‘We cannot move forward without looking back’
Chief Stacey Laforme is a poet and a realist. “The future lies in the arts,” he says. As the country moves toward fulfilling the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Laforme believes it will be the arts, not politics or economi
Excerpt of poem “I Love This Land” by Chief Stacey Laforme of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation
You were and always shall be my brother We were all the same colour wrapped in the flag of this nation My blood flowed as freely as yours, mixed in the fields one could not be distinguished from the other Yet when we came home, when the nation’s colours were removed Difference became apparent, not between you and me, God willing never But in the eyes of those for whom we laid down our lives. Oh, we still stood shoulder to shoulder in the parades, but the government thought that your life was more valuable than mine So you were given land, property, while I waited and I waited, I know what you were given was not enough for what we endured Still it was much more than I.
If his Grade 8 English teacher hadn’t made those corrections, we would have had another 18 years of Stacey Laforme’s poetry.
Laforme, who in December was elected to another — he says final — term as chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, is wellknown for the strong and direct verses which illuminate his emotions and experiences, and those of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.
Following two volumes of poetry Laforme printed and distributed himself 25 years ago, Durville Publications has published a collection of his work: “Living in the Tall Grass: Poems of Reconciliation.”
The book is divided into seven sections, “each reflecting one of the Seven Values which our people hold dear,” Laforme says: “Honesty, truth, love, courage, humility, wisdom and respect.”
The title is a metaphor for Laforme’s belief that “we cannot move forward without looking back.”
Laforme’s first poem was for an English assignment at his elementary school at Six Nations, and the impressed teacher read it aloud to the class, but changed a few words in the middle and at the end, “probably to fix the grammar, but to a young man just trying to find his way when he’s 11 or 12, it stopped me from writing until I was 30. Because she corrected it and wouldn’t tell me why.”
When Laforme was 30, and working for New Credit social services, his mother died and he wrote a poem called “Forgiveness” to help him deal with her death.
“I grew up in a house of abuse,” Laforme explains. “I was born into a generation of abuse: alcohol abuse; abuse of your spouse, abuse of your children. It was just sort of a common way of life when I was born — I’m sure a lot of it had to do with losing our place in society, losing our sense of who we were. It was rampant and everybody knew about it, but they also didn’t say anything.”
He summoned up the courage to show forgiveness to his boss, partly because it was Abuse Awareness Month and the poem might be suitable for a department publication. She said it was great and all she wanted to do was change the last line.
“And I told you about me and changing lines, right?” he laughs.
“The poem was from the perspective of an abused woman who had passed on and the line was something about ‘I know that I should wish him well but I hope that man goes straight to Hell.’
“I know it’s about getting to forgiving and moving on, but the reality is that at a certain point in people’s lives, they have a certain feeling and that feeling, whether it’s right or wrong, should be expressed.”
He penned a replacement poem for his boss called “Some Cycles Need to Be Broken” and he was back to writing.
“I was writing universal messages and someone suggested I should write from an Indigenous perspective,” he recalls.
“I remembered when I was 17 and in the car with a bunch of ladies and the conversation turned to ‘What makes you an Indian?’ I didn’t have the words then, so gave up and sat back and listened.
“But when I started writing again 20 years later I wrote ‘Why am I an Indian?’”
Laforme is convinced that, as Canada moves toward fulfilling the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, its most effective vehicle will not be politics nor economics.
“The future lies in the arts, and it lies in all our youth, not just the Indigenous youth,” he says.
“Arts make change. I could tell you facts and figures for hours but as soon as the test is over you’re going to forget it: just like our kids do in school. But if we can share a moment through the arts — whether it’s song, dance, poetry, painting — it transcends even language barriers.”
Laforme’s most broadly-known poem, included in the new book, is “I Love This Land.”
It was read on the Remembrance Day show of CBC’s “Morning Edition” by celebrated Canadian actor R.H. Thomson as part of his The World Remembers tribute to First World War dead, on both sides.
While he doesn’t like to describe what a poem is about, freeing readers for their own interpretations, Laforme says that the inspiration for “I Love This Land” came from two service veterans at an AFN (Assembly of First Nations) conference.
They still hadn’t received what non-Indigenous soldiers had after the Second World War. As he does in all his poems, Laforme becomes the character in “I Love This Land,” an Indigenous soldier returning from war with his non-Indigenous battle mates only to find them getting better treatment. It is addressed to Canadian society and the government, with the overriding theme, “Why am I left like this?”
“The other soldiers were absolutely deserving, or more deserving, of what they got,” Laforme says. “But (the Indigenous soldier) wasn’t given anything. We stood together. We depended upon each other. I killed. I died. I went because it was the right thing to do. And I’d do it again.
“It’s also their families who are impacted. It just shows how pervasive into the First Nations world it really is: it’s not just the residential schools, it’s also the wars, it’s also the medical field, it’s also the educational institutions. The trauma is generational, and it’s in all aspects of our lives.”
Still, Laforme remains optimistic. He sought a second term as chief only to see through so many promising initiatives at New Credit and says “I couldn’t do my job if I weren’t hopeful.”
Laforme is a high-profile leader, attending scores of events, large and small, in Ontario and gently reminding listeners that most of the southern part of the province is the traditional homelands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit. True to his belief in the longer-lasting impact of the arts, he’ll often open a speech with a verse.
“People have come to expect it,” he says, laughing. “If I don’t do it, they say, ‘Where’s our poem?’”