The repaved road home

Page 13

I left home, a small Ojibway First Nation in central Ontario, way back in 1980. The reason:

college and a desire to see if there was more to life then country music, mosquitoes, and baloney. Twenty-six years later, it looks like I will be returning home. Much has changed in that intervening time ? both in my community and in myself.

When I left home, I was young, impressionable, still trying to understand the appeal of disco, and about 20 pounds lighter. Now I'm old, still impressionable, trying to understand the appeal of rap, and the less said about my weight the better. I know I'm old, I read the Globe and Mail, and listen to CBC Radio faithfully. That's more accurate then flashing your birth certificate. With that said, I have decided after all this time that life in Toronto holds no more mystery for me. I've done the restaurants, the theatres, the bars, the museums, and the transit system. I love the city but let's face it, the novelty has worn off.

In those two-and-a-half decades, I've traveled the world, published 17 books, tiptoed my way through a half dozen different forms of media expression, and had my heart broken a few times. Nothing new there. That happens to practically everyone everywhere. I just hope the transition won't be too difficult. I was born a Rez Indian, became an Urban Indian, and will return home an Urbane Indian. I wonder if the transformation can work in reverse.

Needless to say, my experiences in those intervening years have changed me somewhat. Two years ago when I was in India on my mother's birthday, I e-mailed her via my aunt, wishing her a happy birthday and saying that I'd just taken a tour of a city called Jaipur where I'd seen camels, monkeys and elephants walking the streets. My aunt later e-mailed me back saying that for her birthday, my mother's sisters took her to a nearby garbage dump to watch the bears. I'm going to have to reconcile these two realities. Still, I'm sure the people of Jaipur would find bears and a First Nation's garbage dump equally fascinating.

When I left all those years ago, I thought I'd never return, the anger of youth and all. There was a world to be explored out there and dammit I was going to do that. Since then, I've chased kangaroos in Australia, gotten drunk with Finnish university students, battled sandstorms in northern China, sampled asparagus ice cream in Germany, gotten seasick in Cuba, stuck my finger in a bullet hole left by Pancho Villa in the ceiling of a cantina in Mexico City, saw plays in the West End of London, England, and swam in the oceans off the coast of Sicily while trying to avoid the jellyfish, just to name a few things.

Now I find myself becoming obsessed with how I'm going to re-adapt to life on the reserve. I find myself preferring mortadella to baloney and wonder if that will be a problem. It doesn't fry as well. Many of my concerns come down to food. Over the years, I'd become quite fond of international cuisines. I have it on fairly good authority that that bulgoki and kim chi are difficult to find back home on the reserve. That could be due to the noticeable lack of Koreans. Evidently there's just as little decent Thai, Greek and Vietnamese food there too. I will have to trade in lemon grass for sweet grass. Maybe I'll learn to make baloney tartar.

The noted Cree playwright and author Tomson Highway was born in Brochet, Manitoba, near the Northwest Territories. Today, he spends half the year in a cottage in the south of France. He was once quoted as saying "I don't do Canadian winters anymore." I envy him. A small part of me would love the opportunity to return to a small island I found off the coast of Fiji. As a writer in the Internet age, that would conceivable be possible . . . though my writing could possibly lose its authenticity. Instead of Molson's Canadian, my characters would end up drinking kava, a narcotic drink Polynesians imbibe made from the roots of an island plant. Again, not a lot of kaa on my reserve.

On the positive side, it's green at home. Very green. Lots of bugs too. Can't forget the relatives that know everything you are doing, even before you do. The pace is slower, stress definitely lower, and I've got a lovely house surrounded by several acres of trees to hide in, in case the going gets tough. I have purchased an authentic Chinese/Korean cookbook. The satellite dish I have will keep me more informed with the television stations in Newfoundland and Alberta than Toronto cable ever could. And next November, to keep my foot in the outside world, I'm scheduled to lecture at a Native American/First Nations conference in Vienna, Austria (I'm sure my reaction was the same as yours).

And who knows, maybe in those countries, saying I live on a Native reserve will make me seem a lot more exotic and interesting than saying I live in a split level bungalow in Toronto.