Traditions of a Mutt by Kira Carson

“Pull that bag over the window more; hide your hair,” my sister Damara said from the driver’s seat.

“This is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well,” she laughed.

I remained still and hidden in the back seat, but I could somewhat peer through the scattered luggage and blankets pressed against the car window.

“Hi,” said a lady who came up to the driver’s window. “Card?”

“Yep,” said Damara as she passed it over.

“Cool, thanks.” The lady looked quickly and handed it back, then sauntered inside the building. The smell of gasoline wafted into my blanket fortress while my sister fueled up. I could feel the sweat beginning to accumulate on my bra band. I’m going to die back here. Damara went inside to buy us smokes and got back in giggling.

“Can you breathe back there, whitey?” she said as she chucked the Rez smokes at my now exposed face.

“Ow, rude.”

At least she peeled away quickly. I emerged out of hiding and maneuvered my long legs over the middle console of the moving car and back into my rightful place in the front.

“Haha.” She continued to enjoy the memory of what just happened.

“Shut up, Damara.”

“What did you do with your Métis card anyways?” she asked.

“The zipper on my backpack opened when I was on the back of a bike in The Philippines, and it fell out.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, it’s long gone. I just need to register for a replacement.”

I had recently lost my Métis citizenship card, comparable to the more widely known Status card, to a steep island road. It served no purpose to me while living abroad except to remind me that I was more than the rich white girl many locals saw me as. Yes, the privilege was prevalent for me. This blonde hair and English-speaking tongue opened doors and stroked my ego. But every time I went into my wallet with the pesos fresh out of the ATM, my Métis card was hiding there to humble me. Peeking out between the weathered folds, two green eyes peered back on a background of white, blue, and red.

In 2017, I returned to British Columbia and straight back to work, straight back to the status of regular white girl. After my two years in Asia, I was sent to work in the highland hills north of Williams Lake, in a place called Riske Creek. It had only been four days of my feet on Canadian soil. BC was aflame and I was working in a fire camp in the middle of a charred field, feeding firefighters out of mobile trailers. My older sister soon joined me for work.

The Riske Creek Reservation was the closest community nearby, a few kilometers away. So, the two of us went for a drive. We were pulling up to the gas station when I remembered I had recently lost my Métis card. Even with sun-kissed skin, I was as white as they come. So into the back I went. Lucky for us, Damara’s back seat was full of tossed around luggage and backpacks, along with unraveled sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows. Loose beer cans and coke bottles bumped around the car floor.

Looking back, maybe we were overthinking, but I did know one thing: I didn’t want to deal with it. For once, I just didn’t feel like explaining.

When I was young, all I wanted was to wake up one day with dewy brown skin and the shiny dark hair of my siblings. Why didn’t I get to look like Pocahontas? This was the Disney Princess I wanted to be. I didn’t see blonde girls on TV bounding in the forest with woodland creatures. That was saved for the ones with darker skin and long, dark, flowing hair. I, meanwhile, was supposed to be wiping cinders off my face and talking to the house mice. Later in life, I would realize the gross irony of this. Pocahontas did not have the life we little girls were told she had.

My older sister took pride in her skin. Growing up in a community of only a thousand people, she and my older brother appeared to be the minority. And she loved it. She would pull her hair taut into a slick bun, and suddenly she was Mexican passing. Other days, it was just a few minutes in the sun with oil and she would be the darkest girl in town. Or at least, that’s how it felt.

“You can’t have this,” she would say, holding up a greasy bottle of baby oil. “You’ll just burn.” She never missed an opportunity to let my twin sister and I know we were pale. To her, pale was ugly. She needed to let us know she was superior.

I didn’t know what it meant to be Métis or Indigenous when I was a kid. But I wonder if I would have felt different if I had been granted more pigmentation. Would I have been braver, more able to include myself in the Indigenous community if I didn’t have to explain myself? What if they could see into my memories? Would the bruises, house evictions, empty bottles, and bowls of discount Kraft dinner be enough to be “one of them”?

“These are the twins,” Damara would say, introducing us to her friends who would stop by the house to visit while she babysat us.

“What, no they aren’t. Full siblings? Same mom and dad?”

“Yeah, they’re the albinos. The albino natives. Sometimes we just say they’re from the milk man.” She would smirk. I wanted to rip that stupid smile off her stupid face. Some days, I hated her for pointing out my skin. But she was 16 and I was 7. There wasn’t much I could do.

Nowadays, any snarky comments from my siblings regarding skin colour roll off me like oil on fur. The words land on the ground with nowhere to go, wasted. You’re too old for this, I think.

Despite the lessons of maturity that time has given me, I do find myself examining my skin. There’s a galaxy of freckles on a sky of cream. Some are planets with their many moons and others are constellations—brown, beige, and orange. These intensify with age as I refuse to stay out of the sun. I’m like my old golden retriever, who would lie all day in the summer yard, locks flowing with the light breeze, like a wave in a wheat field. I can hear my mother’s voice. “Well, did you put on any sunscreen?” The next voice comes yelling, yet muffled, through the walls of our old home. “Ha, you burnt whitey?” There is my older sister again. Never missing an opportunity.

Now, in summer, I check daily for melanoma. Is that one new? Is this one asymmetrical? Hey, does this look like this picture? All summer long, I continually change the part in my hair, too. My exposed scalp becomes a bright shade of salmonberry red. Like the sash that once hung over my dresser. It gets some looks.

This pale skin has embarrassed me my entire life. And although I have now found a way to accept my whiteness, I still wonder, since I don’t have the typical skin and features of my ancestors, what I have to pass on to my children. If I also break some of my family cycles of trauma, what is left to give? What will be our traditions? Some nights, when the stars are out, I look up and give these questions to the sky. I let the moon and stars soak them up, thinking the rising of the sun will shine light on some answers. I’m still working on those answers.

What I do know is that I hold the trauma of those that came before me. The damage of small hands being ripped from their mother’s embrace doesn’t go away within a few generations. The once bright fires of my culture were extinguished to coals. So now, I carry in my life the genocide and forced assimilation of the families before me, typically in the form of poverty, alcoholism, and the plethora of their associated issues.

It feels as if indigenous rights, stories, and histories are finally being told correctly. There’s truth and buried narratives arising. So, naturally, these topics come up in my current conversations and I find myself more than ever saying:

“I’m Métis.”

Which is then followed by the most predictable and repeated lines of my life.

“What. No, you’re not.”

“I am.”

“But you’re so pale.” My older sister’s voice then echoes in my memories. “You’re so pale.”

Over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. Sometimes it’s mixed up with a “No, I know Brady and Damara, you look nothing like them.” Or sometimes, just a simple “Really?”

Prior to my Métis card abandoning me, I would pull it out and let the disbelievers inspect it. Some days, I am patient. Some days, I am not. Are they right? Am I the fraud that they’re implying? The wheel is turning, but I’m the one moving my legs.

If my great Aunt Lottie knew I used the word fraud, it would send her to an early grave, which is saying something. She is an indigenous woman who has outlived many of her children and siblings. Her life and the lives directly around her were riddled with a cycle of poverty, abuse, alcoholism and, therefore, untimely death. As a direct result, she is now a resourceful obese sober woman bound to her scooter, living her last years quietly in Falkland, BC. We can’t drink around her, and if she’s telling a story, you shut up and listen.

Back in 2013, during a weekend-long Métis meetup in small-town Falkland, me and my parents, my brother, my older sister, and her two sons gathered ’round Lottie over a picnic table. Missing from our family crew was my twin sister, who made the decision to skip this event and stay in Vancouver. I was 22 at the time.

As Lottie told it, her first 18 years were spent somewhat with her parents, but mostly with her mixed litter of siblings in a family-built cabin in the mountain area of what is now the Kelowna to Merritt connector. The way she described it resembled something out of a movie. She was the oldest, and she and her siblings had the run of the house, as their parents were rarely around. Sometimes, her parents would appear to fix the fence, drop off supplies, or mend to a horse. They would stay just long enough for the younger kids to remember who they were before taking off again. Other times, it was for a quick hello and to introduce them to their new baby brother or sister. Depending on the age, this new sibling would be left with them, or continue with her parents to be released to their care later. This cabin in the woods was their true mother.

These kids were mutts. Métis was not a term commonly used in the family. No matter what they were called, though, they clearly weren’t white, as the government made frequent trips to collect them. In the ’40s, cars were still rare to them, so that strange sound of the engine coming up the beaten road would send them all into a flurry.

“Scatter!” All the kids would run into the woods. Many large men would follow and try to snatch them or coax them out of their hiding spots in the trees. Like they were feral cats.

“I was fast, I was so fast,” Lottie said. These men claimed they were only there to help, to take them to school, to take care of them. Aunt Lottie said they were there to take them to the orphanage. Even she, the first time she told me this story back in 2013, didn’t want to say the words “residential school.” This attempted snatching repeated through the years and, eventually, only Lottie was left. The cabin was in shambles. She spent a year completely alone. Some kids had died of disease, some had been caught by the men in the cars, and others had already made their way into town to live with family. The last horse somehow got out and ran away. That was it. On her eighteenth birthday, unceremoniously, she decided to make the trek into Merritt. This child of the woods joined the rest of the family at the farms in the valley. The cabin would not be used again.

I looked down at my feet under the picnic table. Peeking out from my sandals, they were smooth and white. Useless feet, I thought. These soft heels have never run, not really. They did pick up speed for the ding of food through a restaurant passthrough when plates were up. They made moves for forgotten pots of boiling water on the stove and braced themselves over wet kitchen floors. But they did not run barefoot through the forest, gripping onto the bark of cedars to push them into the sky to safety.

I felt something close to shame when I thought of my Great Aunt. If my white face was in the cabin, would I have been spared? Or would I have been thrown into a residential school with the others? As I sat with what was supposed to be my community in that park in Falkland, I wondered: Did they think I was a tagalong?

But at the same time, I also wondered why I let my whiteness get me down when it had also granted me comforts. Comforts that the rest of my family before me was not given.

Later, Aunt Lottie told us a tale of how she’d killed a grizzly bear that was taunting them. It was so large and hard to kill that the story is now recounted in one of the museums in Vancouver. She talked of losing her pigs one winter and finding them in the spring, living under the wood pile. She told stories of a kind native woman who would check up on her and the kids. This native taught them of medicinal plants and helped saved one of the boys’ lives once when he was suffering from a lung infection.

Aunt Lottie had our full attention, but my sister appeared to lean in a little closer than the rest of us, chiming in here and there with a “wow” or an “oh my god,” while my brother and I sat silently. My nephews, who were 3 and 8 at the time, played in the grass behind us.

While Lottie took a break to stuff her face with some sweets that had emerged on platters, my dad quietly interjected.

“You know, she’s been telling these stories for a long time, and some seem to have gotten a little exaggerated.” The story of the grizzly, in particular, stood out different, and I wondered how long ago she herself quit drinking.

Aunt Lottie has lost many family members to alcohol. Some are deceased. Others are still physically here, but nonetheless gone. Could you call this tradition? It appears that each native in my family has a tumultuous relationship to alcohol, whether they drink or used to drink. You could call them “bad drinkers.” I would call it a coping mechanism.

At this event, which was an organized weekend of music, dancing, camping, and food, no alcohol was allowed. My dad didn’t know this ahead of time and became bored. I couldn’t blame him—each one of us found time to escape the park grounds to the nearby pub for some Keno and a Caesar.

Aunt Lottie told us if we visited more, she could teach us all she knew on beading and other indigenous art. She ended by reminding us, “but I hate booze.” I understood why. However, it was a warm summer day during this second day of our Métis meetup. It took place in a community park with ball diamonds and an unused concession stand and I most definitely craved a cold beer.

I do long to use my hands traditionally, though, to bead and paint alongside Lottie. To feel the rich memories of the primal past fill the air. To smell the drying salmon and hide fill the space. A space which too often stinks of ache and rage. I wonder if foraging or fishing would help me feel a connection to my roots, a belonging outside of the regular sadness and despair that I share with my disconnected community.

I’ve grown up with stories of family suicide and in-your-face alcoholism. Elder and Auntie were not words in my vocabulary. As a child, these hands did find consistencies with history in the wiping of late-night tears. The kind of tears that pour out silently while tucked into bed.

One late night when I was young, I was kept awake by the muffled sounds of raised voices, heard through the walls. The stereo got louder and louder as the night carried on. The sounds began to laugh less and yell more. There was a “THUD” into what I assumed was the kitchen table and the jingle of knocked over beer cans followed. One of the visiting women yelled something and then the music quietened, and she was clearly crying. Deep muffed male voices talked over each other until they all stepped outside. Ah, finally, is the party over? My heart rate slowed with the quiet and I fell asleep, only to soon awake. My face was puffy and tear stained. As a child, you think it’s only you who falls asleep to the sound of inebriation, but this has been happening for generations. It might just be tradition.

In the mornings after these parties, the scenes were all a little different, but they typically went something like this: Those who slept over would begin to pick up empty beer cans off every flat surface around the house. Mostly from the kitchen counters, but a few would be in the windowsill, on top of the fridge, or on the carpet, leaned against the legs of the coffee table. Cousin East-West and family friend Pocha and whatever girlfriends of the month they’d brought would slowly come to life on the living room couch or the wicker chairs on the porch. I’m sure now the ladies were women of some sort of significance, but as a child it seemed there was a new name to remember with each visit. My older brother was sometimes kicking around, ignoring the waking creatures so he could reach his video games in the living room. My older sister, by this point, was no longer living at home. My twin and I often had to fend for ourselves to make it to the cereal.

This one particular morning I remember started with some other dude I didn’t recognize saying “good morning Kiddo,” leaning in, reeking of stale cigarettes, with stained teeth and dirty jeans. He had faded and blurred tattoos on his arm. Gross. Too close. I cringed and leaned back in an attempt to protect myself. He wasn’t one of the cousins. He didn’t have the matching brown skin, straight dark hair, and hazel eyes my dad had. He was just another friend they’d picked up somewhere along the way who decided to join the party. My mom, the blonde lady walking around in her sweats, was ignoring the fact that I was obviously uncomfortable.

“Morning, you hungry?” she said.

Behind that other dude’s stupid head, I saw the bright day, taunting them, the adults. It seemed like on mornings like this, the sun was always trying harder, and the sky was a rich clear blue through the large bay windows. It’s like the universe played tricks on them. A “screw you” for staying up too late and wasting a day. Our old dog, Hudson, was basking in the grass outside. His long, golden hair illuminated him. He looked relaxed, like he’d just returned from the spa. What a guy. The contrast was stark from the lingering weighty air of inside. I got a waft of Cousin East-West’s breath of rye and cola from three feet away.

Can you all leave now so I can eat my cereal? I didn’t talk much as a kid. Saying less meant I was more likely to be left alone. Mornings like this felt like an invasion. There was a garden hose splayed out beside Hudson. That would do the trick. It would help with the smell, too. I finally found myself at the kitchen table with the cereal I had to battle to get to. I was alone at the table, my pale reflection in the bay windows looking back at me.

Now, as an adult, I find myself inspecting my face in the bathroom mirror. Whose nose is this? What would I look like with brown eyes?

Still, while I may not carry the typical physical features of the indigenous, my family history displays the scars of generational trauma. It began with stolen lands, then stolen kin. Weeping mothers and fathers bent over empty beds where children once slept.

Shattered people make broken children, who grow up to pass on their pieces. The hamster keeps turning on its wheel. Most notably, alcohol ruled the many. It became common: to give into the bottle, may it be obvious or subtle.

“You’re not actually Métis, no way.” Should I show the graves of mostly men who met their fate early—my cousins and great uncles and grandfathers? Here, a picture of my grandmother with her second family. We believe her young life had proved too difficult and she cracked. Story goes, she went into some psychosis and ran off, eventually starting a new family. She had little memory of her first life but, for some reason, couldn’t shake the memory of my dad, her first born child. We heard she remained confused and continued to call her new baby by my father’s name, David, for years. A wheel of tragedy that just keeps spinning.

Here, meet my Great Aunt, unable to walk due to her weight because the scarcity of sustenance as a child makes turning away food now feel like a crime.

And here’s me after a few drinks of whiskey, my skin and neck riddled with red blotchy hives, an allergic reaction to liquor. One that likely happens to my other sister and brother as well, only it’s not easily visible on their darker skin.

Métis in its simplest form means mixed. Although my hair is bright and my skin is fair, it still comes from the mixing and melding of my ancestors. My blood and freckles speak of a new world that began. Yes, this world was of pain and confusion and fighting. But it was also of moccasin making inside a log home by the fire. This world was of putting on your Sunday best to go to church. This was of building a new culture out of survival and desire. It’s a mixing of the two very different worlds, one of the Natives and of the European immigrants to Canada. I am more than a face and ethnicity that confuses. My complexion grants me privileges, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t harsh realities there as well. I live with the contradictions of being white and Métis.

Either way, I am here due to the resilience of my ancestors, my father, my grandmother, and my great aunt. So many have fallen in ditches, in their mind, and to the bottle, but some still stand. Some with hazel eyes and some with blonde hair.

“My family is the most important thing to me. It really is,” said my Great Aunt during our visit. I believe her. Even if, according to my father, she exaggerates.

Image Source: Jess Sloss / Flickr Creative Commons