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MISSING MOCCASINS

By on July 8, 2016
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By Pauline Kiely

Mallets are tapped on drums beginning in the East, moving South, then West, eventually ending in the north, in acknowledgement of the seasons of a full lifetime. The word why does not exist in their language as they humbly accept what is. Tobacco is the offering of choice while the smoke of sage cleanses negative thoughts and helps connect with the healing powers of Mother Earth. Astute and temperate, these Anishinaabe, peoples of the earth, only use what is necessary, constantly giving thanks, “miigwetch,” to the Creator, “Gizhe Manidoo.” They who understand and respect that we are all connected have been sequins in the fabric of North America for over twelve thousand years. These keepers of the land persevere to preserve the circle of life for generations to come, respecting that our lives are a gift, and our gift back is what we do with our lives.

In the sixth month on the 5th day in 1955, a little girl was born with tuberculosis. She would be one of three siblings that shared this day of birth. The sickness caused her to be institutionalized for the first three and a half years of her life. When she was five years old an infant brother died while in  care. She suspects he died of starvation because her young parents were often out partying. This resulted in her cousin and herself being moved into a foster home. This cousin’s mother had been murdered. It is the first murder she remembers.

There was also a lot of drinking sessions in the foster home. She was raped for the first time when she was eight. All the children in the home were repeatedly abused. “I tried to report this to authorities, the principal, a teacher, but nobody would listen to a stupid Indian girl.” Her foster mother lived in fear and denial. The preacher and his wife used to party and then hide behind a mask of religion.

Reunited with her biological brothers and sisters at thirteen, she knew little of her family and nothing of traditional ways. Considered incorrigible, adolescence is a blur of juvenile jails and reform schools. At fifteen, she was raped on two separate occasions, and beaten by police officers. A brother who shared her birthday was murdered in Vancouver in 1981. There was no inquiry, “He was just another dead Indian.”

When she was seventeen she missed her bus in Vancouver, weighing eighty pounds she stuck out her thumb for a ride to New Westminster, and caught a lift with the notorious serial killer, Clifford Olsen. She feels lucky not to be counted amongst his list of victims.

The day before her eighteenth birthday, she and her first husband were out for a ride on their Harley Davidson. The couple were forced off the highway when this vehicle deliberately swerved across the road and struck them. The drunk driver proclaimed the reason he did this was because he didn’t like motorcycles. Her husband’s leg was amputated immediately. Although she lost the use of her left leg after the accident it wasn’t removed for three years. This driver of the car lost his license for six months, he served one year of probation and paid a five hundred dollar fine. The victims of this accident received $10,000 per limb by the Ontario government as the driver had no insurance.

She was married twice, and gave birth to six children, but one died. With aspirations of becoming a lawyer she went back to school in 1996 and graduated with High Honours in 1999. After winning a human rights lawsuit against a Vancouver Mall that was systematically removing First Nations peoples from their establishment she became an advocate and activist for Human Rights.

When her beloved niece, 22-year-old Tamara Lynn Chipman, disappeared in Prince Rupert on September 21st in 2005, she was devastated. The senseless loss of this young mother spurred the initiation and planning of the first Walk 4 Justice on the Highway of Tears in 2006. Between 1989 and 2006 nine young women went missing or were found murdered along the seven hundred and twenty-four kilometer stretch of road in British Columbia. Eight of these nine were Anishinaabe.

In walking, she feels the spirits of the wind, raises awareness, gathers databases, and brings voices to the families who have been silenced. During vigils, many come forward sharing their stories. Thousands of hearts ache and rivers of tears flow. Averaging thirty kilometers a day for four months in all weather they walk. It is a relay between the driver and a pair of walkers, up hills, down mountains, step by step they pray, burn sage and sweet grass in homage and remembrance for their daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, mothers, who have vanished.

In 2008, she and other family members hand-delivered a list of 2932 names of missing and murdered Anishinaabe women to Prime Minister Harper.  In 2009 again they walked from Vancouver to Prince Rupert. In 2010, they trekked from Kamloops to Winnipeg, and in 2011, Vancouver to Ottawa. In 2013 from Membertou, Nova Scotia to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and even though her prosthetic leg snapped twice during walks, this passionate warrior forged on. All her efforts have been supported through donations and by volunteers.

In 2013, a host family in B.C. requested she stay on for a couple days longer because Canadian film and television actress, Tantoo Cardinal wished to meet her. Cardinal is well known for her role as Blackshawl, wife of Kicking Bird, in the Hollywood film, Dances with Wolves. The ladies were joined by a pipe carrier from Saskatchewan, and this cherished time with kindred spirits will forever be a fond memory for her.

She is Gladys Radek, of the Git San/Wet’ suwet’ people – En lax il u (Small Frog) clan of Moricetown, British Columbia. All her life she has been losing loved ones to violence and insists she is no different than most of those who are of First Nations. She does not cry if she can help it, she gets pissed off, but she doesn’t cry. She is angry at the inaction of the system and says the pain in her leg is nothing compared to the heaviness of her heart.

She initiates and plans the routes and organizes much of these walks online with her good friend, Bernie Williams.
They walk to demand a National Public Enquiry for justice, closure, equality, and accountability. Everywhere she goes she shares her story, and posters with images of these beautiful missing and murdered Indigenous women. Most are still in the spring of their lives, and some are assumed victims of human trafficking. Almost everywhere she speaks a shattered friend or relative comes forward with another ghost to add to the collection of names and faces of these naive ones that are lured by liquor, “They are tricked by two essential elements, truth and love.”

Gladys Radek is a music lover, an artist, a writer, a shutterbug, a mentor, and a passionate activist who loves her family and is proud of her six grandchildren, especially the one named, “Angel,” who was only two years old as a participant in the first walk. Her black hair is long, her dark eyes dance, and she smiles at the achievement of sobriety for ten winters. This grandmother is small in stature, yet mighty in spirit. Her compassionate soul beats with hope demanding basic human rights for her missing and murdered sisters.

On December 21st, of 2015 she suffered a massive heart attack which resulted in a quadruple bypass. Twenty-eight days later she is once again telling her story. Thirty days later she is in Ottawa meeting with the Minister of Indigenous Affairs, and representatives of the United Nations. Officials promise that finding justice for Indigenous families will be at the heart of a national inquiry.

Five hundred and twenty-five years ago, this all began when Colonials arrived in large numbers. In good faith, the Anishinaabe provided shelter, taught them to survive, and in return, pale faces devoured forests, massacred wildlife, and traded prized pelts for disease, rape, pillage, and slaughter of an estimated one-hundred million. Their traditions and culture were decimated by insatiable greed, and the demon – alcohol. Hundreds of generations of clans and tribes annihilated, survivors left battered, bewildered and confused. In this past century, children of First Nations were torn from their mother’s breasts, sexually, mentally and physically abused in a pitiful attempt at forcing them to conform to a warped credence.

And so it is, and continues, as large corporations consume natural resources, pour chemicals into rivers, pump poisons into the air, slip toxins into food, and booze and drugs into the young and oppressed. Greed is destroying the natural world upon which mankind depends for our very existence while those who are elected wring their hands while calculating commodities, shuffle budgets, and procrastinate.

Empathy burns as Radek speaks, eventually coming to rest in the pit of a stomach that pukes on the bile of hushed generations and harsh reality. The reality that, even now, with all our resources and knowledge, these predators without conscious continue to lurk and dwell amongst us. We who have lived relatively charmed lives in comparison adorning our proud egos with material possessions. Even now, completely exposed, we persevere in using, abusing, and destroying Mother Earth. Many label ourselves humanitarians, and consider ourselves intelligent, yet remain mute and do nothing to rectify the error of our ways. The charade of blind ignorance is over and it is time to open our eyes to the ripple effects which continues to cascade. Mouths that mutter, “Peace on earth and good will towards man” must swallow and digest the harsh truth.

On the roots of violence against women, songbird Buffy Sainte-Marie, comments, “It’s gonna take a lot of people working on this issue, because it’s a very very deep thing. It has to do with how we raise our sons, what we praise people for, and goddamn alcohol.”

Canada is criticised by other nations for the inaction of investigation to address the basic human right in these disappearances of women and girls. International experts are unanimous that an inquest must be participatory, addressing the root causes of the extreme violence and discrimination against this gender in this country. The Inter-American Chair, James Cavallaro, is quoted as saying, “The root causes of this situation are related to a history of colonization, discrimination and inequality, and their impact on the present day. As a consequence, Indigenous women and girls constitute one of the most disadvantaged groups in Canada. Poverty, inadequate housing, economic and social relegation, among other factors, contribute to their increased vulnerability to violence.”

Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Lailani Farha, states, “For the Inquiry to be successful it will require a specific examination of gross deprivations of socio-economic rights as a root cause of Indigenous women’s experiences of the most extreme forms of violence. Of course, it would also require Canada to recognize that socio-economic rights impose on all levels of government very particular standards and obligations.”

With tears welling up in an emotional face to face interview with CBC, Nikki Fraser, the twenty-five-year-old British Columbia youth representative showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau photos of her missing aunt and cousin, and said, “I want to know what you’re going to do about this because I have a daughter, and she is beautiful.”

The newly elected leader responded, “Indigenous lives matter,” and he promised major changes will be made in Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people. “This office, this place, this parliament, has failed Indigenous peoples in this country for a long, long time,” Trudeau said some of those changes will take years, and in some case decades, but he vowed that life will get better for First Nations, and the first order of business will be to fulfill his promise of an inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women that will hear from everybody involved, especially the victims’ families.

At a drumming circle recently held at a social on the Rama Reserve, Academic Elder, Ernie Sandy addressed the small audience, saying, “For many years our people have walked with our heads low, looking down at our feet and the ground. As soon as ten years ago, education began helping us begin to look ahead, a little. I see a big difference today. It isn’t money we seek from churches or governments that have wronged us, it is an acknowledgement of the truths of injustice, and sincere apologies to our peoples and ancestors. Education today is the foundation of our tomorrows. More and more I am witnessing Anishinaabe looking up and walking with pride.”

No drugs or alcohol were at this event where three generations gathered. A traditional smudging of people and food with prayers of gratitude said before the pot-luck meal. After which a circle of men surrounded large drums and they beat to the rhythm of hearts. Beautiful young daughters, light on their feet wore colourful regalia, as others in casual clothing were encouraged to feed their spirits with dance.

Gladys Radek was told that her name appears in the museum of human rights. She dreams of a big concert, “A huge celebration for all First Nations would be awesome, with representation from every reserve across the country.

In 1877, Oglala Sioux Chief Crazy Horse prophesized, “Upon suffering beyond suffering; the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations, a world longing for light again. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be as one.”

Is Canada prepared today to listen and see, and look to hear? Is it at long last time for Ottawa to face this pain and humbly acknowledge a moment of silence in reflection for the injustices done to Indigenous people. Here and now we can write a fresh page in Canadian history books. Oh Kanata, the Huron-Iroquois word for “settlement,” our undiscriminating land that is a tapestry of all nations, colours, beliefs, and cultures, this frontier peacekeeping nation we so proudly call home.

 

pauPauline Kiely is an avid student of life, and survivor of three teenagers. This freelance writer and author believes everyday is a fresh page, and with an open mind and heart one comes to understand that all things eventually unfold exactly as they are meant to be.  Kiely has penned two memoirs based on the antics of her large family that is half Irish and half French Canadian.

Her sassy honest voice hurdles hardships with resilient wit, courage, and charisma.

 

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