The Faraway Nearby

DEANNA PARTRIDGE-DAVID

a

I didn’t know I was afraid of cowboys until I find myself surrounded. Apparently, we’ve arrived during a cowboy convention. Silver tips on their shirt collars glint in the sun, shiny trucks taking up two parking spaces, names like “Frank the Chief ” decalled onto their trucks alongside confederate flags. Dream catchers made in China hang from rear-view mirrors. Dad is as comfortable as he ever is with this. Mom, my daughter, and I have uneasy smiles. Our ancestral memories are flinching.

c

When we were kids, Great Grandma gave us beautiful moccasins with seventies pop imagery stitched on them, like happy faces and daisies.

cw

I have high hopes of learning about Simpcw culture at this Spring Equinox celebration and craft day. I want to see our beadwork, our moccasins, our plant medicines, hear our songs, taste our dried fish and bannock. In my mind, I can smell the sage burning already.

e

Okay, you can bring Pikachu, but I’m going to write my phone number on him in case he gets lost.

g

The city of Kamloops gets its name from the First Nations people of that territory, Tk'emlúps te Secwepemc,' which refers to “the people of the confluence.” They are Interior Salish and Secwepemc like us.

gw

We drive past the site where the big fire was. Blackened trees standing like stick candles in a mud birthday cake.

gw

“Are you here for the cowboy convention?” everyone asks. “No, we’re the Indians,” I reply. I look white, so they chuckle uneasily.

I

My single memory of Great Grandma was the alarming sound she made when my three-year-old self reached to lift the lid off her crystal sugar bowl. So certain she was that I would destroy it, her cry was already full of grief. I’d never heard grief before. It terrified me.

h

Clearwater, where we were when we discovered we were lost, has an Aboriginal Cultural Centre. We hoped it was the Chu Chua Community Hall, but no.

k

“I made a flag!” Where we first ask directions, my daughter sticks a muddy branch into an old sooty pile of snow and makes a “castle.” She doesn’t feel lost. She’s with her family.

kw

Later, asking locals at the A&W/gas station/convenience store combo in Barriere elicits smiles and enthusiastic strangers chiming in about how easy it is to find Chu Chua.

k

A decade after the big fire, the Kamloops Daily News reported, “It was a devastating, far-reaching event with serious impacts.”

kw

A towering man, barely an adult, passes in front of our car to bully the man checking the oil in the truck next to us, his friend. He is dressed like a clean and flashy fashion cowboy. (Black hat.) I’ve never seen someone so self-assured. I would roll up the window to shelter my daughter from his foul language except Mom has the keys.

l

Great Grandma was Catholic. She was with Great Grandpa long enough to baptize her children with an Italian name. “Pretend to be Italian,” she told them.

l´

As we get closer, my expectations are stratospheric. I’m picturing my daughter playing tag with the Simpcw kids while I learn how to sew a ribbon skirt by a wizened elder who is delighted that I brought tobacco to honour her teaching.

ll

We arrive in time for lunch. The chef himself warmly welcomes us at the door. He’s serving corn chowder and ham and cheese sandwiches on what might be Wonder Bread. My daughter is thrilled. No spirit plate. No smudge today. It’s still delicious.

m

While I am way more comfortable on the reservation than I have felt anywhere in our travels so far, I’ve also never felt more conspicuous. I look like my dad. My daughter looks like her dad. My mom looks like her dad. Our maternal lineage is hiding demurely behind the cowboy bravado of our fathers. And my hair is Steller’s Jay blue in a room of raven tresses. I take a deep breath and accept that while the Simpcw are my family, blending in is not an option.

m

The paper reported that the man blamed for one of the most destructive wildfires in Canadian history says he feels intense guilt for the damage it did.

n

I have a secret love of Westerns.

ń

The people are warm and kind when you speak to them, but most avoid eye contact until you do. Just like at Grandma’s, I remind myself not to overwhelm people with small talk.

o

One of the only other white women here hosts the craft-making table. We will be making antique-style folk art signs using stencils, the kind that you buy in gardening shops: “Don’t mind the mess, the children are making memories.” The cultural coordinator tells me that everyone loves making signs. They’ve had her up lots of times. There’s one stencil in the Secwepemc language. The guest crafter can’t pronounce it, but tells me it means “welcome.” We are also welcome to make wind chimes out of tin cans.

p

When my daughter feels joy, she skips around singing “Hallelujah” over and over. She learned to sing “Hallelujah” at Camp Spirit last summer, a Christian camp that accepts children from poor families for free. When she’s distressed, she hides under tables. At the festival, she does both.

p

We won’t have time to visit the Secwepemc Museum on this trip, but I make a note to come back to see Simpcw crafts.

q

“The 2003 wildfire . . . didn’t destroy the community’s spirit, and most rebuilt their buildings and their lives after the fire cooled and the smoke cleared,” reports the Kamloops Daily Mail.

qw

I chat with an elder about genealogy. He wears his long grey hair in a braid and proudly wears the Simpcw logo: two sacred pipes, the bowls facing the centre as they should. The Kamloops cowboys would call those “peace pipes.”

q

My sister and I pretended to do a rain dance around an imaginary fire in Grandma’s front yard. Dry grass crunched sharply under our bare feet at twilight. The sky broke open with thick drops of rain, heavy with the promise of thunder.

qw

An elder from Tk'emlúps is invited to teach us Secwepemc songs and dances. All at once, I understand that I’m not the only one who was kept from our culture.

Outlawed for centuries, these songs and dances were passed in secret from one generation to the next. A little off rhythm and unsure, we stamp to ancient drum beats our bodies recognize. We learn about the most sacred time when light meets dark. I feel so cool.

r

My phone rings. “Hi, we have a Pokémon here at the A&W. He has your phone number on his butt?” (Hallelujah!)

ŕ

Twilight and it’s time to drive back along the ribbon of potholes that connects Chu Chua to the places my GPS has heard of.

S

The trees nearest the Thompson River are starting to draw its vitality up their spines. It’s taken a decade, but there are little patches of green on the tips of branches.