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

by Jesse Thistle

What was I doing here in jail anyway? Why had I put myself in the midst of this filth, this horrible violence? The answer was simple. I did it to save my leg—and my life.

1979–1987

picking only what we needed and leaving the rest for our animal kin so they could feed themselves and their young. That was our pact, she said, and if we followed it, they’d never let us down.

He told us stories about how our people once had lived in large communities in handmade houses just like his all over Saskatchewan, living off the land, but that was before the government attacked us and stole our land during the resistance, before our clans fell apart.

“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.”

road-allowance home

The Road Allowance period (roughly 1900-1960) is a key but little known element of Métis history and identity. As immigrant farmers took up land in the Prairie provinces after the 1885 Northwest Resistance, many Métis dispersed to parkland and forested regions, while others squatted on Crown land used — or intended — for the creation of roads in rural areas or on other marginal pieces of land. As a result, the Métis began to be called the “road allowance people,” and they settled in dozens of makeshift communities throughout the three Prairie provinces, such as Saskatchewan’s Spring Valley along the fringes of Prince Albert National Park, Chicago Line or “Little Chicago” in the Qu’Appelle Valley, and Manitoba’s Ste. Madeleine and Rooster Town (Winnipeg). Road allowance houses reflected the Métis’ extreme poverty — houses were usually uninsulated, roofed with tarpaper and built from discarded lumber or logs and various “recycled” materials. These small one- or two-room dwellings housed entire families.

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.

“Don’t need that.” He laughed and slammed down the lid. He dusted his hands. “Who the fuck needs a kid!?”

He would put himself between me and the Monster. He would rescue me from whatever it was that had him and Josh squealing in the next room while I cried myself to sleep.

Jerry and Josh changed after that. They lost their superpowers, they peed the bed every night. But they were still my protectors.

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.

I heard the name “Cree” in the lyrics and Moses explained to me that it was about when the British Army killed a bunch of Cree Indians on the plains out west and then gave the land to white people.

1988–1996

A few months later I was selling acid by the sheet and sniffing speed in the washroom before class every day.

“Why do you always do that, Jesse? Why do you shit on our heritage like that?”

“Because it looks awful. Why do you and Josh play Indians? Fuck, we’re from Brampton and never practiced that stuff. It’s embarrassing.”

I was jealous of Josh when we were little, and I was jealous of Jerry now.

“The right answer is that you chose because you chose. That’s it. All the explanations you gave to justify your choice are just excuses your mind made up after the fact.”

“Yeah. And when you know that you can just choose to do anything you want.”

“I realized it was all on me and no one could save me—not Mom or anyone. I had to choose to do the work of bettering myself, just like I chose to hustle in pool halls all day. It was that simple.” Mr. T. scratched his chin and admired himself in the pool hall shot.

He was 240 pounds in Grade 11 and had shattered the long-standing bench-press and leg-press records at our school. He was also one of the biggest and fastest rugby players in the district and struck fear in the hearts of many of his opponents.

Toronto Purchase of 1805

http://mncfn.ca/torontopurchase/

I opened my eyes and saw I was dancing alone on the flatness of the great plains. I was dressed in a plume of feathers, deerskins, a bustle, beads, moccasins, a rattle, and tassels. My legs rushed in perfect coordination over top of the grass, pressing and tamping it down, as vast fields undulated before me.

I remember a week later losing my job at the grocery store. I remember catching a ride out west with one of my buddies. I remember asking Josh if I could stay with him. The rest is a blur.

1997–2008

LEEROY DROVE DOWN HASTINGS STREET

Childhood memories of my times with Leeroy filled me as the sun crested up over the mountains and called for me to let go of our friendship. I’d earned the sunlight, it was mine, and mine alone. I crept out of the car and shut the door gently, careful to not wake him.

The assault at the club left me struggling, grabbing nothing but sand. One never thinks it will happen to them until it does. You are never the same and it’s always there.

On horseback they came, Setting everything ablaze. They littered the stolen streets with their bodies And left them greasy with their own fat.

Me, I got a lifetime of people thinking I was a rat. That I could live with, because I knew what really happened—they tried to make me their patsy, and I dealt with it. What other choice did I have as a young Native homeless man? And I knew that the code of the streets was bullshit—everyone cracks, no exceptions.

I never found out if Frank had my back with the jersey, or even if it mattered. When I reconnected with him, I didn’t have the heart to ask him about it. I didn’t want to put him in the same position I was in.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “I destroyed a lifelong friendship, and I don’t have anywhere to go. I just can’t stop fucking up.” “More common than you know.”

I’d be left with nowhere to transition to and would relapse. I knew I needed quick isolation to get clean—total, immediate immersion for months and months.

“I will do my work, I will change, I will finish it.”

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

“All us criminals start out as normal people just like anyone else, but then things happen in life that tear us apart, that make us into something capable of hurting other people. That’s all any of the darkness really is—just love gone bad. We’re just broken-hearted people hurt by life.”

I felt a deep sorrow knowing that he had no chances left.

Now, looking back on it, we were high, wild, and borderline out of our minds. I can’t believe we did what we did. I regret it all.

I sat frozen. She didn’t look so hot anymore.

He shook his head and sat up. “No one told you? He’s gone, son. They got him in ’82.”

2008–2017