From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way

by Jesse Thistle

“If someone tries to push us around, we just pick up and move somewhere else,” Mushoom said. “We live like this to be free, like our ancestors.”

Mom used to think I was mute, but I could speak fine, I just chose not to. My words belonged to me, they were the only thing I had that were mine, and I didn’t trust anyone enough to share them.

The truth is, when I saw the three eggs tucked into that nest it reminded me of my brothers and me and our home in Saskatchewan. I thought of how much that mother robin loved those eggs and how well she and Brian’s family took care of them, and I got jealous. The eggs had their mother, and my brothers and I didn’t anymore. So I took the eggs. I thought that if I had them, in some way I’d have the same love the eggs had, and that would mean that in some way I’d have a mother’s love again.

It would just make life easier, I decided, to tell people I was Italian.

Society, I figured, cares more about criminals than they do about the homeless.

“All people who give to those around them prosper by them, and all those selfish bloodclaats that don’t, get nothing but fire.”

That’s all any of the darkness really is—just love gone bad. We’re just broken-hearted people hurt by life.”