Dave bidini
‘Could someone from away travel down these roads? Especially if this person was non-aboriginal, or worse, nonaboriginal from Toronto? ’
Lin Yellowknife ast Sunday was two days in one: the Summer Solstice and Aboriginal Day. Here in Yellowknife, it was a chance to pour two traditional celebrations into one, making the visitor — the visitor being me — less careful about where to be and what to do. Festivities included a traditional fish fry, feeding of the fire, a cameo by Jordan Tootoo, and performances by the Scottish Métis dancers of North Slave (Great Slave Lake) as well as the Dene drummers. I cycled down to the main city park, where hundreds of Yellowknifers — not to be confused with the Yellowknives, a Dene band — gathered on stone steps through the day and all of its sunlight, which would, around midnight, dim a little but never abate, being, as we are in the north, at a nearly 24-hour glow.
As outdoor civic festivals go, it was fun, but after growing a little hinky, I remounted my bike and spun around town for awhile. The road eventually led me to Back Bay, which led me to Latham Island and, down the road, to the First Nations N’Dilo community, with its street signs written in Slavey and wood cuts in the shape and colour of the city’s name. I’d asked a few friends about protocol — could someone from away travel down these roads? especially if this person was non-aboriginal, or worse, non-aboriginal from Toronto? — but everyone said it was
Could someone from away travel down these roads?
fine. Still, I wanted to be certain. Here, and everywhere, the Truth and Reconciliation Report has brought to light the abuses of First Nations, a genocide that affects all Canadians. It’s what I was thinking about as I swung down N’Dilo’s looping roads carved into massive skulls of Precambrian rock tight to the ragged shore of Great Slave Lake, stunningly bright with the orangeyellow light that soaked the day.
People here talked to me about residential schools — their horrors, their legacy — and how, in one territorial community, entire families — parents, children, cousins — hid in the hillside through fall, winter and spring as a way of avoiding the wrath of the classrooms. They also talked about how long this had all gone on; in some cases, as late as 1996. I thought of what I was doing in 1996, and how, in earlier days, I’d pretended to be a punk, affecting a punk state of mind. I was listening to Billy Bragg and The Clash; protesting at the Litton plant in Etobicoke where they’d made cruise missiles; railing against Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney; and playing Rock Against Racism shows. I thought I was doing good things — in a sense, I guess I was — but we did nothing to change our world at home. We were punks, but really, we were cowards. We turned our backs on Canadians who needed us because Doc Martens and the Sex Pistols and making a shirt out of safety pins was kind of cool. Tortured aboriginal kids were not.
I rode through N’Dilo until late — very late — past homes large and small, some of which had large teepees in their yards spiking the sky. Dudes worked on trucks, kids played on the street and 4X4s hauling lakecraft — canoes, kayaks — sloped toward the water, getting on the lake after eight months of gruelling winter. I wondered if, after an endless legacy of darkness, maybe the relentless sunlight of this day — this Aboriginal Day — could be the beginning of something, and maybe, now, we could all move through it together.