One Woman's Personal Essay--A Universal Story
I read this personal essay, and was very struck by it. I would ask you to please read it all the way through, and form your own impressions, before reading my comments, and commenting yourself.
“Teacher, go back to town,” the children told me.
I was north of 53, three plane trips from Toronto. A Cessna bush plane had flown out over miles and miles of evergreens and lakes, over land so vast we seemed to not move forward at all but hang in a space somewhere outside an earthly realm.
We had landed on an airstrip on the edge of a river surrounded by wilderness, so that my arrival momentarily felt like the first day of summer camp. People milled about beyond the chain-link fence that ran along the outdoor baggage kiosk. A little girl chased a black puppy through the scattering of people. A young woman lumbered off the plane behind me and looked around with scared, doe-like eyes. In her long black tunic and white blouse, complete with open-toed sandals, she looked like a missionary set down amongst the heathens. We had arrived at a remote, fly-in-only Cree reserve in northern Manitoba.
I had been hired to teach a Grade 4 fast-track class to 12 children. The idea was to take a group of 10-year-olds who were academically at a pre-kindergarten to Grade 1 level and focus on literacy and numeracy, with the goal of pulling them up to grade level and reintegrating them into the mainstream classroom.
My first week on the job, I had my doubts. What was I doing in the middle of nowhere, trying to teach children who told me daily to go back to where I came from, children who, when they sat, sat in my chair and refused to budge? They spun and swiveled and smirked at me. They regularly refused to work, refused to sit in their seats, refused to stay in the classroom – those who did show up for school. They jumped each other and wrestled on the floor, easily offended, easily brought to anger and tears.
I stood my ground, read them stories, shared the fact that I was part Mi’kmaq from a place in Newfoundland not unlike where they were from. And somewhere along the way, between a paper-bag puppet re-enactment of Where the Wild Things Are and their first fragile attempts to read, my students learned to trust me, to trust that I was not going to run off back to town before the year was over. They no longer put up with my hugs, they sought them out. My smallest student began to tell me regularly in his quiet, halting voice, “Teacher, I wish you were my mother.”
He didn’t often come to school, and when he did he couldn’t sit still. He dressed in a long black blazer and fedora and walked with teenage attitude. His attention wandered and, when I tried to get him to stop drawing pictures and focus, he would rhythmically slam the lid of his desk every time I tried to speak.
I followed administration’s advice and kept him for detention. He stormed around the classroom overturning desks and knocking books off shelves. He hoisted himself up onto the blackboard ledge and moved in Spider-Man fashion along the length of the wall. He hurled himself back down, his fists clenched and his entire body shaking. A pronounced lisp prevented him from verbalizing his pent-up frustration.
He came to school on the last Friday before Mother’s Day. He showed up in the afternoon and missed the greeting I’d sent out over the announcement system in the morning to wish him a happy birthday. We had 15 minutes left in the class when I stopped the word games we were playing and told the children they could finish their Mother’s Day cards. He immediately pulled out the bookmark he had been colouring from his desk full of drawings.
Shortly after, he came up to where I stood near the sink and showed me the back of his card. On it he had written “To: Mom” along with his name. Below the dedication, I could make out the faint remains of the letter S.
“Teacher,” he said quietly, “how do you spell stop?”
“S-T-O-P,” I carefully enunciated and off he went to his desk.
Moments later he was back, holding up the bookmark again. “Teacher,” he said, almost a whisper, “How do you spell please?”
“Do you want me to write it lightly so you can trace it?” I asked. It was the method we regularly used to make his work manageable for him. He placed the bookmark down on the counter beside the sink.
“Write it there,” he said, pointing to where the word stop had been erased.
I lightly printed the word please and handed the bookmark back to him.
Just before dismissal, he came and stood at my desk. His hands landed heavily on the veneer and he leaned his small body in toward me. A heavy sigh escaped him. A shudder pulled across his shoulders.
“Teacher,” he said, “I don’t like it when my mother drinks.”
I looked into his eyes and whispered the only thing I could think of: “I know. I know.”
“That’s what I wanted to write on the card to my mother,” he said, “but it was too hard.”
Cree boys in a city classroom (Chris Schwarz/Canwest News Service)
Some of the things that struck me reading this personal essay include:
-how well written it is;
-it is reflective of social problems on reserves, but also in other places;
-mothers and motherhood are very difficult to critique, but some mothers, through addiction or major difficulties of whatever type, leave little ones desperate for love, structure, and life solutions;
-most child physical abuse is done by mothers;
-mothers who drink through their pregnancy can give a child "fetal alcohol syndrome", which includes small size, low IQ, neurological and behavioural problems;
-teachers and classrooms provide safe havens, and possibilities for a new self-image and better relationships;
-this 10-year-old loves his mother, and is working really hard to make a better life for them both;
-"but it was too hard" sums it all up.
Your impressions?
Cree children in a bilingual Cree-English class (Chris Schwarz/Canwest News Service)
* the opening photo accompanied the personal essay; the classroom ones are from a National Post article.
On the Canadian Cree Nation
On Canada's First Nations
On the Province of Manitoba (17% First Nations and Métis)
The essay is set in Northern Manitoba, among the Woods Cree (right-hand side of the dark green patch), or the Swampy Cree (left-hand side of the adjacent deep turquoise patch)
You know, what I do find interesting is how children react to this kind of treatment from parents, just like the teenager you mentioned. I know of siblings that grew up to be very different people despite (or because) of the abuse or maltreatment from home, which they both received equally.
Very touching essay and cute boys, there really are people who do not just work for money, but they consider their work as their mission in life and a message that must be delivered.
I wonder why alcohol consumption and addiction rate among native americans is higher that their others fellow citizens,even though they are genetically less prone to alcoholism than others, does it has anything to do with their social status and living standard or may the sense of being marginalized and neglected.
Generally alcohol and other narcotics are considered to be family ruiners, but alcohol being the cheapest and the easiest available, furthermore, its damaging effects being the most grossly underestimated among all, make it number one family destroyer.
Alchol consumption is a major factor behind many cases of child abuse,incest incidents, domestic violence, traffic accidents,divorce cases and even murders.
alcohol addiction always starts with a complimentary cup out of courtesy and ends up with addiction, no one can say for sure that one cup will not lead to addiction, may be and may be so why to run the risk and not just stay at arm `s length from it.
Many people think that children do not feel what is going around, but they do, and it breaks their hearts and leave deep deep scars in their minds to see either their mother or father or both have fallen prey to drinking, gambling and worse being engaged in illicit affairs, but I have never seen or felt more sorrow and pain in eyes than eyes of a child who knows that his mother is selling herself for money, we are not to judge, but that pain is still there in someone `s eyes and that bargain is still being done somewhere everytime.
Diana-it is interesting, and there have been numerous studies done on it. There are a number of factors: age of the child, personality, birth order, place within the family (targeted? black sheep? different? confidante? responsible by necessity?), and outside supports, like teachers, church groups and clergy (not the wacky clerics), sports coaches, redeeming talents that bring positive attention or provide places to sublimate their feelings (in art, writing, drama), etc.
The girl (age 15) I mentioned, was bright (a plus), attractive enough (a plus), confused (understandable) and an insulin dependent diabetic--which meant that adolescent despair and impulsivity were made more risky because she had the means to make herself very ill or complete a suicide (I used to think of her as "armed and dangerous to herself").
Despite what a jerk her father was being--or his new girlfriend was asking him to be--she did well with therapy, and some family counseling as well. Pediatrics is rightfully optimistic that way.
Yet, when I ask the children did it hurt? they say yes and I kiss them place of the pain and ask them if they hate their mothers they says no, when I tell them your mothers are bad they think I am joking and laugh at it and say no, I tell them but they always beat you , they say because we were bad children and would not listen to them, I can say with authority that it is the case with most children, and when they grow up they hardly remember any of this,simply because they know the difference between the disciplinary punishment and random and arbitrary toture which is never forgotten.
how many a times I am speechless and devoid of any explanation when beholding a scene of mother beating her child and he still clings to her hugs her and endear himselve to her and do not want to run away. It is not in vain that some people even in old age and beyond beating kiss her feet and get few moments of peace having their heads in her lap.
As to the use of propylene and Ethylene Glycol and solvent based glues as sustitute for alcohol it is quite a phenomenon here in rich gulf countries specially among students as yound as elementary school students, because liquors are illegal except in few place.
I think there are two issues here, the first being the mother who abuses alcohol and is neglecting her child as a result and the second (which is related, as you point out) being the treatment of the First Nations over the past three centuries, which has led to the situation today.
The article really struck me, more so because it comes so soon after the Roma expulsions in France (I knew next to nothing about the Roma before what happened, so I started reading about them). After reading this article and the stuff about the Roma, I felt a whole range of emotions from disgust to guilt.
It both cases, it's happening in modern industrialised nations, where the rest of the population is failing to help their most vulnerable co-citizens. I was going to say the governments are failing, but it's our collective duty to help, especially when we collectively (or at least our ancestors) are responsible for their plight today.
What a touching essay. My heart aches for children who have gone through so much because of their parents. And often those parents were hurt in some ways as children too. It's sad.
But those pictures are adorable. Thanks.
So now we have children growing into adults, not knowing how to survive properly in their environment and having their own children who they do NOT know how to parent. These children were taken from their parents and subjected to the same residential school experience and then again another generation. These schools were meant to get the 'Indian' out of the children and to supposedly get them into the white society and off their lands. It didn't work because the white people didn't want them in their environment and wouldn't give them jobs, etc.
The First Nations are now a beaten down people who turn to drugs and alcohol because it was given to them or to find solace. They think of themselves as dogs and don't know how to look after their children properly. In many cases the abuse suffered at the schools was passed along in the families and villages.
The Brits who instituted the schools say their intent was to 'educate' and for many it might have been their intent but in general it broke the back and hearts of the people.
That is one very simplified story of what happened here in Canada and similar stories in Australia. I am more familiar with what happened on Canada's west coast but the stories are the same across the country. Here's one link you might find interesting about the schools. Maybe Chiara can make it live.