Often
I am given the book on the year’s Massey
Lectures. For 2022 I got the book by Tomson
Highway, Laughing with Trickster: On Sex
Death and Accordions, Anansi Press, 2022.
The title is colourful and so is the book. The
Cree author, playwright and musician, joins the
growing number of Indigenous people that I am
reading.
I have found the books by indigenous authors
impressive and informative. I found Thomas
King’s The Inconvenient Indian, Anchor
Canada, 2013, an entertaining account of the
history of Indigenous people in North America.
Journalist Tanya Talaga’s book Seven Fallen
Feathers, Anansi, 2017, gave an
understated but detailed account of suspicious
deaths of young indigenous high school students
who had come to Thunder Bay, Ontario from
reservations for education. Her restraint begged
questions and the book was popular. Since the
book, the lack of serious investigations and the
inappropriate actions of the police force have
led to provincial government interventions
towards a fair and functioning police force for
Thunder Bay.
Most recently I read the book by Jody
Wilson-Raybould, Indian in the Cabinet:
Speaking Truth to Power, Harper Collins,
2021. This book by Canada’s first indigenous
Justice Minister and Attorney General gives an
account of the experience in federal government
of a person of integrity who was more interested
in doing her job well than in responding to
pressures from the prime minister and his
office. Indeed, her insider account underscores
a problem with the role of the prime minister’s
office that had been flagged in my earlier
reading. See Rethinking Democracy, September
2019.
I had seen the Stratford Festival production of
Tomson Highway’s play The Rez Sisters in
an open-air tent in 2022. I enjoyed the play and
its trickster character so I approached the
Massey Lecture book Laughing with Trickster with
anticipation. I found the book and its
autobiographical information about Thomson
Highway interesting and written with what one
reviewer called “his signature irreverence”. The
insights are on language, creation, humour, sex
and gender, and on death, forming the 5 chapters
of the book. They are threaded with indigenous
perspectives.
On Language begins in Cree. He was
born in the Far North but just south of Yukon,
Northwest and Nunavut, in the northwest corner
of Manitoba amongst a small group of northern
Cree speakers in Dene territory, as well as Dene
speakers. At age 7, he went far south for
schooling that took 9 years, but with returns to
his family and home. His father was part of a
group of Cree-speakers including Metis who had
moved into the sub arctic to transport goods
north and furs south for the Hudson’s Bay
Company. They learned several languages and fell
in love with the beauty of the drainage system
of lakes and rivers. Eventually this group also
entered the full arctic, encountered and learned
the Inuit language. His family’s home was a
cabin in Brochet, but his dad, caribou hunter
and dog sled racer who spoke four of these
languages, could leave home for the wilderness
for days to weeks.
A theory of the origin of language is people
making sounds and gestures to animals. However,
languages now are tangled up with the mythology
to which they gave birth and to which we owe
today’s form of the myths. Theology is discourse
about gods and cosmology a discourse about the
universe. Mythology is about both gods and
universe. Three big mythologies merge in North
America – Christian, Greek/Roman and North
American indigenous mythology. English, French
and other languages allow an understanding of
Christian mythology. The written literature of
the Greeks and Romans give access to that
mythology. Unfortunately, almost all of the some
hundred indigenous languages were unwritten.
Although some have died, some are very much
alive. Yet most Canadians have never heard Cree
spoken in a conversation and are unaware of Cree
words in common use: for example, Saskatoon,
Manitoba, Winnipeg, Chicoutimi, Quebec and
Ottawa. And some ask what is Dene, never aware
that the indigenous people they lived amongst
spoke two different languages. Cree and Dene
were two peoples speaking Cree or Dene.
Until recently, Canada was home to a hundred
indigenous languages. However, following the
impact of TV and Internet, there are now 70 and
they are threatened. Cree is the most used with
90,000 speakers. There are four main families of
languages. Athapaskan includes Dene in the
central Canadian north but also Apache in the
southwestern US. Iroquois languages span
southern Ontario and Quebec including Mohawk and
the former Huron now called Wendat, as well as
Cherokee in the US Carolinas. Algonquian is the
largest family and it includes Algonquin spoken
in northeastern Quebec and northwestern Ontario.
Cree is an Algonquinian language that is spoken
in the lion’s share of Canada. And then come
dialects. Cree has four principal ones.
Thanks to the late arrival of electricity where
he lived, Tomson Highway spoke Cree until past
21 years old. He still speaks, writes and
performs in it. This book was written in Cree.
The loss of language took away something else:
laughter. For Cree is the funniest language
because a laughing deity controls the tongue,
blood flow, breathing and the brain’s dances and
mind’s sizzles. The half human half spider deity
Iktomi takes on various names in various tribes
- Raven on the west coast and Trickster in
English. When the Cree language left so did half
the laughter. Each language has a purpose. Like
birdsong, languages make our planet a beautiful
and fascinating place to live.
On Creation begins with a
celebration and libations in Toronto. The half
God half human with a big sense of humour lives
in the indigenous, making parties unruly. The
event had been fuelled by supplies of magical
tobacco – marijuana - by “Billy”. There was a
surprise police arrival and Billy pried open the
window and jumped out to his death. That was at
least the impression of those present. And the
story got embellished – the 13th floor or the
30th floor? The Cree “myth” word is halfway
between “truth” and “lie” words.
Tomson Highway bumped into Billy alive and well
some 3 years later. The floor had been the 2nd.
He had just jumped to the ground with a bruise
or two and limped away to the nearest bar. The
myth included hanging by finger-nails and a huge
drop. In this realm of our collective dream
world, men sprout wings and strange creatures
roam: half man half horse; half woman half fish.
How did this universe come to be? What
god-angel combination was responsible?
Christianity is the youngest mythology, coming
in the 1st century CE, after classical Greek and
Roman, and took hold in a new world order in the
first 5 centuries of that millennium. First,
Christianity is monotheistic – one god.
Secondly, the god is male and heterosexual
without a speck of feminine attribute. Third, he
is perfect, flawless, omniscient, omnipresent
and omni-everything – like Santa Claus. Fourth,
he is depicted by artists as a scowling old man
with an absorbent cotton beard, rearing from a
swirl of angry clouds draped in something like a
bedsheet, menacing with a golden thunderbolt.
Fifth, time is the essence. Space, that is the
planet, air, water, soil vegetation and all that
sustains us is of little consequence. Sixth,
time is governed by a straight line. From a
soupy mass of matter emerged a super-angel – a
super “Billy” – who gave birth by himself, with
no need of a collaborative female, to the
universe and earth with its soil rocks water and
millions of molecules without the pleasure of a
sexual act, without any period of pregnancy.
Poof – it all arrived in 6 days. A straight
line: day 1 light, day 2 atmosphere and so on
until on day 6 man was made from a ball of mud
and woman from his rib bone.
The narrative goes on. The man could rule nature
as he pleased. Midpoint along the straight line
came the god’s only son: half human, half divine
and male. The son came to a specific part of
earth to show humans truth, love and humble
forgiveness – not entirely successful given
events in that place today. At the end of the
straight line of time comes Armageddon: the
destruction of the universe by this same angel,
this same god bringing the end of time and the
end of earth. Tomson Highway says this picture
was inspired by Vine Deloria Jr.’s book God is
Red. Last, this male god gave us the earth but
then snatched it back. The narrative of the
eviction from a garden says it was because a
woman engaged in an act of pleasure – eating an
apple. The story exists in only 3 mythologies:
Christian, Judaic and Islamic - the 3 biggest
monotheistic mythologies. The umbilical cord
with earth is cut. Time is our curse. We don’t
live in the here and now. We don’t belong here.
We float in a state of pure theory – chronology
– as the arrow of time hurtles along its line to
Armageddon.
The second mythology, the ancient Greek, goes
back to the 7th century BCE. It bloomed faster
and died sooner than Christianity. Humanity and
the universe were created by a multitude of gods
and goddesses including sky, earth, Muses,
Fates, Graces and more. A Mother Earth goddess,
Gaia, became known as Hera who mated with Father
Sky god, Zeus, leading to a “horrible
numerosity” of gods – Mars for war, Artemis the
huntress, etc. None is perfect – they all have
emotions, frailties and flaws like the flesh and
blood humans. As Rome gained ascendancy, it
adopted these gods, giving them Roman names so
that Zeus became Jupiter for example. Eventually
Christianity shifted Jupiter into Jehovah who
became Yahweh the male god addressed today “Our
Father …” The other gods and goddesses,
“pleasure principles” all, were demoted to
humans – “saints” like Cecilia the muse of
music, and compassionate Saint Veronica. This
was the god who arrived in North America.
In Greek mythology, space – the land, air and
water – is more important than time. Nature came
to fruition and flourished as one great act of
pleasure and spectacular beauty. There is no
linear time line as in Christianity. Nor is this
a circle. It is an arc or broken circle because
it ended with the arrival of the next mythology.
And so it was also for Christianity. Cathedrals
speak of a time of great significance. The faith
held then is palpable in buildings that still
create a sense of awe. Now they are deserted.
The magnificent Christmas mass of Tomson
Highway’s childhood has become an old white man
with a beard and pot belly flying around on a
sled pulled by reindeer. The palm leaves and
foot washing of Easter have become a rabbit
hiding chocolate eggs for children. Myths can be
compared. The location of Paradise, or the
Garden of Eden, is unknown but the Greek Arcadia
is known. It is a pleasant sun-kissed part of
the peninsula south of Athens. It was not a
garden to be kicked out of but a gift from a
god, Mother Earth. Arcadia had Pan in it – half
man, half goat, and sexually aroused to inspire
“the panic of pleasure”. Highway recalls the
myth of original sin and the hope of a future in
paradise from his childhood teachers and states:
“This space, our Earth, is now. It is heaven; it
is hell. It’s what you make it while you’re
here.”
The third mythology on this continent is
Indigenous mythology and it is pantheistic – god
has not left nature to become humanized but is
in everything. This spirit is not a ghost but an
energy that flashes through all life like the
thunderbolt of Zeus. The Cree consensus is that
the universe and its contents came from a female
force Omaa-maa, related to words for mother. The
girl was endlessly sexual, sensual and fertile.
She was a creature of pleasure and of flesh who
gave birth to wondrous and beautiful things –
including the outrageous clown, Trickster in
English, that is half human half god. She gave
birth to men as an afterthought. Like the Greek
Hera, she is beautiful and grand, giving us
flowers and trees and lakes and loons. But she
can also present as a jealous angry force from
hell in earthquakes, hurricanes and famines. And
indigenous friends have died when cruel winds
arose suddenly as they were crossing a lake in
their canoe.
Time in this mythology is not a straight line
but a circle or womb surrounding space, land,
ocean, air and the vast expanse of sunlight, and
of lakes, forests and wildlife unlimited in
Canada, and a garden of pleasure, joy and beauty
unlimited and most wondrous. In this circle is
no end, and those who lived in ages before live
on here with those of today. Mythology lies
between science and religion to describe the
dream world of horses with wings, Pan or the
Cree Trickster, or where snakes talk to women
not men.
On Humour has readers trying to
say Cree words in front of a mirror to show that
the language forces contortions of the face tied
to humour. Moreover, the language is open and
blunt in its use of words and metaphors that
play around sexual objects like tits or having
an orgasm. All this is to show that the language
lends itself easily to course ribald humour. And
so: “Welcome to pleasure, welcome to fun.
Welcome to Trickster and his sense of humour.”
According to the Cree, the world came about from
the efforts of a female force of energy
Oomaa-maa which means Great Mother, known in
English as Mother Earth. She gave birth to
Thunderbird to protect other creatures from the
sea-serpent Kinee-pick. The second creature born
was a frog Oma-ka-ki with sorcerer’s powers to
protect from insects. The third creature was
Weesaa-geechaak known in English as Trickster
who can change shape to save himself from
danger. He is an adventurer who likes to make
mischief and play tricks on people. He is to be
offered tobacco, one of the four sacred herbs,
if one meets him. The fourth child was
Ma-he-gan, wolf, who travels with Trickster.
Trickster makes himself into a little person and
rides on wolf’s hairy back. These magic little
people exist for Ojibway – not unlike the Irish
leprechaun. Next came Amisk the beaver. Fish,
rocks, grass, trees and other animals eventually
emerged from the womb of Mother Earth. Unlike
the immortal line “let there be light”, here the
clown Trickster says “let there be laughter”.
One or Trickster’s stories is about the great
flood, the canoe with a birds nest in it to keep
animals warm, and animals like beaver diving to
try to find mud so as to rebuild the land.
Trickster rebuilt the earth. Another story is
about the animals deciding the number of moons
of winter. Trickster chose the frog’s suggestion
of the number of frog’s toes – 5 moons –
November to March. Another is the story of the
quest of Nanabosho to kill the Great Chief of
all Fish for oil for his grandmother’s hair. He
ends up being eaten – canoe and all. He beat the
heart of the fish, killing it. Then comes
fighting his way out with help from a squirrel
and seagull.
The trickster is funny and Tomson Highway notes
that while Jesus has a compelling mythological
story he is not funny. The Greek-Roman world has
Hermes the messenger, Dionysus the god of wine,
and Pan the resident of the garden of pleasure.
All peoples have their Trickster – the lords of
misrule, the Pierrot and Harlequin. The Lakota
Nation has Iktoma. A tale of Iktoma getting a
ride on a hawk follows. When he makes fun of the
hawk, it turns over, he falls off and drops into
a hollow tree. Then it rains hard causing
swelling of the tree. Fearing being crushed he
prays, humbles himself and his smaller self can
get out of the tree.
In the polytheistic and monotheistic
“superstructures” there are two levels: divinity
and humanity. In the pantheistic there is a
third level: nature. In each of these how one
level mixes with the other is important. It can
be sex. For example, Zeus sleeps with someone.
But it can be visions or illusions or day or
night dreams. Through these encounters life on
Earth is imbued with magic. And the result of
sexual encounter with Zeus gives rise to the
heroes such as Hercules. But few heroes are
humorous like Trickster.
A story is told of Trickster trying to get food
from two coyotes who have a bird. The story was
used by Tomson Highway as a play for school
children. The children were in fits of laughter
as Trickster vigorously scratches for a box of
food supposedly hidden for him between two V
shaped trees that the coyotes were swaying with
ropes while moaning about Trickster’s vigour. In
the end, the coyotes let go of the ropes and
Trickster is trapped. Unfortunately, teachers
noticed that the two “sticks” looked like a
woman’s legs so the play, although
unintentionally, could be seen as lewd. The rest
of the school tour was banned!
Tomson Highway tells of his early play of 1984
The Sage the Dancer and the Fool adapted from
James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce’s story is one day
in the life of a man in Dublin. The Highway play
is a day of the life of an indigenous man in
Toronto that has 3 characters, each playing one
titular person: Sage his intellect; dancer his
spirit; and Fool his body. It was an attempt to
blend the 3 mythologies. The 1970s were a time
of dramatic change for the indigenous. Before
1960, the indigenous were mostly rural and on
reserves in the west and north. When they got
the vote in 1960 they got to leave the reserves
and seek employment, advanced education, and
liberty -- in general in urban centres. And they
had to make adjustments. That’s what the 1974
play was about. By the end Dancer, the spirit,
was dancing a ballet on the tallest skyscraper
in Canada on Bay Street, Toronto. And the spirit
of the Native Trickster was in an urban
environment for the first time – the collective
spirit of the native people had made a
transition from forest dweller to urban
phenomenon. So did Trickster theatre, art and
literature finally emerge, just.
The violence of the marriage between sky god
Zeus and the earth goddess Hera was nothing
compared with the meeting of the Christian God
and Mother Earth. He almost killed her. The
culture could have disappeared, and Trickster.
But it didn’t. It hung on by one spark that
indigenous artists stoked to life. And so – the
Trickster stories. They came from the mists of
time when magic was alive, witchcraft flourished
and magicians thrived. Humans were
shape-shifters. The indigenous lived in the
Boreal forests alive with magic that breathed
and talked. The relationship between humans,
animals and nature was real and intense. When
the first generation of Native people emerged
from these forests with their university degrees
and started picking up the pieces of a shattered
culture, the children’s stories, the Trickster
stories, that came from the farthest reaches of
their collective racial memory, were all they
had to build with. And so they do.
The chapter ends with a delightful tale of
Trickster’s role in the coming to being of the
“night sun” or moon.
On Sex and Gender begins with a
tale of the first two people in the world – old
man Coyote and Coyote women. They live on
opposite sides of the world. By chance they met.
They are alike but each has a bag. They ask each
other what’s in them. The man’s contains a
penis, the woman’s a vagina. They agree to put
them out of the way between their legs. It looks
to the woman as if one part might fit in the
other. It occurs to the woman that this might be
a way of making more humans. There is discussion
about what men do and women do.
The chapter turns to two real young people
living at opposite ends of Brochet who were very
much in love. They walked and talked about
birds, animals, the past and present, about life
and love and children and grandchildren. A long
field of tall grasses grew in summer enjoyed by
children and for love making. The Dene girls
were susceptible to this by Cree boys. The young
woman in the story was part Dene and the young
man Cree. Very much in love, they visited the
field. She got pregnant. Brochet was a Catholic
village and she had no choice but to marry at
age 16 whether asked or not or agreeing
willingly or not. Trouble began before the man
was 20 when he announced he had given his son a
mark of Satan – as the church taught children
out of wedlock had a mark of Satan. With their
3rd child he told her she was stupid; with their
5th she was ugly; and by their 10th fights broke
out. With bruised eyes and wearing sunglasses in
church she had birthed 15 children and heard the
priest condemn contraception. One summer she
burst in on her aging father, her head and face
badly beaten by firewood. Her mother vomited in
the toilet at the sight. By midnight, her
father, the world’s most peaceable man, had
knocked out and almost killed the drunken man
that had done it. She moved in with her parents
bringing her 15 children. “Divorce and
separation is not allowed by the church”
thundered the priest.
There follows a second very similar tale, then a
third. The third is particularly cruel. The
women’s special treasure – a sewing machine on
which her life depended was taken by her husband
and dropped out of her depth into the lake at
the beginning of winter. She had used her
priceless possession to make her children’s
clothes, her clothes and her husband’s clothes.
She chased after it and got a canoe to try to
retrieve it. Her husband followed, scrambled
into the vessel and pushed her into the water
and beat her knuckles with a canoe paddle as she
grabbed for the side. People can’t swim on
account of the always–cold water. The woman
almost drowned but somehow did not. Throughout
winter the neighbour who saw this act struggled
onto the winter ice to try to make a hole to
retrieve that priceless possession in a marriage
from which there was no exit.
Trickster is neither man nor woman and can be
either or a coyote or a spider or a rock. In the
opening story that comes from the Blackfoot, she
is neither. But he is funny. With the English
language the angel with wings and the sword of
flame appears and the story is not funny. Tomson
Highway finds English brilliant and he loves it.
He regards it as a privilege to have learned it
and to use it. And he loves “Mooney-ass”
settlers and sleeps with one. He speaks 4
settler languages and can write plays, books,
and the lyrics of songs in English as well as
write music. English is good to make money, but
sex is terrifying to the English language. To
mention parts of the body below the neck is to
put one’s foot in the banned “garden”. To get
over that requires another language or having
sex for relaxation. If you’re not allowed to go
to the garden of beauty that is your body, if
you can’t touch the “tree” without guilt, you
get sick. This is what happens when a religion
dictates no sex for its priests.
Tomson Highway returns to his comparison of
myths, but needs a second European language.
French is close to Latin and so it is close to
polytheism. It allows one to get below the neck
to at least the stomach and has one foot on the
edge of the garden of pleasure. Romance
languages are Catholic, allowing sin on six
nights especially with Dionysus on Saturday.
They can worship Zeus King of the Sky on Sunday
mornings with carnal excesses forgiven.
Protestant languages are without confession and
forgiveness and are refused entry to the garden
by the angel with the sword 7 days a week. So
English stops at the neck but French can sneak
in to engage in acts of pleasure, if laced with
guilt, like eating, drinking and making love.
English is the language of the head, French that
of the heart and stomach and Cree is that of the
body.
Cree is the language for even the ridiculous
clown-like parts of the body. There follows the
story of a funeral of a friend of Tomson Highway
on the rez on Manitoulin Island. The funeral is
followed by a communal meal of beaver that
someone had stuffed with nuts, “wink, wink”, and
roasted. The large group moved around the table
and - cringe in English, laugh in Cree – the
women begin discussing what “they” say about
beaver: “the young is tender and juicy”, “old
beaver is tough and rubbery”. And this discourse
across generations of women grows heated and the
volume rises. The finale comes from an older
woman who states with authority “old beaver may
be tough and rubbery but it’s better than young
beaver, trust me Mildred, I know whereof I
speak”. Every syllable in the discussion had the
clown-like Trickster in it. The laughter was
long and ringing – and this was a funeral!
The three mythologies differ in how they
approach gender. Montheistic myths divide the
universe into two. English has he and she but
nouns mostly do not have gender and are referred
to as “it”. French divides nouns into masculine
or feminine with positive things like love,
laughter and happiness “le” and negative like
sadness, pain and death “la” and even a man can
be a victim “la victime” or criminal “une
criminelle”. Going further, the language of
monotheistic mythology puts the genders in a
line with the male God, on top, then man, male,
then woman, female, and finally nature, neutral
– no gender. Both genders have power over
nature. Moreover there is no room for anything
else. In the polytheistic myth, there is a
more democratic semi-circle system with Sky
Father Zeus and Earth Mother Hera chairing and a
more or less even number of male and female
gods. Homosexuality was practiced openly, see
Plato’s Symposium. So Monotheism has two
genders, polytheism has three.
Pantheism has any number of genders around a
table. There is Mother Earth giving birth on one
side, and heterosexual man hunting and providing
on the other. But there are also “Two Spirits”
people on both sides of the table who have the
souls of both genders at the same time. The
two-spirit people tend to be the shamans or
priests, or the artists or visionaries of the
community. Or they take care of the many
children – they make good babysitters, great
aunts or uncles and they take care of the aged.
It transpires that Tomson Highway and his
partner cared for older people in the town in
the south of France where they spent 14 winters
together. Two-spirit people act as a buffer
between the warring heterosexual males and
females that make for a world that is lethally
dangerous for gays and women. Tomson Highway’s
life has been threatened three times.
The circle of pantheism has animate and
inanimate as well as gender. Animate things
include ana isk’wao (woman), ana seeti (tree)
and ana asini (rock). Killing makes these
inanimate. Man and woman become anima meeyaow
(corpse). Cow becomes anima weeyaas (meat). Most
parts of the human body have no soul. Exceptions
are the womb and the vagina. That’s where the
seed of the idea of matriarchy lies in the
language. There is one more human organ that has
a soul, but: “It is uncomfortable to explain in
English.”
On Death begins with a memory of a
priest and childhood catechism teacher at Guy
Hill Indian Residential School. God is up there
with his white beard and thunderbolt and heaven
teems with angels – winged men, messengers, and
others. In monotheism when a person comes to the
end of the straight line the spirit leaves the
body and floats like a vapour. What then? A
deity called God the Father decides: heaven,
hell or purgatory.
In heaven everything is white: people wear
white; everyone is white; no one is black or
brown or red. The angels all pluck one of the
little stringed instruments that the priest
demonstrates but in 4/4 time – not 3/4 time – as
they sing hymns of glory love and praise to
Gitche Manitou as the priest calls their
K’si-mantii. Tomson Highway later learns that
smoking, drinking and sex are forbidden in
heaven. Catholic priests, bishops and popes are
allowed in, and there is happiness eternal
kneeling eternally at the right of this
God-Father. Tomson’s father played the
accordion. Could he go? No. Tomson vows to help
his father keep the accordion.
The second option for the recently diseased is
purgatory – something denied by protestants and
disputed among Roman Catholics. The few with
perfect lives go to heaven. Those who hadn’t
been bad enough to warrant the other place –
hell – would go to a sort of way-station to
cleanse, that is purge, whatever the sins were.
The length of time there depended on the number
and severity of sins. One could undergo the
penitence and be forgiven eventually. Penance
could be a string of Hail Marys for as long as a
day recited on your knees. But the priest of his
childhood said purgatory is a “soul place” not a
real place. For a real place you need heaven or
hell. But first “limbo”. However, limbo was
cancelled by Pope Benedict leaving only hell.
If you killed your husband or shot 20 people
your spirit would be extracted by another winged
man, this time one in red and not white, a
devil. And you would be taken screaming down a
tunnel to a cave called hell. The priest said
the devils were naked with snake-like tails that
writhe and coil with an arrow at the tip plus
they had the horns and hooves of a goat – rather
like Pan, the Greek god of pleasure. The devils
were once angels but became followers of Satan,
an angel who dared to question god’s peerless
intelligence and as a result Satan and his
angels were cast out of heaven and down below
earth into a cavern that is a raging noxious
inferno with flame after flame. Lucifer sits at
the centre with a trident that Tomson thinks
came from Poseidon, Greek god of the sea. Here
hymns are not 4/4 time but all the other rhythms
and there are accordions playing the joyful
dance rhythms. No other mythology has an uglier
more twisted more perverted vision of the
afterlife: it is one designed to terrify.
The Greeks believed the psyche or spirit left
the body like a puff of wind. The body was
prepared for burial according to rituals –
laying out the body for visits and mourning, a
ritual procession to the cemetery and then
interment of the body or cremated remains.
Immortality came from the remembering of the
dead by the living – hence elaborate monuments.
In this polytheistic system there is only one
destination – Hades, deep in the earth. It is a
place where time disappears and the dead fall
into a kind of non-being. There is no
punishment, no suffering and no reward. But it
is not a happy place. In this polytheistic world
the soul of the dead is met by a god, Hermes,
and taken to the banks of the river Styx. There
the soul must pay the ferryman Charon the coin
that relatives had put under his/her tongue so
Charon would take her across to Hades. At the
gate she/he must bypass the guardian 3-headed
dog Cerberus. There he/she will remain in
suspended animation for eternity. The god Hermes
comes closest to the Trickster that anchors
indigenous mythology.
The ever-curious Trickster wanted to see the
land of the dead and asked his friend Eagle to
go with him. Trickster walked and ran but on
occasion asked Eagle to carry him. They
travelled over hills and along valleys.
Eventually they came to an island where they
heard people singing – they found the dead,
heard them sing and saw them dance. They
recognized ancestors who had died many
generations ago. They wanted to stay but
something told them they were not allowed, that
they would have to leave by daybreak. With
daybreak came a mist that swallowed dancer after
dancer and Trickster and Eagle returned to the
land of the living weeping.
In the pantheistic system a person who dies
doesn’t go up or down or anywhere. Heaven
and Hell and Hades are right here on this earth
in the middle of the circle that is our garden.
On death, the physical person of the self
becomes inanimate like the earth which is itself
inanimate, and over time becomes one with it.
Over time parts become converted into bits of
plants, insects and animals, even other human
beings. The circle of life and death and rebirth
goes on. If the line of God comes to an end at a
point, the matriarchal circle doesn’t. The
bodies of the dead come back in the leaf
shuddering on the maple tree in the garden or
the breath you take. Death is not an ending but
a passage.
Tomson Highway paints a paradise as he describes
life in the barren lands around his native
Brochet with their lakes and forests and eskers
left by glaciers retreating to the arctic at the
end of the last ice age. Then he turns to the
indigenous reality and suggests that to take
indigenous people down from that paradise land
and plunk them down in an urban setting invites
social breakdown on a massive scale – alcohol
abuse, cheap drugs, extreme poverty, all-out
confusion and suicide. The reasons are legion:
germ warfare and smallpox blankets; theft of the
most beautiful, richest parts of the land;
confinement to “reserves”; Catholic church
conversion saying worshipping nature was
tantamount to devil worship; scaring children
with tales of a hell that doesn’t exist. What if
this message of a pantheistic world that I heard
had been listened to and been respected? And
what if it’s too late now?
When Highway was growing up in northern Manitoba
in the 1950s there were few forest fires.
Emergency evacuation of entire communities by
planes with platoons was unknown. Now the North
is besieged by fire after fire and evacuations
of entire villages – entire towns – are par for
the course. Lytton in BC was burned to the
ground. The fires get closer to major urban
areas. Then there are floods. And the summers
get hotter.
Tomson and his partner live in the Aylmer sector
of Gatineau in Quebec, across the river from
Ottawa, in a community called Wychwood, a
riverside quarter cut off by a major highway
that was formerly cottage country for Ottawa.
The river is close and widens in the area to a
lake with small rock-lined beaches where
thoughtful members of the largely retired
community have left Adirondack chairs for people
to rest in and listen to the river flowing.
Their grandchildren who live nearby love to play
by the river when they come over. In winter
there are homemade rinks on the river ice. And
the cool northern wind fills the lungs and the
spirit soars. But the river has its moods.
Wychwood has been flooded many times. It is only
a matter of time before the rivers go haywire
and kill cities. Or if they don’t, the fires
will. Thomson sits in an Adirondack chair and
looks at his grandchildren. They should be all
right. But will their children? Will we let the
patriarchal God of monotheism continue
destroying this planet or will we let Mother
Earth of indigenous pantheism preserve it for
their grandchildren with her womb and her never
ending circle?
The book ends with a moving account of the death
of his younger brother Rene Highway of aids age
35 with Tomson at his side. Tomson has a dream
of the two of them canoeing together as the di
in childhood to the island with singing
ancestors and being pushed off alone as dawn
comes. He still lives with him. He brings joy.
His brothers last words asked him to be joyful
and tries to be twice as joyful. Being busy
being joyful for the two of them leaves no time
for tears.