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Heritage to the Next Generation: Fall 2009

Elder in Demand for Childhood Stories

Dianne Meili

"Your spirit animal will come when you need it. The grizzly bear is noble and fears nothing in his territory. You must learn his ways. They will guide you in your life."

The year is 1941 and the speaker Bella Twin. She is the kokom, the grandmother of award-winning Alberta Cree author Larry Loyie. In his children's book When the Spirits Dance, eight-year-old Lawrence (as Loyie was called in his youth) jolts awake after having a disturbing dream about a grizzly bear saving his life, only to awaken and hear something prowling in the bush. He warns his mother just in time and the would-be thief is scared away. His grandmother assures him the grizzly bear protects him always.

Real-life childhood adventures like this one-Loyie's books are crammed with them-have made them irresistible to readers young and old. Young Lawrence raises a baby owl who hangs upside down from a clothesline in As Long as the Rivers Flow, camps by himself in the bush when he goes with his mother to tap birch trees for syrup in the spring in When the Spirits Dance, and almost dies fighting a forest fire in Goodbye Buffalo Bay.
Even when he attends residential school, the bleak schoolyard bare except for a slide and one power pole, he manages to find excitement. In Goodbye Buffalo Bay, his true story of life in residential school and moving on, he writes about stealing a gun from a priest's room and accidentally shooting it off in the ice house. He escapes from the school with a friend and sprints across Buffalo Bay Bridge, only to be captured by Father Superior after almost tasting freedom.

Loyie's memories, presented in stories of learning and realization, and beautifully illustrated by Heather D. Holmlund, provide a positive view of Aboriginal experience that is genuine and insightful.

"When I did my early research on Aboriginal people in anthropology books, I found it was never accurate," says Loyie. "I was looking for material I could use for my work, but there was never anything that rang true to what I had learned as a youngster. Too many books have been written about First Nations by non-First Nation authors."

Loyie knew the life lessons his kokom Bella, mosoom [grandfather] Edward Twin, and father Victor taught him were powerful. For example, when Lawrence learns he is too young to go hunting with his father, he is challenged to see if he can "fool a beaver" swimming by without scaring it. As he waits by the river, his stomach grumbles and his mouth gets drier and drier. He begins to understand the patience and discipline of hunters. "It would be easy to go back to camp, eat supper, and go to bed. But he had to stay to prove himself to his father," Loyie writes in As Long as the Rivers Flow.
"Much of what I learned in school has been forgotten, but the traditional teachings have never faded," Loyie says in a phone call from Vancouver, where he and his partner, writer and editor Constance Brissenden, are on a book tour.

"Our students can't get enough of Larry and Constance's visits," says Vanessa Malegana, the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Division program coordinator for the Catholic School Division in the Peace River area. "Our Aboriginal students personally relate to their books and stories-even just the fact they get to see brown faces in the pictures-and their visits break down a lot of cultural barriers because our non-native students love their stories, too.

"The two of them are great. They're role models to the kids, and Larry is an elder who lets them know they can reach their goals like he did, plus he's so adaptable; he and Constance vary their presentations for all grade levels."

An oft-repeated kudo in letters sent by students after meeting Loyie and Brissenden goes something like this: "I liked it that you didn't just talk about your books, you talked about your childhood."

His simply told, non-stereotypical recountings endear him to audiences.
"I'm just telling the truth, but stories about my traditional childhood seem to fill a space in peoples' hearts," Loyie says.

He tells an especially gripping tale that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats: it's summer and he's spent the day picking plants with Kokom Bella to make medicine teas. When Kokom's dog, Whiskers, disappears she knows something is wrong. Without warning, a giant grizzly rears up before them-it seems as tall as a house to young Lawrence. He watches Kokom throw down her pack to distract the bear and take aim with her .22 rabbit gun loaded with a single bullet.

Lawrence's tiny grandmother Bella, famed for shooting the biggest grizzly in North America, is one of many childhood heroes readers meet in Loyie's books,
His first chapter book, the recently released Goodbye Buffalo Bay, has moved audiences to tears. In vivid yet restrained language, Loyie describes the difficult and confusing years he spent in residential school in Grouard. Amy, a Grade 6 student in Guelph, Ontario, responded with: "If I were in your shoes, I would feel horrible if I were taken away from the ones I love ... I would cry every single day. If I couldn't speak my own language, it would be hard but I would try hard not to so that I would not get beat up. It would also be really hard not to give a dirty look in the (school) picture."

Kali, another Ontario student, reacted with: "I'm really impressed you took control of your life and became a writer after what the government did to you. You have taught me a lot in this book and I think you're doing a great job."

When the Spirits Dance, the first book in the Lawrence series, tackles the effect of war on a child when Lawrence's father leaves the family in 1941 to fight overseas. Outside of the series, yet another successful book, The Gathering Tree, tells the fictional story of a rural First Nations family facing the illness of their favourite cousin, Robert, who has tested positive for HIV. Initiated by Chee Mamuk, the Aboriginal education program of the BC Centre for Disease Control, the book was published to provide a school-friendly resource to introduce HIV awareness and prevention.

Writing about such subjects has not been easy for Loyie. In fact, writing, alone, has been a challenge. After a lifetime of labouring at different jobs to support his family, he wondered how he could reach the dream he'd had since he was 12-becoming a writer.
"At residential school the level of learning was very low. I didn't know the skills needed to be a writer, but in my mid-'50s I found myself disabled. I thought 'this is my chance,' taught myself to type and upgraded my reading, math, and science, and eventually took a creative writing class.

"I clearly remember my first day at the Carnegie Learning Centre in Vancouver. It was early spring of 1988. I was uncertain, nervous, and scared, having committed myself to upgrading my literacy skills. I knew there was no turning back."

To Loyie's surprise, his instructors treated him as an equal, and gradually, without realizing it, he became more assertive. He began to speak up at meetings and "went from being invisible to being very visible."

In 1994, he wrote the play Ora Pro Nobis, Pray for Us about his residential school years. "To complete one scene, where the nun berates us and belittles our families, I went to a medicine wheel to find the strength to write the ugly things she said. I cried many times but I got it down. With my partner, Constance, as director, the play was staged in three provinces."

Loyie's goal is to continue building the knowledge of traditional First Nations lifestyle through his writing, to encourage pride in culture, and to help develop more Aboriginal writers. After he and Constance taught their first writing workshop together in 1993, they created the Living Traditions Writers Group. Their website contains teacher study materials as well as blogs about writing, reader response to their books and presentations, information about getting published, and links to Aboriginal book sources.

Recently, Loyie returned to live in northern Alberta, an area he left 60 years ago. Now 75, the author has no plans to quit writing and looks forward to immortalizing more memories at his log house by a lake near High Prairie-a place not too far from Rabbit Hill in Slave Lake, his childhood home.

"I've just started writing," says Loyie. "There is much more to share about the strength of our First Nations cultures. I write about our traditional lifestyle and the strength we have always had to instill pride for our way of life. It was humble, skilled, and beautiful and I loved it.
"There was an Aboriginal boy in Regina at a school who was asked how he felt about our presentation," Loyie recounts. "He stood up and said 'I feel proud.' As an Aboriginal writer, it doesn't get much better than that."

He and Brissenden have an audience patiently waiting for more books. With sales totalling more than 35,000 of their first four published books, and tours that take them to schools across Canada for presentations-up to four a day-they are working hard to meet demand.

Another three books are in the works.

"One time I put off talking to some elders for two years. When I finally went, the ones I wanted to talk to had passed away. I realize now I'm in the right place at the right time. I'm not putting anything off now."

Winter 2009
Complete Contents of Current Issue

After 14 years, Winter 2009 is our 56th issue of Legacy and our last.

As Legacy's publisher/editor/owner, I have been fortunate to work with remarkable people. My sincere thanks to our thoughtful associate publisher Gurston Dacks and encouraging business psychiatrist/music columnist Ron Chalmers. To talented, remarkable designer Mark Dutton. To patient general managers Mary Oakwell, Liz Grieve, and Yoko Sekiya; and determined ad sales manager Andrea Kopylech. And to two of the best, most sensitive associate editors, Eva Radford and Naomi Lewis. Thank you, also, to the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation for supporting school subscriptions and to Enbridge, Elly de Jongh, and Melcor Developments for public library subscriptions. To the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for editorial support. And to our committed advertisers and many loyal readers.

I have looked forward each issue to wonderfully written columns by Paula Simons, Sid Marty, Ron Chalmers, Laurie Greenwood, Johanne Yakula, Dorothy Field, Gordon Morash, and Patricia Myers. And to beautifully crafted prose and poetry by well-known and emerging writers alike.

But I have decided that Legacy's own story will conclude now. Indeed, it has been fun. Thank you all beyond words.

Barb Dacks, Publisher