STURGEON LANDING Indian Country—A Serial Part Two

We left The Pas by the lone road that led to the village; a red clay dirt ‘road’ that zigzagged through a forest so dense that even light would have had a tough time penetrating. Our destination was the almost inaccessible Native village of Sturgeon Landing. The trip was rough enough but was made more arduous when it suddenly started to rain. Our vehicle became stuck in a river of thick, brown, mud. We got out and pushed. The rain stopped suddenly as it started. We continued to inch our way over the logging trail closer towards the village. Our assignment: to reclaim the people of this supposedly violent and lawless Native village back into the church of Christ. I was told that the previous pastor, a priest, had run off with a young Native woman and was never seen nor heard from again.
What happened next was right out of Hemingway. As I walked along the dirt road that lead to the main part of the village some Indian children ran up alongside me and started to pull my hair. They had never seen a tri-racial person before and wanted to see if my hair was real. When we were briefed we were told that under no circumstances were we to play with the village children. To Native peoples we were told to comport ourselves with the utmost dignity at all times. What happened after we stored our stuff and toured the village was right respect. I pretended to ignore their barbs and pulls I introduced myself to the people who were gathered around me as I walked through their village. First impressions do count and I wanted to make mine good.
The local whites, some French Canadian others English, were glad to see us. They bombarded us with requests to pass out birth control pills to the Indians since ‘they multiply like rabbits.’ I realized I wasn’t on holiday but the front lines. We bandaged minor wounds plus distributed penicillin pills from our medical kit to the sick. The village was divided in half by a raging river that flowed between halves. The tourists lived in a separate compound below the Indian village on the lakeshore and stayed to themselves.
Saskatchewan is God’s Country! One pretty place and the fishin’s good. If you are an avid fisher and would like to go there I advise you to contact: Sturgeon Landing Outfitters-Mr. Jim Metz-Box 24 End of Namew Lake Road-Sturgeon Landing, SK-SOP OHO-Canada or better yet send him an email at: sturgeonoutfitters@sasktel.net. He also rent cabins, motor boats, has a taxi service, and a candy store; forget your camera.
My work went smoothly. Problems aside, the place was a virtual Utopia. The people would gladly give you the shirt off their backs without blinking an eye. Everybody was friendly, generous to a fault and nobody locked their doors at night. I wonder if they do now. The locals invited us into their homes and offered us food, soft drinks and lively conversation. The two American women and I parted company a few days after our arrival for professional reasons. We divided the mission duties in half. I worked with the young adults and children; they were comfortable with the seniors.
Sturgeon Landing was accessible during warm months but reachable only by air in winter. Our bush pilot was a mild-mannered French Canadian named Pierre [not real name]. During our off hours I would listen to him tell stories of his daring aerial exploits during inclement weather when he risked his life to fly ‘his Indians’ to hospitals during medical emergencies. His courageousness was one of many examples of heroism in this isolated village.
I saw more practical Christianity in that village during my brief time there than in my many years living in Chicago. Loving thy neighbor in Sturgeon Landing was more than a metaphor. It was a living reality, in a literal sense. I met a woman who like her Biblical counterpart actually had seven husbands! I met men who had more than one wife and the village teens and the local whites didn’t see anything wrong with taking sex breaks in between drinking bouts, fishing, or other activities. To them sex was meant to be enjoyed anytime, anywhere, and for any reason. Whites and Natives intermingled sexually on a regular basis. In my entire time there I rarely ever saw depressed people in any significant numbers.
Nearly everybody drank heavily and was damn proud of it. They developed chronic alcoholism into a fine art. These good folks could drink anybody I know under a bus. As a former resident of Chicago’s rough and tumble Robert R. Taylor Housing Projects, I was no prude. In the manner of many a minister I would proclaim the Gospel during the day but would party-hardy at night, all within the realms of reason of course. I was there to reconvert them and not act in judgment on them, unless the situation warranted it. They reminded me of the old neighborhood where I chugalugged with the best of ‘em.
But a strange thing happened to me as I was walking home one night from one of my late night Catechism classes, I spotted a black heap of something on my doorstep; like an idiot I kicked it. A second later the ‘thing’ suddenly stood up! It was black bear about as tall as me! The beast reared up on its hind legs and bared its claws! I ran! It ran! The bear fled to one direction and I the other. I don’t know who out ran who but I do know this I didn’t return home for hours.
That next morning I told some folks what had happened. About an hour later a jeep load of some very drunken ‘hunters’ with faces as red as beets pulled up alongside the mission house. They were going to hunt the bear and invited me to join in. Seeing their smiling red faces I politely declined. These guys were all totting shotguns and in their thoroughly inebriated state I didn’t want them to mistake me for a bear and accidentally fill me fulla’ holes, skin me, then hang my head over a fireplace. They returned later that evening. I was thankful that nobody got shot; they never did catch that bear.
Another occupational hazard was the angry wasps who attached their hive above our chapel door. We had two doors. I avoided using the one next to their nest but no matter, they dive bombed me every time I passed. I was stung so many times I think I’m immune to bee and wasp venom. After a while I just pulled the barbs from my arms and went about my business.
A bit of history. The Cree Indians migrated to the area thousands of years ago. French fur traders and other adventurers arrived in the area 300 years ago. Both peoples were involved in a lucrative trade in beaver pelts, metal implements, Native women, and liquor. Within a generation the Natives quickly became hooked on hooch, the start of many of their problems. Before we arrived we were told about some high school kids who were drowned in a boating accident while liquored up. I remember one time after I had just finished teaching at the local community school, one of my students angrily confronted me outside the mission house with the intention of bashing my brains in with an empty wine bottle. It got ugly. He called me out. I confronted him. After he called me a bunch of not-so-nice-names the guy took a swing at me! I ducked. Too drunk to actually hit me he hit the deck. When he came to his senses he fell to his knees and bawled like a baby. He begged my forgiveness then told me he was ‘tired of being a dirty red skin.’ The next day when he sobered up I gave him the Freddy’s Short Course on Ethnic Pride with a lesson or two tossed on temperance. It worked. I had no more problems from him. Both he and his shy girlfriend became my best students.
Far too many Native Americans on both sides of the border suffer from low self-esteem which spawns chronic alcoholism. Self-hate leads to a sundry of other ills such as spousal abuse and other crimes of violence. One of the many people I counseled was an attractive young woman who was married to an abusive husband. Her eyes swelled with tears as she sobbed how her husband would regularly beat her after heaping torrents of verbal abuse at the poor woman. I did my best to persuade her to leave this guy not knowing at the time that she had no place to go since all her people lived in the same house. Not having sufficient funds to leave or an appreciable amount of education to get a job outside the village she felt trapped and alone. In a sense she was. Final installment (Part 3) to be continued in issue 457 Nov 16-30.