From One Raven's Eye

Page 7

How can you tell where Ontario secondary road 525 ends? Right where the rough, never-sanded-in-the winter part begins. This so-called road that snakes into my home reserve.

Back in the early fifties, the government asked whether we would give up land so they could put in a road. This was to get to a hydro dam site further north. Because they thought provincial game laws would then be enforced along that surrendered land, the chief and council at the time said "nah."

So the province, still suffering a case of jurisdictional diaper rash, refuses to maintain our road. Of course their traffic laws don't apply either. What looks like a 12-year-old driving towards you could easily be two six-year-olds. One on the shoulders of another who is working the gas and brake pedals.

Even so, with other places who give up real estate to the province, that shaking vehicle sensation usually means you've arrived on reserved-for-treaty-Indians ground.

As you drive along the White Dog version of this Aboriginal rights institution, you'll see swamps and hills of scrub timber. The lumber and pulp size stuff has been clear cut a long time ago. Just when you figure your car is going to shake apart or the vibration has shaken loose some personal internal part, you pull over a hill and there it is, my bushy home address.

Down the first short stretch, to your right, are the sewage lagoons. These are the size of football fields. The kids used to play hockey on them until the health people made them stop.

Anyway, what these ponds mean is now most people have running water in their places. Some even have showers, bathtubs and inside toilets. However, since a person still has to pay for these extras themselves, it is still a common sight to see a sleepy, tangle-haired person wobbling off to the little shack in the back.

The first house you pass on the left is Ronnie's place. It's one of those new CMHC units, not one of those Indian Affairs specials that still mostly dot the roadside.

Ronnie has added a sun deck. He keeps a neat yard. This house would not look out of place in any typical city suburb.

The next couple of houses are the kind reporters take pictures of when they show up to do another helpful expose on how poor Indians really are. Plastic covers broken windows. There's a scrawny dog. You can't tell with that kind whether it's their throats or stomachs growling half the time. Dark-eyed, round-faced kids run around in the cold with their coats half open. A rusty car or a mud-smeared half ton are parked in some of the driveways.

Then there is the store. All the windows are boarded up. Unless they stay open 24 hours a day, or put in a minefield and guard dogs, the place will keep getting broken into every now and then.

The school, unless you're involved in it on a daily basis, sure looks square and quiet from the outside. In all these years, Whitedog has had four kids make it through high school. The encouraging part is three of them have done it in the last couple of years. Two band members teach in the he school itself. We are one of only a few bands in the area who have taken over local control of our education. Still, attendance, discipline and general lack of parent and community support are ongoing problems.

Between the school and the store is the band office. What is left of the paint on it is blue. It is in places such as these that the idea of governing ourselves will happen or not. This is where that idea must become action. Not conference action, not speech making action, but tough, day-after-day, show-up-and-get-the-work-done action. If not, then our decisions and our pride will always drive up to the steps of such buildings in government cars carrying briefcases.

On some days you see the kids sniffing gas, the violence and the heavy drinking. On other days you see in that where six years ago there were two foster homes on the whole reserve, there are now over 30 of them.

Our rez is in many ways fairly typical. t's not so bad teachers flee the place in the face of twentieth century Indian attacks. It isn't Alkali Lake where the people are turning themselves and their community around. Islington Band 29, White Dog is somewhere between 40 years ago when we make an independent living for ourselves and sometime

up ahead when we can find a way to do so once again.

Some people, even those from amongst us, figure that getting rid of reserves would make us all better off somehow. Let's take a look at the idea and see what is actually being said by those who propose such a thing.

For now, as you drive away from the place you have a decision to make. One of two choices on how to drive that washboard, denture-rattling road. Some people drive like crazy over it. Their thinking is to sort of skip over the surface like a rock. Other people choose to go slow and try to bob along the wavy surface like a cork.

Well that's it for this week. I hope that no matter how you choose to cruise it, we can still get together at a spot similar to this one next week.