INNISFAIL, Alta – Cree elder Maggie Loney was asked to open Innisfail Pride on June 25 with a prayer, smudge and message of hope.
She reminded her audience the COVID-19 pandemic created aloneness and quiet for the past two years. She said there was a loss in communication between all people, with many “hiding behind things’, like the web.
“Now, I think it's time for us to get to a point where we start communicating again,” said Loney, a respected Red Deer Indigenous leader. “We communicate when we have what we call a good sacred circle. And a good sacred circle is you. It all starts within your mind, in your heart; that's your sacred circle.”
In the crowd listening intently was Gordon Shaw, a 63-year-old professional planner, who volunteered at the Pride event with his wife Angela. Shaw is also a proud member of the Dakota Tipi Creek First Nation, located six kilometres southwest of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.
These are extraordinary times for Canada’s Indigenous citizens, including Shaw and Loney.
Since last year’s discovery of more than 1,100 unmarked Indigenous graves at the sites of former Catholic church-operated residential schools across Canada, including more than 200 in Kamloops, British Columbia, and as many as 751 at Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, there have been Canada-wide calls to hold the Catholic church accountable.
Pope Francis will be in Canada from July 24-29.
The pope, who apologized from the Vatican to Canada’s Indigenous people on April 1 for past abuses in Catholic residential schools, is expected to visit the Indigenous community of Maskwacis, 105 kilometres north of Innisfail, on July 25.
During his one-hour visit the pope is also visiting the former site of a residential school in the community. The pope may also repeat his April 1 apology on Canadian soil.
“I have mixed feelings about it. It's good to see he’s coming to acknowledge. But what is he actually going to do about all illegal things that happened to the Indigenous people in the past?” said Loney. “What is going to happen to the priests that were never charged? How is that going to change? And how are they going to move forward with the rest of the Indigenous population? There needs to be more than, ‘I'm sorry.”
Shaw said he felt “empty” about the pope’s apology on April 1. He said none of the words resonated with him.
He added action must come behind the pope’s words because the hurt caused by the Catholic church is still impacting generations of people, and is the cause of dysfunction for countless Indigenous families.
“The fact that my heritage was taken from me and because it was taken from my mother and my grandmother, I never got to experience the other side of my heritage,” said Shaw. “It's going to take generations before that hurt is healed.”
But 10 years ago, Shaw vigorously launched an arduous journey to reclaim his Indigenous heritage. It changed him forever.
The Lost Pearl
Shaw’s story begins with his maternal grandmother Pearl Pashe. She was an Indigenous woman born in 1897 along a trapline near Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan.
Pearl’s birth was not registered until she was nearly seven-years-old when she was living at the Dakota Tipi Creek First Nation. While there she was called The Lost Pearl.
“She was actually dressed up as a little Indian and basically paraded out to the white community as a little princess kind of thing,” said Shaw.
At around seven years of age, she was taken to the Portage la Prairie Residential School. Six weeks later Pearl was sold to work as a scullery maid for a transportation company.
She spent the rest of her childhood and her teens toiling from one company house to another. Many years later her white, Italian immigrant husband, Joseph Alterio, paid $2,000 to get Pearl out of the company; a cost it claimed for all meals, uniforms and accommodations Pearl needed for her time with the company.
With those sad years finally behind her, Pearl went to Winnipeg for more than a decade; far away from her Indigenous roots, and never returning to the Dakota Tipi Creek First Nation.
“My grandmother did not embrace her heritage. She always considered herself to be white, and not of native descent,” said Shaw, emphasizing Pearl lost her legal native status when she married Alterio.
His mother Doris Shaw also chose not to follow the Indigenous path. She raised six children on her own, including Gordon. His father died when he was just six-months-old.
The mother and children grew up poor in North Vancouver, British Columbia; never knowing or acknowledging their Indigenous heritage. They continued living as white citizens. Doris’ employment history is especially interesting.
“My mother went to work for the post office back in 1968; the first female letter carrier at that time in all of Canada,” said Shaw. “She was actually the first Indigenous female letter carrier in Canada. Although I've tried to get Canada Post to honour that by putting out a stamp for her so far, I haven't been successful.”
New beginnings
Pearl passed away in 1986 in Vancouver, never returning to her Indigenous roots. In 2003, Doris passed away. She never seized her heritage either.
At that time Gordon began to recognize there was another part of him that was lost. With help from Doris’s sister, his aunt Audrey, Gordon began the work needed to receive official native status from the federal government.
“It was completing the circle that was started by my grandmother, and recognizing it was a very large part of my heritage that I wasn't recognizing,” said Shaw. “The Lost Pearl - the fact that she lost her status because she married a white man, and my mother wasn't really brought up in terms of thinking she was a native person.
“I just felt it was fundamentally important for me to reclaim that heritage because it’s such a significant portion of my ancestry, that I descend from Chief Crazy Horse,” he said of the 19th century Lakota war leader who fought in many legendary battles, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
For many, many years Shaw painstakingly researched his ancestry and filled out all required paperwork to prove his Indigenous status to the federal government. However, getting timely approval was torturous.
“The waiting was extremely frustrating, because as far as I could see there was a direct lineage from my great-grandfather to my grandmother, to my mother, and to me. It was very clear on the documentation,” said Shaw. “It was only because for some reason, it fell into the right person in the government bureaucracy that she processed it very quickly after I had talked to her.”
In 2019, he finally received what the federal government calls a Certificate of Indian Status; an effort that took more than seven years. Almost immediately after, four out of five of his siblings did the same.
“I felt that I was a pioneer in reclaiming that heritage. The fact others were able to build on that pioneer work made it so much better for them,” said Shaw, who proudly showed the Albertan his certificate.
Sacred circle
In February of 2019, Gordon Shaw travelled with Angela to the Dakota Tipi Creek First Nation.
For the first time he would meet family members, including many cousins and nephew Eric Pashe, the chief of the reserve. It was here he was finally able to walk the same ground Pearl once trudged on.
The entire visit was a huge boost for Shaw’s longstanding quest to find and embrace the man he knew for decades was inside but never fully released.
In July the couple went back to Manitoba to attend a Sun Dance 40 kilometres west of the reserve. A Sun Dance is a sacred Indigenous ceremony that involves the community gathering together to pray for healing.
“I think I already had a very strong connection with God at that point. I think it was more trying to build on that spirituality, to foster a deeper understanding of who I was, where I came from, where my family came from, and how I could honour that in going forward in my life,” said Gordon. “And so, it took a very long time to be able to convince the government that yeah, I am a native. I am an Indigenous person.”
The second visit included a naming ceremony. Angela and Gordon proudly accepted the medicine man’s offerings of their new Indigenous names.
Angela became Four Directions Woman.
As for Gordon, his circle was reclaimed and completed.
He is Red Wolf Man.
