Free As Long as the Rivers Flow by James Bartleman Page A

her.
    “You know even less Anishinaabemowin than you did last summer. You’d think you’d put a little effort into keeping your language.”
    When Martha tried to help run the household, her mother was not impressed.
    “What sort of person have you become, anyway! You come home spoiled by that school, expecting to be fed the food of the white man. But people like me can’t live without country food. You can’t shoot a gun, set a net, light a fire, chop wood, clean fish, cook bannock or smoke geese—let alone make moosehide moccasins and gloves. Why, when I was a girl, I could do these things before I was ten!”
    Martha’s mother was not alone in finding it hard to love a child from whom she had become estranged after years of absence at residential school. Her remarks, however, confirmed her daughter’s impression that she belonged neither among the whites nor among her own people.
    As the months went by and her relations with her mother remained strained, Martha slipped into a depression. Lacking the energy to get out of bed in the mornings, she sat around doing nothing in the afternoons, abandoned her efforts to learn how tofish and hunt, and no longer tried to help her mother with the cooking and cleaning. From time to time, for no obvious reason, she broke down in tears.
    Her mother was appalled when her daughter turned to her for help.
    “You’re bringing shame on our family! You lie around all day letting your old mother do all the work and expect to be waited on hand and foot. In my day, Anishinabe people never got sick in the head. You’re just lazy and spoiled. Pull yourself together and above all don’t let the neighbours know what’s wrong with you!”
    But Martha’s condition worsened and she was soon unable to sleep. Matters reached a crisis one night when she was, as usual, lying awake and rigid in bed, her senses on high alert. A cold moonlight flooded in through the open window, casting sinister shadows against the walls, and the normal sounds of the northern community assumed a menacing air. Children running and playing behind her house were making fun of her, the hoot of an owl was a premonition of death, and the distant howling of wolves was a direct threat. The dogs, responsible for protecting their human masters from wild animals, answered them from backyards throughout the reserve with irresolute and fearful barking, as if to say, “If it’s Martha you want, just come and get her. We won’t stop you.”
    The wind in the black spruce trees whispered that she came from bad seed, from a flawed, inferior race, doomed to disappear and leave no trace on history. It said the nuns had been right—she and her people were Stone Age accidents of history who had been clothed in the skins of animals when the white man arrived, with no alphabet, no books, no music, no calendar, no domesticated animals, no cities and no monuments. It said the Native gods were inferior to the white gods, had been vanquished and would never return, leaving nature empty and forlorn. It said shewas weak, friendless and unwelcome in her mother’s house, in her community and in her country. It said she came from a place that no longer existed, was living a life that had no purpose, and ultimately, she and her people would disappear from history without a trace.
    Suddenly a gust of wind blew through the open window, lifting the sheets on her bed. A malevolent force, perhaps a bearwalker, perhaps the Wendigo, was coming and was about to attack her. She wanted to seek safety in her mother’s arms, but if she tried, her mother would push her away. There was pounding on the door, laughter and the sound of children running.
    She heard her mother struggle out of bed, fumble around sleepily and stumble to the door. She heard her open it and mutter: “Those kids. Their parents should teach them better manners. They should be in bed at this time of night.”
    Martha thought of Father Antoine—how she sometimes secretly welcomed