nothing to hunt. There are no jobs, no money to live a decent life. We see ourselves, our men and our children falling into despair, hopelessness, low self-esteem and drinking. Families are broken like never before. Drinking and violence rise as our spirits fall.

We live our lives in constant danger. Since the blockade we have been afraid to go certain places in town. Our sons have been beaten by white men when they say they are Lubicon. We are even afraid to say that we are what we are! The roads are dusty and dangerous to travel. The logging and oil trucks run us off sometimes. We have lost many young ones because of the horrible roads. We are not even safe in the bush. We are afraid to go into the bush because the white sports-hunters shoot at anything that moves.

We ask why? Why us? What have we done to deserve such treatment? Why can’t the government settle with the Lubicon? Why have they spent so much time and energy trying to destroy us rather than deal fairly with us? What have we done, our children, our people? What wrong have we done to the outside?

We are not dogs, but we are treated like dogs. We are people just like you. We are equal. We have every right to be here. The Creator put us here in this place. We are important–our future. We have lost more than you can imagine: our way of life that we loved, our culture, our beautiful land, our health and our happiness. What else can we lose?

The Lubicon women demand an end to the physical, emotional, economic, cultural and spiritual destruction. We demand an end to the invasion and devastation to our lives. We demand an end to the government and corporation warfare with our lands and lives. We demand an end to the mockery of our Nation! We demand an end to the genocide. Hear our voice and our message–we don’t know if we’ll be here tomorrow. (Martin-Hill 1992, read for the Lubicon Lake Nation Women’s Circle by Rose Ominayak, August 1992)

There were men and women alike with their heads down and eyes watering. The Lubicon women had broken the silence, and powerful it was.

The local media’s response to their statement was interesting, in that it was suggested that the Lubicon women wanted a settlement out of desperation and that they would accept anything. The federal government responded by trying to establish, in their communications with the media, that they sympathized with the women and hoped they would tell their chief to stop stonewalling the federal government’s offer.

The women held several meetings after the Alberta Commission of Review hearings. The women were outraged that the federal government was trying to blame the chief for the impasse. They requested copies of the latest Lubicon offer Siddon had given to the chief and Band Council. They read it through and saw that issues of membership, compensation and community development were unsatisfactory, and they requested a meeting with Federal Minister of Indian Affairs Tom Siddon. The Honourable Tom Siddon did not respond.

During a gathering at the opening of the Longhouse in August 1992, the women decided they wanted to attend the next meeting between the chief and Tom Siddon. Two elders, Louisa Ominayak and Josephine Laboucon, three delegates, Maggie Auger, Rose Ominayak and Jennifer Ominayak, and I, were appointed to attend. The women also requested that five women elders from a nearby Aboriginal nation, Hobbema, attend to offer support and direction. In September, I drove Louisa, her daughter Rose and Josephine to Edmonton. On the way there Louisa said, ‘This is really good, we have not been helping as much as we could. I think this should go on and the women should not quit once you are gone’ (Louisa Ominayak, September 1992). The two elders occupied themselves watching for a moose. It was not a good sign if you did not see at least one animal on the way to Edmonton; it was best if you saw a moose. Josephine spotted several foxes, which she believed to be a sign of Siddon. She said that he was going to ‘be sneaky, like a fox’ (Josephine Laboucon, September 1992). We agreed. Louisa decided, upon the second sighting of a fox, that we were going to have to ‘outfox the fox’. Josephine wanted to see a bear, but we never did.

Meeting the Minister of Indian Affairs

As the meeting with the minister began, Maggie Auger asked Siddon why he never responded directly to the women’s letter, choosing instead to send his response to the media. He responded that he thought he had sent a letter to them. Maggie stated:

In the letter to the media you say you feel bad for us and that you will do everything in your power to help. You try to blame our Chief for us not having a land-claim deal. We don’t like you trying to say it is our Chief that is the problem. We have read the offer you gave us in August. It is not good. Was there not an agreement between the band and your government to hire independent cost estimators to evaluate how much a new community would cost? (Maggie Auger, September 1992)

Siddon responded, ‘Yes, we had agreed to have independent cost estimators determine the amount of building a new village at Lubicon Lake.’ Maggie then responded:

Then, Mr Siddon, if there was an agreement to wait for the independent cost estimators to determine the amount, how did you come up with C$73 million in this deal you offered a few weeks ago when the cost estimators have yet to complete their estimation? Isn’t that in itself breaking the initial agreement with the chief?

Siddon replied: ‘I think C$73 million is a large sum. In fact, it is one of the most generous offers the Lubicon ever received. You have to realize how much money that is that we are offering you. You women have said yourselves how poor you are and your living conditions.’ Louisa Ominayak interjected,

You have made billions off our land. Don’t tell us that you are being generous with our own money! We are sick of playing games. You never answered Maggie! Why did you offer a deal when those men that were supposed to come up with the amount, you didn’t wait, you went ahead and put this in the media just to make it look like we are bad people. You are the ones not being fair!

Jennifer Ominayak then added:

That is our land, you need to get that one straight first. Our land! You are trying to make it look like we keep turning offers down, but you had an agreement with my Dad to go with the independent cost estimators and, instead, before they even finish, you are on TV saying you have a new deal for us. Now, you know who is wrong here. You’re just trying to make us look bad, and we know better. Besides, you also agreed to drop the membership issue, that we would determine who is a member. Now I read this new offer and you bring up membership again, there again. You are breaking your promises. What do you have to say? Tell the truth.

Siddon responded, ‘Now wait just one damn minute here. You are making me angry. There is no need to tell me to tell the truth! I came here of good will and agreed to meet with you for five minutes, and they’re up!’ Louisa Ominayak told him he was going nowhere without a deal. Maggie said:

You need to show respect to us if in turn you want to receive it, and you are not showing us respect. You are lying to us. Now, I will ask you again and I want an answer, not to change the subject, but an answer to my question, did you agree with the Chief to have an independent cost estimator determine the amount of the land claim settlement for building a new village, yes or no?

Siddon responded,

I realize the cost of a new village is more than even what the Lubicon’s proposal suggested because of the inflation rates and so on. We took this into account. Now you must realize the C$73 million is a whole lot more than the $45 million you were offered. It is quite fair and you should talk to your Chief and tell him how fair it is. We cannot give you more, especially since your band has lost many members. Even taking this into account we are giving you a lot of money.

Siddon only evaded the questions and the discussion led nowhere. The meeting lasted for over three hours. Over the course of this time, tensions rose and Siddon practically shouted at the women. Louisa Ominayak warned him once again. He evaded all of their questions and left visibly shaken. The media immediately questioned the women. Maggie wearily responded: ‘He swore at us, he shouted and he lied. He is not a man of honour and we are disappointed with his answers. He talked in circles. Maybe the Chief will have more luck’ (Maggie Auger, September 1992). Siddon went to met with the chief, and we gathered at the restaurant for dinner. When Bernard arrived he told us that Siddon was shaking when he came in to meet with him. He said that Siddon asked, ‘Who the hell is that Mohawk woman, and what is she doing with your women?’ Bernard said he told him, ‘She is a researcher, and it’s not her you have to worry about. You met the Lubicon women and now you know what I have to face each time I come home and report “No deal!” ’

The meeting with the Minister of Indian Affairs galvanized the Lubicon women into formalizing their association. The women decided that they would continue to support the land-claims struggle and their leadership, but would also focus on improving the community’s social well-being. The women expressed concern about the ‘human condition’. They felt the community had been torn apart through years of struggle, which had created social breakdown and collective community stress.

The Women’s Circle began work to establish a ‘collective spirit’ critical to the healing of the community. Continuing in this direction is of utmost importance to them. As the head of the Women’s Circle, Maggie Auger stated in November 1992:

As a woman I am aware of all the problems here, the miscarriages, the babies that die. We know better than anyone how this development has hurt us, that the outside never sees or hears about. But we don’t normally talk of our personal tragedies, that’s not our way. But truthfully, the government has done quite the job on us. Letting us hang in the air like this. Creating new bands. Tearing families apart. This has taken a toll on us and we never let anyone know how much suffering really goes on here. The Women’s Circle maybe can ease our pain. Keep us together, support for one another. We must stay together and keep our ways strong. That is what I believe will get us through this. (Maggie Auger, November 1992)

Forgotten Voices of the Lubicon Lake Nation Women

It is the Lubicon women who have suffered most significantly because of the development in their territory and government colonial policies. They have much to add to the story of the Lubicon. During one of the women’s meetings, Lillian Whitehead told me: ‘We want you to tell our story, what we have been through, what we are fighting for’ (Lillian Whitehead, August 1992). I promised the women that I would tell their story.

One of the first women I met in the community of Little Buffalo near Lubicon Lake was Louise Ominayak. In December 1989, she was grieving the loss of her mother. Sensing her pain, I opted to stay with her instead of visiting with the chief and band council. It was during this visit that she agreed to give me an interview.

I have been raising kids ever since I can remember. My mother was sick and I had to look after eight of them. We lived in the bush. It was a hard life but a good one. I miss that, even though it was hard. I went to school for a while. Not very good at it. Bernard and I were always scrapping with other kids at school. We used to like to fight, even then [laughs]. I had to stop to look after the kids. He went on, he was smart. Me, I just know the bush. . . . I was only about fourteen or fifteen. But we had fun. Somehow we had fun. Can’t explain it. We laughed, went places on horseback, it was my best memories. We raised all of them.

Now, everything is upside down, nothing has been right. This land claim. He never goes to the bush anymore. I miss the bush. Out there it is so peaceful and quiet, good. It was not bad when we first lived here [Little Buffalo]. Then, one day he asked me about becoming the Chief. I said, ‘OK, I stay home and raise the kids while you do what you have to.’ I did not realize I was agreeing to give him up. I’ve been on my own ever since. The children miss their father so much. It was hard, especially when they were sick. Our boy Lou, we almost lost him as a baby. His lungs, he was so sick and Bernard had to go to [New York] that time. That was real hard on all of us. People just don’t realize how this has torn us up inside. And him, he has changed. Worried all the time, quiet. I don’t know what goes on out there, where all he has been, or seen, but he thinks a lot. Me, I don’t like to go on the outside. I went to Edmonton once and wanted to go home right away, too many white people. Then my home, we always have reporters, strangers in and out all the time. I just feed them and don’t say much, but I listen to what they are saying. They take pictures of how the land is being torn up and all the trucks and then they leave. I often wonder what happens to all these pictures, if anyone out there is listening or seeing what is going on up here. But things just keep getting worse.

The hardest part is my family being torn up. I don’t understand how that happened. One by one, my brothers and then sisters left to go to the new band, Woodland Cree. I just can’t figure that out. Why? After we raised them and helped them, now they are against us. My father has a lot to do with that. After leaving us he got jealous that Bernard raised them. But all those years . . . now no one talking to one another (shaking her head slowly). I miss my mother so much. If she were here I would ask her what to do.

Sometimes I ask God, what is He taking everything away for? I wonder if I was bad or something, losing everything that I know and really love. Bernard says don’t worry so much, just look after the kids. So I do, just keep them out of trouble. Kids wander around in the dark around here, drinking and getting into no good. Sometimes their parents are drinking and their kids are hungry; they come to the door for food. I don’t let mine out after dark. It’s hard, people changing, drinking and fighting. Sometimes the young people come here, a girl is hit or something. I try to help them, tell them to stay with it. That’s what I am trying to do. Sometimes the drunks come here when he is gone away. One time this man, I beat him with my broom, I got him out of here. But this is not good, I miss being in the bush. My kids, they are not learning the way I wanted them to. I wish my mother was here. She could tell me what to do. (Louise Ominayak, December 1989)

The next time I was able to visit Louise was over a year later, in the summer of 1991. She had moved to Codotte and was living in a Woodland Band-owned trailer. She appeared even less happy than the last visit. She said she had left Little Buffalo because it was ‘getting to her’, but she was not joining with the Woodland Cree. Her brother was now the Chief of the Woodland Cree and was pressuring her to sign with them. She refused. Edmonton reporters were seeking her out to find out if the Lubicon Chief’s wife had left to sign up with the Woodland Cree. The Woodland Cree were about to vote on a plebiscite for a land claim deal. Louise informed me that the Woodland band was paying up to C$1,000 for people to sign with them. She also told me that ‘They are fools. Their welfare money will be taken away’ (Louise Ominayak, June 1991).

In July of 1992 Louise stopped by Bernard’s and gave me a beaded belt, barrettes and necklaces she had been working on. We attended the round dance at the ‘steel building’ that evening and she was looking well. We had more of a chance to visit. She told me:

I am staying in Trout now. I get to the bush a lot. I don’t like it in Codotte, too much drinking. They are always after me to drink or give them money. I miss Little Buffalo. My kids want to stay here too. I needed time to sort things out in my head. Everyone is trying to get me to turn against Bernard, but I won’t. People must not realize how we shared everything all these years, grew up together. They forget, I don’t. They can’t buy me. The white man is trying, but they can’t give me anything I want. They took all that away and they are still taking everything. Maybe I will move back here. Not right away, but I still visit him. I can stay there if I want. He let me take whatever I wanted. I stayed for a while last winter. We are just too different now, but I can stay there if I want to help with the kids and the house.

But I need to get my life going, my own life. My brothers are nice to me now, too. I missed them and my father is not well. I tried to help him out. Boy, things are crazy. They were after me to sign up with the Woodland, but you never do that, you stay with him on that one. They just want to have me sign up so that will make headlines. After all this, why would I do what the [white man] wants? They must think I am stupid. When I wouldn’t sign they wanted me out of the trailer. If I signed I would have been promised new things and money. I am Lubicon and I am going to stay Lubicon, so I had to get out of there too!

That’s why Trout was good. I was left alone up there, just stayed in the bush, tanned hides and beaded. You and I, we will stay friends no matter what, right? People around here are making all kinds of rumours, but we know, don’t we? (Louise Ominayak, July 1992)

I told her that I understood and didn’t listen to the rumours. If anything, I admired her for the way she had held up under the circumstances. I felt anger over what this woman was being put through. It was through Louise’s experiences that I was beginning to comprehend the human cost of this ordeal. The government capitalized on the human pain of individual Lubicon members, sparing no one in its attempts to undermine the Lubicon land claim.

The following spring of 1993, we spoke again. This time Louise had moved back to Little Buffalo and was living at home again. She was upset because a very young baby had died in the village, and she was the first to arrive. She did not want to talk about it and said she was trying to forget what she saw. I spoke with her again that spring. She was feeling better and was about to begin a new job.

It is good, this Women’s Circle, having people doing things together again. I hope that it goes on. Maybe I will go to a few meetings and see what is going on. They have asked me to help the younger girls to bead and tan hides. Maybe, if I have time, I will. I should teach you, you don’t know anything of the bush but then I can’t write books either, so don’t feel bad [she laughs]. (Louise Ominayak, May 1993)

Over the years I also grew close to Bernard and Louise’s daughter, Jennifer Ominayak. When I first met her in 1989 she was 18 years old and had completed high school. She was also very pretty and carrying a child. She did not seem to be thrilled about her condition so I left her alone most of the time. When my family stayed at the house during the summer of 1991, she had a beautiful little girl, Lennett, and was carrying a second child.

It wasn’t until the fall of 1992 that she opened up and discussed her feelings. I feared the tragic consequences that could be associated with someone young and intelligent living in a community that had very few resources at its disposal, and little opportunity to offer an energetic person. Jennifer frequently expressed how ‘bored’ she was and how little there is to look forward to in Little Buffalo. She agreed to be interviewed:

I remember, too, or, my mom told me about my fingers. See them? The nails don’t grow on this hand. I always hide this hand. But I guess they were in the bush and it was real cold, like a blizzard. My father had left the camp and got stuck somewhere, we were running out of food and everything. So my mom carried me in the blizzard for maybe ten miles! I guess my hand got frostbite. So this old couple that my mom had went to see for food, the old man fixed my hand with our medicine. But can you imagine carrying a baby that far in the cold? Holy, my mom is tough, not like us, we are spoiled.

But I wish I could do things like her. She can bead and everything. I remember being in the bush when we were young. Man, we had a good time riding our horses and our cousins were with us. That’s when things were fun. We were like a family more then. . . . That’s one thing I am good at, riding horses, but I don’t ride as much with the kids being so small.

Melissa [her younger sister] is lucky, she doesn’t have to go to school the way I did. Dad is teaching them how to do things. She can ride good! And she goes to the cabin more with him. Erwin, too, he is a good hunter. Lou doesn’t have to go to school either. I wish that would have happened with me, but they wanted me to finish school. It was hard catching up all the time because I was sick. Finally, Dad and Fred took me somewhere far away to this special doctor and ever since then I haven’t been so sick. But I missed a lot of learning, being sick and away from them.

Now I am educated but don’t have a damn thing to do, no work, nothing. What good was it? Maybe that is what my father figures, what good did it do me? So he is teaching the others everything. I like to write but don’t know what to write about. I want to help in the land claim but don’t know how to. I see my father, so tired, running all over the place and he doesn’t eat right. I worry that he will get in a car accident because he is on the road all the time. What would we all do if anything ever happens to him? I can’t help worrying and I am worried until I see him pull in. Then I can sleep OK. But everyone around here is calling, worried too. It’s crazy, eh, checking to see he is alright.

I know he was mad because I was going out and partying a little bit, but it is so boring around here. I am sick of it. I get up and clean, get the babies dressed and then what? Maybe go for a visit, but that gets tiresome after awhile. No one has any money to go to the show or anything. All of us are bored and we don’t know how to go in the bush. So that’s why we drink. Nothing else to do here and we all know it’s wrong but it’s hard to have nothing to do day after day. Everyone is just waiting for the land claim because nothing will really happen around here until we get that. So, it’s really the waiting and the sadness of all this. We were involved more when we were younger. Even the principal of the school was involved and let us go to blockade and write about it. But the province got rid of him and now we have this woman that is not very good at all. Lots of kids don’t want to go to her school and she is driving everyone away. They don’t teach anything about our people there or nothing! It was better when I went there and the principal was more involved. It was fun to learn, so I don’t blame all these ones for dropping out. But then look at what they are doing instead, drinking. I wonder if anything will get better around here?’

I am really glad that you[r] people keep coming here. That is the only action around, the round dances and those people from the Sacred Run. I miss that old man Hubert, he teased everyone. When he was here it seemed as if everything was going to be all right, but when he would go it would seem as if everything was bad again. People over the years have dropped off. It seems like when I open up to someone and get to really like them they have to leave and go to their own lives, and we are left here, just lonesome. That’s why I don’t bother trying to get to know anyone anymore. I am afraid to lose them again and be lonely. Like you, I am getting real used to you being here and talking with you, but you will go home and I will miss you and be bored again. I miss your girls running around here already. But you already have a reserve with lots to do there. You are lucky, I don’t blame you for leaving this place. I will try not to drink anymore, stay out of trouble. Maybe I will ask my father what I can do to help with the land claim again, maybe help the Women’s Circle, eh, like last summer?

That was really good when we told that guy, what’s his name? Siddon, Tom Siddon, yeah, when we told him. . . . He thought he was going to treat us women like dummies, like we don’t know what he is up to. Oh man, I will never forget that guy’s face, it was all red! He looked like he wanted to hit you, if he would of, well, we would hit him. That’s when I got upset. He had no right to treat you in that way, like scolded you because you had a tape recorder. I told him, didn’t I? He was trying to make it look like Daddy was a liar too. We should all be mad at Daddy. What did he think, we never read the paper he sent? It must be hard on Daddy to meet with guys like that all the time. I know they lie, but he sat there and lied to us and that’s why I think we all got so upset. I got him on the membership question, didn’t I? I remember asking you and the lawyers over and over again, I knew I had it straight. Then he said membership wasn’t an issue, when he stated right in that paper it was! That felt so good, to tell him what we know. I wonder if they will ever meet with us women again? Maybe not, but I still wonder why they are putting us through all of this when it is ours, our land, everyone so poor, nothing to do. Why are they doing it, do you think?’ (Jennifer Ominayak, November 1992)

I explained to Jennifer that I wasn’t all that sure either. I also explained to her that I believed the government did not want to settle fairly with a land claim because that would set a precedent in the north. She failed to understand why being fair is a precedent.

Louisa Ominayak, who died a short two months after I interviewed her, was an outspoken elder and almost 60–she was not really sure. She was born around Marten Lake. I had been lucky enough to meet her in the summer of 1992. She was active in the Women’s Circle, and we traveled to Edmonton for the meeting with the Minister of Indian Affairs. I miss her robust laughter and outspokenness.

Louisa spoke fairly good English. She went to school with the priest and nuns at Marten Lake. She figured there were around seventeen families at the time she lived there. She married Jim Ominayak and together they raised their children. They built a cabin at Marten Lake because of the school and the availability of game. This is her story.

Ya, we were poor, had nothing. But we had wild meat, ducks, grouse, rabbit, moose and berries. We ate, the children were poor, clothes, not much. We built that cabin, it cost us C$11.00 for the logs and we had to get a permit to build there. Then they served us papers, but we were not there, like most other families. We came back from the bush just in time. We had only been given four day’s notice to get out of our house, they were gonna run everything out of there. We had to borrow a team from Whitefish to get our stove and everything out. Then, some didn’t even know.

Boy, they came in and bulldozed the whole place. We had no home. They never did pay us for our home we lost. We felt so bad. That was our home! It was nice there, quiet, no drinking, had a little school there. In Codotte there was drinking, but not there. The government never talk about that day we all lost our homes. I never see that on the news. They never know how we felt there, watching our nice place being bulldozed. I’m still mad about that.

I went to a convent from the time I was seven until I was fourteen. It was good there, lots to eat. They treated us nice there. That is how I can talk and write. . . . I got out of school and got married, moved to Marten River. All my kids were born in the bush except two, Mike and Martha. I lost three, one as a baby, one in that accident.

Joseph Laboucon used to be the Chief in the ’50s. He died now. I have been waiting a long time for our reserve. I wait and wait, but never nothing. They think we don’t know all the oil that was at Marten where they bulldozed our homes. We know it has oil all over there. They kicked us out. They don’t want to give us a damn cent for what we know is ours. They don’t know how tough we are. We’ll fight right to the very end. And we will tell everyone what they did to us up here. Someday they will have to own up to what they have done.

They cry about the money, but who has all the money? Not us. I want my children to have a nice home, nice jobs and a nice place to grow up. Not welfare and drinking and no animals. We won’t settle for that. What will there be for our grandchildren if we accept that deal they want us to? Welfare, poor houses, beg them for everything, that’s what they want. We lived on our own and we know what is ours and what is not. They have gotten rich off our lands. What we got? Bulldozed homes, TB [tuberculosis] and welfare. Nope, I am gonna fight along with the Chief. He’s smart and he won’t let them rip us off, that’s why we made him that, Chief. So, next time I see that Siddon, I ain’t gonna be so nice as I was in Edmonton. I don’t have long, so I’m gonna give him a good one. They still owe me that C$11.00, I’m gonna get it, too! (Louisa Ominayak, December 1992)

When I returned to visit Louisa, she had been taken to the hospital. At the time, we heard it was an abscessed tooth. The following month Maggie Auger received a call that she was very ill; I was at the house at the time. Louisa wanted Maggie and me to know that she had cancer and not long to live, but not to tell anyone. My visit was cut short because my elder, Hubert Buck, had passed away. I tried to visit her on the way to the airport, but we ran into a blizzard and barely made my flight on time. She died only a few weeks later. She was another elder that never lived to see what she wanted most, a settlement.

There are many, many more stories that the grandmothers before them and the ones living today have to tell. The themes are similar: the loss of a way of life they loved, loss of loved ones, and finding strength to continue the battle. Few have visited a community that has been torn apart on every level as the Lubicon have. Yet as a Haudenosaunee elder who visited the community stated, ‘As long as the women hold together, the Nation will survive no matter what. When the women fall, so do all the people, the Nation’ (Chief Hubert Buck, 1991).

Epilogue

The Women’s Circle lost momentum not long after I left the community. The strain of funerals, wakes, conflict and continued struggle left little energy for the women to organize. I visited the community in the winter of 1997. The elders interviewed had all since passed away. The land claim was not settled. There was now a sour gas plant located near the land set aside for the Lubicon community near Lubicon Lake. Logging, oil exploitation and other development projects continue as the Lubicon struggle to hang in there. I meet up with Jennifer Ominayak and others in Edmonton at least once a year. She tells me of the many miscarriages, the family violence, alcohol abuse, illnesses and depression many young women are experiencing. The community is on hold; schools, homes, health centres–life on hold. I understand why the only control some young women feel is to take their own lives: then no one can hold them hostage or put their lives on hold anymore. I have talked several young Lubicon women out of suicide, but I am running out of words of encouragement. The Lubicon women know they are under attack in a silent war of wills between their people and corporate interests and the governments. Their main goal in telling their stories is for Canadians, the people, to know how it feels to be a Lubicon woman.

The Lubicon women are testimony to the sheer strength of Indigenous women, who hang in there no matter what.

Notes

This chapter, the Lubicon research, and the analyses cited here are all collective efforts, and therefore ownership of the work cannot be claimed by one person. Elders from Lubicon, Six Nations and the western prairies have touched the thinking, the patterns and the work in ways both big and small.

1. The dynamics of this Indigenous knowledge encourage an adherence to the Creator’s law, which is manifested and revealed through ceremony, song, dance and prayer. They are the glue which unites Indigenous consciousness (Mieli 1991; Dumont 1990; Die et al. 2000).

2. All unpublished passages quoted in this chapter were tape-recorded and transcribed from interviews, meetings and events during my field research (see Martin-Hill 1995 and in press).

References

Battiste, Marie and James Henderson-Youngblood (2000) Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge, Purich’s Aboriginal Issues Series, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Purich.

Churchill, Ward (1997) A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997.

——— (1999) Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Colonization, Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring.

Dei, Sefa, Budd L. Hall, and Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg (eds) (2000) Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Dickason, Olive Patricia (1992) Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Dumont, James (1990) ‘Journey to daylight land’, unpublished MS, University of Sudbury, Ontario.

Frideres, James S. (1993) with Lilianne Ernestine Krosenbrink-Gelissen, Native Peoples in Canada: Contemporary Conflicts, 4th edn, Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.

——— (1998) with Lilianne Ernestine Krosenbrink-Gelissen, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Contemporary Conflicts, 5th edn, Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, Allyn & Bacon.

Fulton, David (1986) ‘Fulton discussion paper’, February, unpublished.

Goddard, John (1991) Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree, Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre.

Jaimes, M. Annette (ed.) (1992) The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, Boston, MA: South End Press.

Lennerson, Fred (1989) ‘The Lubicon Lake Nation Cree’, unpublished paper, Edmonton, Alberta.

Lubicon Settlement Commission of Review (1993) ‘Final report’, Edmonton: Lubicon Settlement Commission of Review.

Mandelbaum, David G. (1979) The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical, and Comparative Study, Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre.

Martin-Hill, Dawn (1995) ‘Lubicon Lake Nation: spirit of resistance’, Ph.D. thesis, Dept of Anthropology, McMaster University.

——— (in press) Indigenous Knowledge and Power: The Lubicon Lake Nation, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

——— (ed.) (1992) ‘Statement from the Lubicon Lake Nation Women’s Circle’.

Meili, Dianne (1991) Those Who Know: Profiles of Alberta’s Native Elders, Edmonton, Alberta: NeWest Press.

Richardson, Boyce (1989) Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, Toronto: Summerhill Press.

Smith, James G.E. (1987) ‘The Western Woods Cree: anthropological myth and historical reality’, American Ethnologist, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 434–48.

——— (1988) ‘Canada–the Lubicon Lake Cree’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 61–2.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books.

United Nations (1990) ‘United Nations: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’, Human Rights Committee: 38th session, CCPR/C/38/D/167/1984, 28 March.

York, Geoffrey (1989) The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada, Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys.

Map of power dam and industries affecting the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne

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