Shot in Maniwaki: Song launched music career

Indigenous artist Willy Mitchell has advice for wounded teen

“As soon as he seen me, he looked me in the eye and stopped a few yards ahead of me. My two other friends were there. When I seen the brake lights, I decided to run across the street. I threw down those light bulbs and ran.

“He fired two shots already. I jumped over a snowbank and landed knee high in the snow. I got to the treeline and heard part of the third shot. I heard a big buzz sound, a vibration type of thing, and I was falling through the air in slow motion. When I hit the snow, the snow was flying in slow motion, too. I hit a tree with my collarbone and I came to. It sort of knocked me back into reality or something. he was a teenager living with his grandmother in Maniwaki. The “accident”, as he still calls it, happened on Jan. 23, 1969, when he was just 15 years old. Mitchell was shot by a police officer who suspected him of stealing Christmas lights.

He recalls the incident in detail, up to the moment he passed out. It was around 9:45 p.m., and he was putting up posters for an upcoming gig. The young Algonquin musician ran into two 14-year-old friends; one of them handed him a pair of light bulbs.

A police car rounded the corner. When Willy Mitchell heard about the young man shot in the head at the Maniwaki courthouse last week, the news brought back a flood of memories.

“It was like a big bang to me, in my memory,” said the 64-year-old Indigenous musician, who performs in Ottawa on Friday as part of the Native North America Gathering concert at the National Arts Centre. “What’s going on here?”

Almost 50 years ago, Mitchell survived a bullet to the head when

“I got up on my hands and knees and I knew I got hit in the head. I didn’t know where, I was searching all over. I felt the warm blood coming out of my cheek. I stuck my finger in there. I was still on my hands and knees. The cop came. He was standing there hollering at me. He still had his gun. He wasn’t pointing it at me, but it sure looked like he was going to finish me off.”

The officer accused Mitchell of “making ” him shoot.

“Why did you run? Look what you made me do,” he remembers the officer yelling. No help was offered. Finger still in his cheek, Mitchell made his way to the nearest house, rang the doorbell and entered. A woman came to the door. Mitchell took his finger out of his cheek and the blood “squirted out of my face like a faucet.” He asked her to call an ambulance, fell and passed out.

The bullet, Mitchell later learned, hit the back of his neck as he was turning his head to the right to locate the snow-covered trail into the woods. It exited through his left cheek.

A year later, Mitchell was still wearing a neck brace. He had what he thought was a toothache, but the pain spread throughout his left side. His eye was swollen shut. It turned out that fragments of the bullet had made their way to his glands.

“I had lead poisoning,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know if it contributes to my thyroid problem today, but it sure didn’t help.”

He had nightmares for years afterwards, back pain and still feels a cracking in his neck.

Mitchell was eventually awarded a $3,000 settlement, a far cry from the $175,000 his lawyer was seeking. He gave his mother $2,000 to reimburse the expenses she incurred driving back and forth from her home in Upstate New York to the courthouse in MontLaurier, Que. Another $500 went to his lawyer.

Mitchell spent the remaining $500 on a Fender Telecaster electric guitar. He wrote a song called Big Police Man about the experience, which he performed on an Ottawa television station with his Desert River Band in 1971. (Before the name Kitigan Zibi was adopted in 1994, the First Nation community 140 kilometres north of Ottawa was known as Desert River, after the nearby Rivière Désert.)

In the 1970s, Mitchell attended Algonquin College and then Quebec’s Manitou College, an educational centre dedicated to the preservation of Aboriginal arts. That’s where he met other Indigenous artists and musicians from across North America, including Cree musician Morley Loon, the late, legendary singer-songwriter Willie Dunn, and the late Jeanne Poirier McDonald.

With McDonald, Mitchell organized the 1980 Sweet Grass Festival, a showcase of Indigenous musicians, in Val d’Or, Que. They hired a recording engineer and the music was released as a live album. It was Mitchell’s first recording experience. The first studio album of his own was his Wolf Tracks cassette, also released in the 1980s.

Mitchell and his Cree wife, Louise, have been married for 40 years. They have six children and six grandchildren. Over the years, he’s worked as a moose-hunting guide, a heavy equipment operator, and in various other jobs.

A few years ago, Mitchell heard from Vancouver producer and record collector Kevin Howes, who was tracking down Indigenous musicians from years gone by to include their work on a compilation album.

He still had his gun. He wasn’t pointing it at me, but it sure looked like he was going to finish me off.

Released in 2014 by the Seattle label Light in the Attic, the album, Native North America, Vol. 1: Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966-1985, features 34 remastered tracks, including three songs by Mitchell. It was nominated for a 2016 Grammy award.

Mitchell describes the compilation as one of the “greatest ideas to come around in years,” and is thrilled to hear songs by his peers, including Willie Thrasher, Willie Dunn, Morley Loon and John Angaiak, being rediscovered. It’s also sparked a handful of concerts, including Friday’s date at the NAC.

As for the young man recovering in hospital, Mitchell has some words of advice: “Try not to be bitter about everything, otherwise the negative side is going to win,” he says. “Your life is not going to be the same now. It’s never going to be the same. Be humble, be good. Try to be a good person.

“I’m sure he’s going to get a good settlement of some kind,” he added, “and a big free lesson: You can never be tougher than the law.”