Gladys Taylor Cook:
Leaving the bitterness and pain behind
Article by Avery Ascher
Like
other winners of this year's National Aboriginal Achievement
Awards, Gladys Taylor Cook (Heritage and Spirituality) has found
that she, and her life's work, has suddenly become highly visible.
Forty-five years ago, as a single mother taking various laundry
jobs to make ends meet, her situation was the exact opposite.
"Every job I had, I was invisible," Cook recalls of
the many years spent loading washers, unloading dryers, folding
and pressing laundry at the residential school, and later, at
the hospital in Portage la Prairie, Man.
It's not that she felt this kind of work was beneath her. Rather,
it was the systemic and systematic racism she experienced, an
indifference that looked right through her. It was an indifference
that couldn't even be bothered to assume she would never want,
or be capable, of doing anything much different.
"Racism played a major role in my life," Cook said.
"I had to fight every inch of the way."
There's no trace of bitterness in her voice when she says this.
She learned long ago just how liberating letting go of hate and
anger can be.
Cook's journey to that place where she was able to let go took
many years. Born on Sioux Valley First Nation west of Brandon,
she was first sent to an Anglican-run residential school at Elkhorn,
Man., when she was four. Like others of her generation, the aching
sadness of separation from her family would be ...
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