Innu Don’t Rest Until They Sleep
A Car Conversation
When Audrey parked in front of my house, at 7:40 a.m., she introduced the women sitting in her station wagon. Kari, who looked to be my age, sat in the passenger seat. Elizabeth and Nympha, the two Innu women from Labrador, were in the back and when they moved closer, there was enough space for me to squeeze in beside them. After Audrey’s introductions, we decided about the most efficient route to the campus.
The one-hour conversation in the car was easy with hints of anxiety about suitable allotments of time each person should speak during the two-hour presentation to my class.
Audrey whispered to Kari, “What shall I say when I introduce you? Should I say that I have known you for ten years and that you have stayed with Elizabeth in her tent?”
Elizabeth stopped speaking to Nympha in her own language. She leaned forward to touch Kari’s shoulder, and added, “And you went into the bush. Remember Kari?”
“Yes, Elizabeth, I remember.”
As the conversation continued I got a glimpse into how Elizabeth invited Kari into the dailiness of her life so that she could learn about the Innu. In exchange, I learned how Kari assisted with the tour and supported Elizabeth’s dream.
While we zipped along on the 404 expressway, and, commentary about the passing roadside was shared, I ruminated about how I wanted the session to unfold. Hoping for full attendance, I willed the students, especially those who usually dawdled, to arrive on time. I pictured us five women sitting behind a table to the right of the fireplace, and, I hoped a roaring fire was going to be more than a promise.
The car conversation, with all its closeness and mutual gratitude, reminded me of the women I worked with and learned from in the early years of my career. Those experiences had set the stage for my high expectations of what it means to work in collaboration and to reside in a genuine learning community.
The Log Cabin
From the campus parking lot, I pointed to the snowy trail that lead into the woods on the border of the campus.
“The cabin is just beyond the woods,” I said.
From the covered porch, I pushed open the heavy door to crackling sounds of burning logs in the fireplace. Inside, when everyone walked toward the warmth of the fire, floor boards creaked underneath our winter footwear.
Elizabeth whispered, “I’d love to live in a cabin like this.”
I took her words as a sign that she felt at home. This is what I wanted. I wanted the women to feel at home and it was gratifying to see the fire as a warm welcome.
After arranging two long tables together, everyone got to work. Elizabeth used logs from the hearth to hold the weight of the Innu flag as a table skirt. Audrey and Kari tacked a Labrador map on the wall. With the room generally askew, I felt the urge to reorganize the space to fit the image of the setting I’d envisioned earlier. I hurried to pick up loose papers and litter. After I attempted to pull a two-seater couch closer to the fire, I heard joints in my back pop, and, then I watched gratefully as two early-arriving students took over the task.
Through Audrey’s explanation, I learned that Kari had worked hard to secure funding for the tour. Kari’s fund raising held a common narrative thread to my life as a teacher. She reminded me of the continual strain of securing federal funding and how the success of our programs depended on it. I remembered how important it was that no one worked alone.
Relationships that Enter Out Lives
Nympha had been described to me as “a soft spoken but strong woman.” Earlier on, Audrey had portrayed Elizabeth as “a strong woman who fights for her people.”
From the first time I heard about Elizabeth, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about her. Prior to the visit, Audrey invited me to her home to preview the National Film Board video Hunters and Bombers (1991), that featured Elizabeth in the role as advocate for her people. Viewing this film cemented my thinking that my students should hear her story about advocacy and community work. I felt strongly that they would learn about implementing change and not doing it alone.
In the Log Cabin…
When the log cabin was almost full I introduced the panel and I told them that I’d met Audrey at my church and that plans for this session actually began over coffee. I had appreciated Audrey standing up during the church service to speak on behalf of the Innu people. She later arranged for Kari to visit with my youth group and tell stories about their concerns and how the Innu people live.
“The Innu,” she explained, “live on the land. They don’t take any more from the environment than they can use.”
Beginning in English, Elizabeth stood. She began by saying she is a mother of nine children, a grandmother of 24, and that she is fighting the government and the military for the future of her children and her grandchildren. Elizabeth talked about herself. She was born in a tent in the bush. She never knew her people as singing songs or dancing. She didn’t know about alcohol. She repeated that her “family, mother, father, and sisters and her brothers, were very happy.” They worked, cleaned, hunted, walked, and lived in the tent. Her story continued with telling the students that the low-level jets are destroying the culture, and impacting the Innu way of life. Among the singed trees and the polluted rivers as excess fuel is dumped, the caribou and the porcupines are smaller and fewer. Elizabeth described the incredible noise and the frightened, sleepless children who would wake up crying in the night. She talked about the future, and she talked about the past, the health, and the lives of her people. Elizabeth wants her children and grandchildren to know how their grandparents lived and survived. She spoke softly, and sadly, about her own adult children using alcohol. She added, “and maybe my grandchildren will use alcohol.” She said, “maybe you have heard about the problems in our community on the news.”
Heads nodded. With the crackle of the fire in the background, the room was still. Elizabeth’s voice was low and even. She stood tall, with only her fingers leaning on the table. Sometimes she freed one of her hands, and extended her arm toward to sky. The students didn’t take their eyes off her.
I loved the inclusivity. I watched the care they took to listen and understand each question asked by a student. Kari had told me that Elizabeth would present in English, because sometimes Nympha gets tired from translating. The two women’s voices interchanged throughout the presentation. Watching them interact with my students and one another, reminded me of the team teaching I loved so much and the mentorship that existed among the women I had the privilege to work with.
On the way back to the city, when Kari let the headrest take the weight of her head, she asked, “Elizabeth, do you remember me on the caribou hunt? I didn’t know where to stand, or what to do with myself. I just thought that I would get in the way.”
Imagining Kari on the hunt, and empathizing with her confusion about where to stand and her doubt about what to do next, resonated. I was reminded that I sometimes, in the metaphorical sense, I dance with my students.
In the Kitchen…
Audrey served us homemade oxtail soup, a selection of cheeses, and good Russian bread in her home.
As Kari enjoyed the marrow from the soup bone, she shared where the women could find caribou meat. Nympha and Elizabeth told us that they cook and eat all of the caribou. They used to eat the liver too, but not since the low flying jets began disposing their fuel on the land. The conversation about meat, bones and marrow, reminded me of Kari’s words to the church kids: “The Innu take no more from the land than they need.”
Nympha told us that she felt uncomfortable carrying her eagle feather back to Labrador in a plastic bag, which left me wondering how the feather arrived in Ontario without incident. The concern and care of Nympha’s eagle feather symbolized the interest in preserving the culture and the educational objectives of the tour. I heard perseverance, advocacy, and civil protest in response to the threat to the Innu culture. I was caught by my own satisfaction of listening to the stories of the women in the relaxed atmosphere of Audrey’s bright kitchen overlooking her garden, and I was reminded how place, shapes our lives.
As we ate together, Elizabeth was pulled away by phone calls about confirming speaking engagements, meal times and travel arrangements. At first glance, she seemed to take her world in stride. She reentered the conversation with ease each time she returned from Audrey’s office. My initial image of her life and its simplicity of living in a tent (though in my mind this is a challenging life) shifted as I learned more about the details of her existence. I learned that her life is far more complex than I first imagined.
Knowing that Kari was going to rest, I asked Elizabeth if she were going to rest before speaking to the student federation at the University of Toronto later in the evening, to which she replied, “Innu don’t rest until they sleep.”
