Grandmothers Uniting

We’re here from Saskatchewan in Canada. It’s prairie province where there’s a saying: if your dog runs away, you can see him for three days! We belong to an organisation called Intercultural Grandmothers Uniting and we’d like to tell you a little about why we formed an organisation and what it’s about.

For many generations people have come to Canada from all over the world to join the Aboriginal people, who were already there. You’d think by now that we’d get to know each other well, but the truth is we live parallel lives on the same land. And it’s time we intersected.

Shirley’s story

“I am Metis. I am living proof that they have already intersected! The Metis people are a mixture of European and aboriginal blood. There are many truths that describe us: ‘half-breed’, ‘allowance people’ because we didn’t receive any land from the treaties, the ‘forgotten people’. We pass each other on the street and that is all we really know about each other. But there’s a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding, mistrust and injustice out there.

That’s where the Intercultural Grandmothers Uniting comes in. It took only eight people who wanted to do something positive, and now there are hundreds involved building bridges of understanding and respect, friendship and trust between the races and the generations. Over the last eight years since we were formed, many people have heard about the Grandmothers just by word of mouth: our work within the schools, with church groups, multicultural groups, public servants, and youngsters at risk.

Why I joined the Intercultural Grandmothers was part curiosity at first. And then when I found the real purpose, I dove in. And I found that they were going to do something about the violence in the schools. And I thought that my life history, my life-story, could help others.

My life-story has lots of violence in it. Violence started within my own family. I have six older brothers and had to learn to fight, but still wanted to remain feminine. That’s a big job! I was strong. I had big muscles and I chose to wear long-sleeved blouses to hide those muscles. And I thought fighting physically was the way to solve problems, to solve issues. I really did.

In school I learnt the different colours of people. My family was very close to a black family. As a matter of fact, I called the older men of that family ‘uncle’. One day, one of the uncles came to get us from school and he loaded us in the car. Next day the nun who saw us getting into the car asked, ‘Are you part-Black?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. It really didn’t matter to me. But I guess it mattered to her. Racism is learnt.

I turned to alcohol because I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like that I was part-Indian and part-White. (Back then we used to say ‘Indian’, now it’s ‘First Nations’.) I didn’t like being Matis and, therefore, didn’t like myself. And to cover those feelings, I drank. The alcohol led to more violence. And then the downward spiral continued and I ended up in prison for a violent act.

Finally, I decided I wanted to learn about the Indian part of me. I started going to ‘sweats’ – that’s the sweat-lodge, which is a church for Aboriginal people. That’s where we go to pray and offer our sufferings to the Great Spirit. One day I was having so much frustration, even to the point of losing my hair. I just gave everything up in that sweat and said, ‘Here, Great Spirit, Father God, this is my life. Take it as it is.’

I stopped fighting. I stopped arguing. I started listening to the Great Spirit’s voice instead of my own. I started helping young people and trying to keep them from following the path that I took. So when I saw that part of the Grandmothers’ purpose was building bridges between generations, I knew I belonged to them.”

June’s story

“I grew up not knowing anything about racism. Why? Because in my neighbourhood there were no people from other cultures, no people from other races. My parents, however, inoculated me as best they could against racism by reading me stories told by people from other cultures and by showing respect to each and every neighbour that we did have. But book-learning is a flimsy platform for true understanding. We need to touch each other. We need to give to each other from deep within ourselves. That’s how respect and friendship grow

I’ve lived all my life within the middle-class: a school-teacher among a family of school-teachers. I got married, bore seven children, worked with youngsters with severe disabilities as a teacher. But I ended up in jail too! The thing that happened was Oka. I’ll tell you about Oka. I was sixty-four then, that’s about eleven years ago. And Oka is a little town in Quebec. There, the townspeople 3wanted to enlarge their golf course. So they appropriated land for the purpose that belonged to the Mohawk people, or at least the Mohawk people claimed it through treaties that had not yet been settled.

The Mohawks put up a barricade on the road and some weeks later a cavalcade of police came up to the barricade. There were shots fired on both sides. A policeman lay dead. The Mohawks stood their ground. The Canadian army came in, surrounded the less than one hundred men, women and children in a pine grove. (This land was beautiful. It had a wonderful stand of pines and an ancient Mohawk graveyard in it.) The soldiers came and they put razor-wire all around the periphery. There were 2,000 of them. They brought in tanks and helicopters. You know the story. And I, who don’t watch much television, was sitting mesmerised at home watching this drama unfold, being very frightened and not believing this was my country that was doing this.

The government – both the Quebec government and the federal government – said ‘We will not talk to the Mohawks until they surrender.’ Well, I phoned the Prime Minister’s office, for all the good that did! And then I hopped in my van and I drove the 2,000 miles to Oka, as close as I could get to where the police barricades were. I felt there have to be people there protesting and yes, there were people. There was a peace camp, sworn to non-violence, asking the government, ‘Please talk, please negotiate. Quit this confrontation.’

Well, after I was there about three weeks, the police closed down the peace-camp. About six of us refused to go, and that’s how I ended up in jail. Meanwhile, the men were still in the Pines. I think that the Mohawk people survived because of prayer, because of ingenuity, and because they had a wonderful sense of humour. When the soldiers came in with their big, expensive searchlights – because they wanted to see – it’s very hard to see in a pine grove what’s going on! – so they put up these lights and the Mohawks held up a $10 tarpaulin in front of the light. It worked just fine! The soldiers brought in their fire-hoses, but there again there’s lots of trees to hide behind and it didn’t work too well. But the Mohawks filled condoms with water and threw them back at the soldiers. And then, when the Mohawks said, ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ they declared unilateral peace, picked up some plywood, dropped it over the razor-wire and walked out. So that’s the story of Oka and that’s why I was in jail.”

Building bridges

So from there you can see from our stories why the Grandmothers group is so important to us. We can take action against violence, disrespect, and ignorance, while being part of a supportive group whose purpose is to build bridges. Our original purpose was arrived at by discussion and by prayer and it is to build bridges of understanding, friendship and trust between the races and the generations.

Respect means really understanding what culture and our fellow man. Loss of respect results when culture is taken away. You know, when Europeans came to North America, they thought that the Indian drums were pagan and meant war. They were so wrong! To me and my people, they mean the beat of the heart. They beckon you to come and dance with us. In the Bible it says, ‘Dance and make noise unto the Lord.’ That’s what we are doing. Come and dance with us! Come and feast with us! And come and celebrate us! Come and celebrate with us! Come and worship the Great Spirit with us!

We use the ‘talking rock’ in our gatherings. When you are given the rock, you hold it in your left hand. You are the only one speaking. Nobody can interrupt you, so you can have your say. Freedom of speech! You’re the only one. The rock travels in a circle from hand to hand in the direction of the sun.

We grandmothers talk together, laugh together. We’ve cried together. We dance together and have fun together. When we need to work something out, we do it by discussion. Usually quietly. Occasionally there are voices raised in frustration. We’ve learnt to love each other and the way we work is simple. We see something that we think needs to be done. Maybe we don’t know how to do it, but we don’t have to rush at it. We don’t have a lot of money, a lot of people, or a lot of fanfare. We just take it one step at a time, give our solutions time to grow.

So, when we found that one of our members could not read, we realised that we could carry out a literacy project that helped us all. We have worked with the schools to bring awareness and to counter racism and violence. Now, here we are in this group of people in Holland, representing so many different cultures and races. Wow! We’re glad that we have a chance to share out story with you. We feel privileged in sharing our stories and vision with you and we know that we will receive so much inspiration and wisdom from hearing your stories. Thank you for this time together.