Status Updates From A Two-Spirit Journey: The A...

Predators use AA to target vulnerable women. Women who have only recently stopped using alcohol or drugs may have little confidence&ability to stand up for themselves. They're in a fragile place where a bad experience can set them back in their recovery. Even if they stay sober&have the courage to speak out, others may not believe what they say, if someone with more status, authority, & long-term sobriety denies it.

Oh my god

Two-spirit, same-sex couples used to play an important role in Anishinaabe communities, because they adopted children who had lost their parents...and other special duties, like keeping fire, healing people, or leading ceremonies. My kokum explained that two-spirit people were once loved and respected within our communities, but times had changed and they were no longer understood or valued in the same way.

Some parents left Ombabika to try to find their children and bring them back. In the end, a few were successful. Some children ran away from residential schools and made their way back to Ombabika on their own. Others only returned after many years, when they were already young adults. But a number of those who were taken away that day never returned. There were parents who never saw their children again.

White men came and took away most of the children to residential schools...8Parents did not understand why their children were being taken from them, but they were unable to stop it...my mother started screaming and crying. She told my stepdad that white men wearing trench coats and strange hats had arrived at the railway station, given her & other parents a piece of paper, and taken all the children away on a train.

Most [teachers] were mean to me. They did not hit all of the kids, but they hit me a lot. The main reason was because I was left-handed, and they wanted me to use my right hand to write. Each time they caught me using my left hand, they took me to the front of the classroom, unfolded my hands, and strapped them with a wide belt or a fire hose. Sometimes they lashed my hands until they were numb, swollen, and bloody.

The Abitibi Pulp and Paper Company continued to set up new camps in the area, and at each one they clear-cut the nearby forest. So sometimes, when I went trapping, I found that familiar stretches of woods had entirely disappeared. It was devastating. Beautiful, sacred forests that I had grown up with had been destroyed. The land looked naked and scarred, as if it had been raped and left to die.