THE URBANE INDIAN - What a way to begin the year

In America, the beginning of this New Year was bright with promise. All the Americans were going nuts over their brand-spankingly fresh president, all new and shiny. Even our Native neighbors to the south were waxing poetic about Barack Obama and his possibilities.
During the presidential campaign, he was even adopted into the Crow Nation. It was so rare to see such enthusiasm in politics, anywhere. Since the inauguration, Obama has named six American Indians to his transition team.
Hopefully, some of that enthusiasm will be smuggled across the border, because I sure can't picture our beloved prime minister doing anything similar. I don't suppose anybody's willing to adopt him.
Stephen Harper prefers to keep company with the likes of Tom Flanagan, a Conservative advisor whose opinions on Canada's First Nations people are controversial and subject to severe Aboriginal annoyance.
His book First Nations? Second Thoughts, which severely questions Aboriginal Canada's dependence on federal money, is required reading in many Native outhouses across the country.
Up here in Canada, I couldn't help wondering what wonders the New Year would bring for us, and specifically me. Last year we had the famous apology for residential school abuse, financial compensation, the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (well, I think they're still working on that one), and Joseph Boyden won the Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce to name just a few momentous occasions.
Definitely a banner Aboriginal year for sure.
Unfortunately, 2009 is proving to be not such a positive and encouraging year. Currently we are all wallowing in the financial crisis that has gripped the world, and it keeps getting bleaker and bleaker. And as somebody who works in the industry of Native theatre and publishing, let's just say my anticipation for a prosperous and happy New Year kept wavering like a flag blowing in the Arctic wind. What I do for a living is not exactly a magnet for disposable income. People do not naturally envision surviving on food, water, warmth and a theatre play.
I had visions of soup lines for Native playwrights, novelists and columnists wrapping around friendship centres. First Nations artists, on each corner, with signs saying "Will write a play for food" or "Spare change for a metaphor." It, more than the cold snap, made me shiver.
Alas, my winter became a lot darker and colder then I had anticipated.
A few weeks into January my mother passed away from a stroke, and the end of an era suddenly appeared. I am an only child of a single parent, and I always credited her with originating my sense of humor and perspective on life.
One time when I told my mother I had the opportunity to open for and emcee a night of Aboriginal comedy at the grand opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C, she paused for a moment then said "Well, you'd better learn to be funny." Wise words indeed. And I have tried.
Though we were very different, she was somebody I always tried to emulate. She was strong, independent, trustworthy, fun and always made the room she was in at that moment definitely a better place to be. I shall miss her, but I will draw strength from knowing she will, in my mind, never be gone.
It's been said that every time an Elder passes away, a library disappears.
That goes without saying.
One time while driving somewhere, we heard a commercial on the radio advertising classes in French. Wistfully, she said "I wish I was bilingual."
I had to remind her she was. She thought for a moment and said, quite proudly, "I guess I am." Fully fluent in Anishnawbe, that circle of speakers has just grown a little smaller, and the world is definitely worse off for it.
My mother, Fritzie Taylor, always had time to listen to all my bad jokes, my unusual perspective on society, and my reflections on Native life.
It will be a different world for sure.
I admit, there's a galaxy of difference between the rise of American President Barack Obama and my Ojibway mother passing away... but both are monumentally affecting on different levels.
Still fascinated with America, my mother watched Obama's rise to success with curiosity. She once told me about when she was working in the States as a domestic during the fifties, she felt guilty about being told to only let the Black people who worked for her boss drink water outside the house. My, how things have changed there and here. Obama never met my mother, but I think he would have been better off for it.
I guess, optimistically for me, 2009 can only get better.