Thanks to Reform

Page 18

Perhaps we would not have heard of Aboriginal poet Molly Starlight (Morin) if it hadn't been for the Reform party's resident Canada Council basher, Inky Mark.

"Reform takes aim at grants for 'wacky' arts projects" was the Vancouver Sun headline that changed Molly's life. She had been included on a list of $100 million in grants that Mark cited as evidence the Liberal government was throwing away the hard-earned money of taxpayers, although her share of the take came to a mere $1,500.

A Sun story printed in the Ottawa Citizen story reported "An Aboriginal poet received $1,500 to help write a small pamphlet of poetry entitled Where Did My Ass Go?, a title that came while Molly was pondering such things as "Why are we as First Nations in such a rough state? Why isn't anyone in my family a doctor or a lawyer? Why is there so much alcoholism among First Nations?. . . And where did our ass go? And why do we have flat bums?"

The Citizen's words about Molly's chapbook - a selection of her photocopied poems and short stories - woke a sleeping tiger. Starlight got much more than the proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

In British Columbia, the story began on the front page of the Sun, one of Canada's largest daily newspapers, with an oblique reference to Molly, not by name but as an unidentified "Aboriginal poet." She dashed off an angry response, which two days later became the Sun's letter of the day. It was headed: "Reform MP is missing the mark on 'red' humor."

Molly felt insulted. She'd been slagged as a free-loading Canada Council recipient and criticized on the basis of scant information. She suspected her grant was attacked not only because of the collection's unusual title, but also because she's Native since one article said "there are really no provisions put in place to keep track and make sure the money is spent to reflect Canadian values."

"I thought, 'Screw you, buddy.' I worked really hard to learn how to read and I worked even harder to learn how to write and I worked harder to get my college diploma than anything that guy has ever done in his life, I betcha," she said in an interview with Windspeaker.

Molly missed some of the sudden fame that came her way, not having seen the TV spoofs on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes and the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

"My cable was cut off. At the time all this stuff happened I was very much at a low point. I was on social assistance for a year. I'd been unemployed since I graduated with my-yeahhh!-college diploma and I was in a program I didn't want to be in. I was at a really depressed point and then to have some Reformer saying I'm unemployed and not even give my name in Parliament was really...,"she pauses to recall how she responded; 'Hey I'm somebody and I count and you can't just be bashing me. You don't even know me. I may be unemployed and I may not be doing what I want in my life, but that doesn't give you the right to start poking me around."

Nick Woolsey, who runs Vancouver's Fuzzy Hat Publishing, has posted some of Molly's readings on the web. He calls her story inspiring and says she's an example of the artists the Canada Council should be funding.

"She's opening up a lot of people to what life on the reserve is like; she's also encouraging literacy."

Canada Council's Donna Balkan said the council was concerned "because we felt the people who criticized the grant just took a look at the title of the poetry book and didn't ask or didn't investigate what this was all about and who Molly Starlight was.

Taking on Mark and the Reform party added to the stress in her life Molly says, but fighting back was what she had done all her life. It was instinctual.

"That's what I had to do as soon as I hit the school system. You either fought or you got beat up. There was no middle ground. I lost a few fights, because there was four on one mostly, or five or six. It was me against them. It was mostly non-Native where I went to school." Molly is the offspring of a Cre mother, Ethel Morin, from whom she takes her legal name, and a Sarcee father, Bruce Starlight, from whom she takes her writing name. Morin and Starlight were teenage sweethearts.

Molly attended Kindergarten at Enoch school, located west of Edmonton, but in Grade 1 became one of the first Native people to be sent to a mainstream school. There, because of her accent, her braids and her skin color, she was targeted and called a squaw.

She lived on the rez with her maternal grandparents until she was about 10 and then moved to the city to live with her mom and her step-dad. Culture shock hit her in the face then as it did in Grade 1.

"On the reserve I was a relative and just normal, and when I went to the city I became an Indian and a squaw." She had to remind herself 'I know people like me, because back home there are people like me. I make them laugh, so I'm a likable person.'

Now 35, life has not been easy for her.

"I don't think you can be Native Canadian and not have a rocky road growing up in Canada. It's impossible."

There are days, she confesses, she wishes she wasn't born an Aboriginal woman. It's the only conclusion she can reach for the poor treatment she sometimes gets even after looking for other explanations.

"I know it's because I'm an Aboriginal woman that this crap is happening to me. People are making preconceived notions of what an Aboriginal person is and trying to fit me into that peg, into that puzzle. I'm not some shy person who's scared to make eye contact with people."

She knows the stereotypes well.

"A Native woman who should be a single mom with five or six kids by now and her kids all taken away by welfare and should be having problems with alcohol. And they shouldn't be looking anybody in the eye. They should have their eyes down and they really shouldn't have an opinion and if they did have an opinion, they shouldn't actually express it, because we know all Indians are shy."

Adding to Molly's difficulties is the fact that she i dyslexic and gay.

"The First Nations' community is very closed to gay people. I can understand it from an historical reference. Because of residential schools, they equate being gay or homosexual with priests and nuns who got after their brothers and sisters."

Molly decided to go public with her sexual orientation at 22. Her mother and stepfather were living in Spain. Separated by thousands of miles and the great Atlantic ocean was a good time, Molly reasoned, to let her mother know her firstborn daughter was a lesbian.

"The only thing she could do when I told her was to call me back three times and hang up," she says, laughing at the memories. "My mom still doesn't take it well." Some of her relations do however.

Some find her partner, Susan Macrae, a non-Native writer, attractive. They give Molly thumbs-up and kind of nudge her and say 'Good snag, huh.'

Dyslexic people write or read p for q, b for d, was for saw, no for on. Spelling errors are common. It can be overcome with support and training. Letters are disordered by Molly on paper and also sometimes when she hears them. Telephone numbers are really difficult for her to absorb. She also has a difficult time remembering people's names and putting names to faces.

"It's like having a lazy Susan in your kitchen and spinning it around and grabbing something and going, 'Oh, that's not what I wanted.' It misses somehow."

Her chap-book contains 17 items, including seven poems and five short stories. From time-to-time she deliberately misspells, in part because she's a poor speller but also to give some poems double meanings or to vary the rhythm.

She says her disability played a large role in her acting up in school and being punished for it.

"I racked in more time in detention and suspension than I did actually being in school." In the early grades it was no big deal, but by the time feisty Molly got to Grade 5 being called on to read aloud was a problem. Rather than have the class see she didn't do it wel, she'd slap a classmate on the head, light a cigarette, get up and walk out of the class or swear at the teacher: 'Shut up, I don't want to read the stupid thing. You read it. It's boring.'

In her mid-teens she spent some time going to a church in Red Deer and she attended their Christian Academy for about a year and upgraded her education. Her math and reading tested at about a Grade 1 to 3 level.

"I was very embarrassed. I was quite shocked." She was 16 years old and doing some schoolwork prepared for Grade 1 students. While there she was taught social studies in Grade 10 for about two months by renowned Holocaust-denier, Jim Keegstra.

"I never got good marks and I had a detention every day from Jim Keegstra," she recalls. "He was talking trash the whole time. He didn't say anything about the Holocaust, because he had said 'I can't talk about the Holocaust, but we will talk about other aspects of history that are in question.'"

Her involvement with the church and the laying of charges against Keegstra for the teaching of his anti-Semitic views confused the youthful Molly, but also helped prompt a spiritual awakening, leading her to reconnect with her First Nation spiritual beliefs. The church, though, did teach her how to have fun without drugs and alcohol by doing things like going for a jog or riding a bike.

"And if it wasn't for the church, I'd probably be in jail. I was quite hell on wheels."

Her current life started to take shape when, refused entrance to a Victoria college, she moved to Vancouver and started knocking on the doors of Vancouver Community College and its electronics program. She scored poorly on English and math entrance exams and was further tested. She was told she definitely had a learning disability. Dyslexia was suspected, but she had to wait four to five months to find out. "That was really hard." She wavered between fear and anger, fearful that if she wasn't dyslexic- "Maybe I'm just stupid."

Admitted to the electronics program