#57 – Dick Bernard: The Politics and Practice of Race

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The New York Times (NYT) “Breaking News Alert” came in at 3:03 PM ET on Friday, July 24, 2009.  The headline: “Obama Says He Regrets His Language on Gates Arrest“.
Anyone stopping by this internet space knows what the flap is about.
There is nothing so sacred to a political figure these days as “staying on message”.  President Obama could regret his final remarks at the news conference on Wednesday even if for no other reason than it deflected news from his main message on health care reform. 
Personally, I think President Obama’s statement and his anger and the defense of his friend were appropriate and right on, and I hope the statement in the NYT release that “Mr. Obama said he had talked to the arresting oficer and hoped the case could become “a teachable moment” to be used to improve relations between minorities and police officers” is a substantive statement.
I have no beef with police, generally.  They have a generally difficult job.  Having said that, police do screw up, and screw up very badly, and knee-jerk support of the police no matter what is uncalled for.  As for non-white “others” like Professor Gates,  generally they are not cut any slack.  If a mistake is made in their arrest, most often it comes to light long after the fact, if at all.  On the one hand, there seems a presumption of innocence for the police; on the other, a presumption of guilt for others, especially non-white.
This issue is considerably closer to my mind than it might otherwise be because last week I was involved in an intercultural conference whose venues included a rural ND Catholic Church basement, and a Community College on an Indian Reservation.  There were a number of times when I felt distinctly uncomfortable to be a white man, solely because of what I symbolized and represented.  (The feeling was embarrassment, and, perhaps, helplessness…what has happened, has happened.  I benefitted from being part of a privileged class, I learned its ways, and it is likely impossible to move completely past it.)
Involved in the conference were a number of people who were called “Africans”, because that’s what they were.  They were likely better educated than myself; they were there because French was their first language; they were all extraordinary people.  But when they came into the Church basement in rural North Dakota there was, among the assembled locals, well, you know:  “What do I say?”  “Who are they?”  That kind of thing.  (It evolved into a good discussion, and church lunches are always good!)
At the conference, at Turtle Mountain Community College http://www.turtle-mountain.cc.nd.us/, the focus was on intercultural relationships between French-Canadians, Metisse (in the old days, “half breeds”, “mixed blood”) and Native Americans (“Indians”, “natives”, “indigenous”), there was also tension: questions not asked; questions asked but not answered….  The steps to honest dialogue are slow and halting. 
The Metisse hero, Louis Riel, was hanged in Canada in 1885, and for years was a reviled symbol of a failed revolution; today he is a cultural icon in the same society that considered him a bitter enemy.  Apparently there is a Louis Riel Day in today’s Manitoba, much as there is a Martin Luther King Day in the U.S.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel
The “Indians” on the Turtle Mountain Reservation have a casino, which brings good and bad to their society, and they have a confidence and assertiveness which can be uncomfortable.  It happens that way when attempts are made to level playing fields.  The assertive minority can be assumed to be  “uppity”.  For the dominant culture, uppity would be called confidence; and, of course, white males have been taught that  our “place” is superior.
I am confident that as a society we are moving away from the worst of the racist aspects that have so long identified us.   But we have a long, long, long way to go.  The incident in Cambridge, and President Obama’s response highlight this.
Change will not be easy – it never is.  I remember a long ago handout at a conference.  It was called the “Change Curve”, and it said that on the way to something better than the status quo “steady state”, the road is difficult.  In fact, in the early going things seem to be getting worse than better (think routine things like quitting smoking, or losing weight….).  Persistence brings good results, but it takes persistence.
Whatever happened in Cambridge MA in a residential neighborhood has become world news. 
To me, that occasion should be greeted as an opportunity to deepen and intensify the dialogue on race matters in this country.
Update: July 31, 2009
Yesterday, July 30, the President, the Professor, the Policeman and the Vice-President met at the White House.  The same day, the woman who had called 9-11, Lucy Whalen, made a public appearance.  The recording of her initial call has been released.  She never mentioned race in her call, which was a very calm, simple reporting of only facts that she could observe.  It remains to be seen if the incident will be viewed as an opportunity for dialogue, or as an opportunity to attack, divert attention from other issues, and divide Americans.   Now there is insistence that the lady also meet with the President; and complaints that she was not invited to the men-only meeting.  These do not seem to originate with the woman, who comes across as simply a citizen who was trying to do what was right.  Stay tuned.

#43 – Dick Bernard: Fathers Day

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Happy Father’s Day to all you biological Dads, and the legions of “Dads” whose role was defined by other than physically being the parent. 
Being “father” is a complicated business that defies simple definition.  Even defining my own assorted roles over the 45 years since I first became a father in 1964 would take a lot of words: and that would only be my own descriptions from my own perspective.  Suffice to say that I am with experience in the business of trying to be “father”; all of those who have experienced me as “father” at any point along the way would have their own interpretation of whether I was a good Dad, or a lousy one, or all shades in between at one time or another in each relationship. 
 That is how the role “father”  is.  It is pretty hard to make a “sound bite” of what it is to be “Dad”.
Over the years I’ve watched a lot of men, (and women), practice the imperfect art of fatherhood, juggling it with all the assorted roles that come along with the job.  Each of us have similar stories, having lived the life, or watching someone else live it.  Each story is unique and really never ends.  In many ways we are, good and not so good, a reflection of who we watched and experienced over our lives.   
 My “poster child” for this Father’s Day 2009 is my great-grandfather, Denys-Octave Collette.  I’ve picked him because his is the earliest real photograph I have of an ancestor.  It is an old tintype that I still have.  That photograph is at the end of this piece. 
Octave, as he was apparently called, was born in rural Quebec in 1846, and when he was about 21 the entire family, parents and siblings, moved west to St. Anthony, the original white settlement at St. Anthony Falls, which a few years later became part of Minneapolis MN.  He was not his father’s first child, but he carried his father’s name for some reason.  That Dad went by Denys for some reason.
In 1868 Octave married my great-grandmother Clotilde Blondeau at the Catholic Church of St. Anthony of Padua in St. Anthony MN, only a mile or so from historic St. Anthony Falls.  Her Dad was a French-Canadian voyageur, and (almost certainly) her Mother a native American from Ontario.  The Blondeaus, already with a young family,  had somehow or other come to what is now suburban Minneapolis (present Dayton) not long after 1850, long before there were railroads or roads to this area. 
In 1878, Octave, and several of his brothers, “walked”, it is said, to homestead some ground on the Park River at Oakwood ND, a village just to the east of later-founded Grafton, and a few miles west of the Red River of the North.  The description “dirt poor” probably well describes them.
From the union of Octave and Clotilde came ten children, including my grandmother Josephine.  Several of the children died young, as was not uncommon in those times.  Their entire married life they lived on the same farm, doing their best.   
Great-Grandma died in 1916.  Great-Grandpa remarried the next year to some mysterious woman in Minneapolis.  I say “mysterious” because she apparently did not pass whatever test was administered by the family for acceptability…I know her name and when they were married and where, but she doesn’t merit even a footnote in the family annals.  Had my Dad not “spilled the beans” about her, I probably wouldn’t know she existed.
She died in the early 1920s in Minneapolis.  They had a small store (which still exists as a corner store) on Lyndale Avenue at about 36th Street in North Minneapolis.  Their home exists now only in memory, somewhere above the cars which enter Minneapolis bound I-94 at the Dowling Avenue ramp. 
Octave died a year or two after his spouse at what was called the “poor farm” in Winnipeg (doubtless there’s a story there, too).  He came home to be buried next to his first wife and two of their children who had died in infancy in the churchyard of Sacred Heart Church in Oakwood ND.  He resides there to this day, roughly a half mile from where he farmed for the first 40 years of Oakwoods existence. 
I’ll be at that still-surviving church and churchyard about noon on July 17, along with a tour group who is revisiting French-Canadian, and intercultural relationships between the whites, native Americans and Michif (“half-breeds”) at Turtle Mountain in Belcourt.  We’ll be exploring relationships….
Thanks for the memories, Great Grandpa. 

Octave Collette and Clotilde Blondeau - 1868 - Minneapolis MN

Octave Collette and Clotilde Blondeau - 1868 - Minneapolis MN


Update: July 11, 2009
Monday we head north from the twin cities area for a short vacation.  On the 15th we will be in Winnipeg to visit relatives on Octave’s side of the family; on the 17th I will be in Oakwood, at a luncheon in the church which Great-Grandpa Octave helped to found in 1881, near which he lived and farmed and raised a family for nearly 40 years, and in whose churchyard he is buried.  The next few days will be an opportunity to revisit family history.
The original post, above,  began normally enough, about a Father on Father’s Day.  But Octave’s life ended unpleasantly, with family friction and dilemmas resulting in his dying on a “poor farm” (rest home) in Winnipeg; and his grave in Oakwood un-marked for well over 50 years.
As it goes in families generally, exposure of “dirty laundry” is not always appreciated as it appears to sully the family reputation.  Such is what happened in this post, though in a very innocuous manner.  On the day this post appeared, one descendant, a cousin of mine, wrote me with a story of why the Canadian kin did not harbor their kin in his last unfortunate years.  “he had been [at his sons house] for only a few days and fell down the stairs [and they couldn’t take care of him].  [Two of the sons] wanted to have him buried with their mother in Oakwood.  [One] had a large family and could not afford to bring his Father to Oakwood.  [The other] was able to scrape together enough money to bury his dad with his mother in Oakwood.”   
But there was more to the story, most of which will never be known, but some of which was filled in by my Dad in 1981. 
Octave was part of a large family, and all of his siblings moved to the Oakwood area about 1880, and by the time of his death, there were lots of descendants and relatives in the area between Oakwood and Winnipeg.   Nowhere was there “room in the inn”.
In 1981, my father wrote about the situation: his mother, Octave’s daughter, could not take in her Dad because their house was too small and she still had three kids living at home.  Octave’s son, who had received the farm from his Dad a few years earlier, perhaps could have, but his new spouse was not especially excited about the prospect of having an aged relative she hardly knew living with them.  Hers was likely a very reasonable concern.
Many other siblings and kinfolk between Minneapolis and Winnipeg existed, and all likely had similar and perfectly logical stories.   They had not planned for Octave coming home.
I leave the last word to my own father, Henry Bernard, who was Octave’s grandson, and was a teenager when the family drama took place.  After I noticed no headstone at Octave’s grave in 1981 I asked my Dad to tell me what he knew about the story, and he did, in two letters dated June 29 and July 13, 1981.  Parts of this essay reflect what he remembered.
Two short portions of his story, in his own words,  seem pertinent to end this essay: “No marker was ever put for him [on his grave] for some reason.  There were stories about that but I don’t think it is pertinent.”  (No one has subsequently “spilled the beans” on that tantalizing morsel!)
He neatly sums up the story, thusly: “The comments reveal the reality of all families – that not all is perfect, and in fact it is unreasonable to expect perfection….”
Here’s to families, with all their warts and imperfections!  We do the best that we can do.
Update July 23, 2009:
I visited the “scene of the crime” July 16, 17 and 19, and perhaps have what will be the last words on this topic.
July 16, in rural Manitoba, I visited with Agnes, recently turned 90, who is Octave’s granddaughter, lived in the house with Octave, and was 5 years old when he took the fateful tumble which led to his hospitalization at the “Poor Farm” in Winnipeg sometime before his death in January, 1925.  Agnes remembered Octave as a man with white hair who walked the farmyard with his hands clasped behind his back.  In the directness that accompanies being 90, and reflecting the innocence that accompanied being 5, Agnes said that when she saw her Grandpa fall down the stairs, she laughed – she thought it was funny (her Mom quickly straightened her out!)  As she was recalling the event I remembered that a number of years ago my Dad and I had stayed in the same house, and we had come down the same stairs as Octave had that fateful day many years earlier.
I also remembered an incident when I was less than 10 when I, and a bunch of other boys, witnessed my own father taking a wicked tumble down a stairs.  None of us paid much attention to his agony – we were playing basketball, and that was more important.  Thankfully, Dad got up and wasn’t hurt (he was perhaps 40 at the time).  Hopefully, if he had been hurt, one of us would have had the common sense to get some help for him.  Kids often don’t tune in to these kinds of things.
The day after the meeting with Agnes, I was in the churchyard where Octave remains buried, an appropriate footstone now marking his presence.
Octave Collette R.I.P March 23,1846-January 25, 1925

Octave Collette R.I.P March 23,1846-January 25, 1925


Two days later, Sunday, July 19, several of us went to the site where Octave had died, next to the St. Boniface Cathedral in Winnipeg.    By now, I was hearing the “Poor Farm” more accurately described as a Hospital or Hospice; a caring place staffed by the Grey Nuns.  The original hospital had been replaced by an impressive new hospital on the same site as the old.  In those old days, it was not uncommon for elders to spend their last years in a hospital room.  In fact, Octave’s daughter, my grandmother, lived her last several years in such a circumstance in her North Dakota town.  She died in 1963.
Octave has long rested in peace; now I can rest as well, knowing (I think) most of the rest of the story.  I still have curiosity about Octave’s second wife and her sons: I know the unusual surname, and actually saw it on a billboard while in Canada, but whether I will actually pursue that angle or not is an unanswered question.
It has been an interesting search.

#17 – Dick Bernard: Don Bartlette, Macaroni at Midnight.

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Today was Diversity Day for Bloomington MN high schools and I went out to Jefferson High School in Bloomington to staff a table for a group in which I am active called World Citizen www.peacesites.org.
I had the written program for the day, but wasn’t certain when I was supposed to be there, so I went out early. The first two periods of the day featured an assembly talk by a “Dr. Bartlette, Speaker”. I had no idea who this person was, and the program didn’t say any more about him or his topic. It was a very nice day outside, and the choice between listening to somebody give a speech to a bunch of kids captive in a school auditorium, and enjoying some fine spring weather seemed a no-brainer.
But something drew me into the auditorium for the second talk. Still, rather than sit down, I stood in the back, much like a teacher on duty. At least I had an escape route.
Dr. Bartlette was given a very low key introduction, and walked up to the podium, a short man, wearing a short sleeved dark shirt, very plain appearing. He began to speak, quietly, and with something of a speech impediment.
He quietly told his life story, born in a small log cabin up the hill and in the woods outside of a town, born with severe facial deformities, unable to speak, growing up shunned as a native American in North Dakota, but also shunned by his own father who had expected him to be normal at birth, and he wasn’t. He was shunned by virtually everyone except, it seemed, his mother, and ultimately a wealthy woman in the town of 1700 people became something of a guardian angel. She saw something in him, or perhaps it was her sense of his worth as a human being that led her to help him thrive. His life began to turn around. In his high school years someone, perhaps the wealthy woman (I don’t recall off-hand), prevailed on the most popular high school kid to befriend him, and the youngster did, and Don blossomed, becoming class and student council president and valedictorian of his class.
He had his audience completely engaged. I was standing back there, choking back tears, choking back tears, choking back tears. And he continued to tell his story.
He continued to learn, and ultimately achieved his doctorate and now, as his business card says, he is a “Public Speaker”, worldwide. He now lives in Ohio.
Doctors went to work on his face, replacing the deformed half-nose with which he was born with a plastic nose that serves him well. Other major facial and other defects needed correction as well. He got his degrees, and one of his first jobs was as Human Rights Director for the city of Bloomington MN in the late 1970s. It was not a time, he said, where diversity was celebrated.
He finished his talk to great applause from the young people in attendance. He came back to thank them for their attentiveness to his story. He left the stage, and I thought I’d not see him again. But my 45 or so minutes in his presence profoundly impacted me.
After the talk I saw him walking a short distance away. I went up and shook his hand and thanked him for a powerful witness to possibility. We compared notes: he had graduated from his North Dakota high school the same year I did: 1958. He knew my small towns; I knew his. We will likely stay in touch. There is much for us to connect about.
I looked him up on the internet. Material about him can be found by searching Don Bartlett Macaroni at Midnight (yes, there is a story to that). A movie about him is apparently now in production.
If you ever hear that he is in your area, make it a point to stop in.
You won’t regret it.

#14 – Anne Dunn: Sweet Smoky Blues

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Note: Here’s another chapter on Sugaring near Deer River MN. Anne previously wrote on this topic at #6, published April 12, 2009, under the category, Quietings.
I’d been charged with watching the maple syrup cooker so it wouldn’t boil over. There were also three barrels of sap bubbling the steam away. Annie and Laura had just returned from emptying sap so the holding barrel was full.
After returning to camp, Annie began splitting wood while Laura renewed the fire. I was quick to see and eliminate a brief but intense flare. Using a long pole I scattered the flaming wood to cool the fire.
Earlier that day I’d noticed that the sparks clung to the shelter roof and didn’t die out as quickly as I thought they should. I also noted that the fire was swirling rather violently. But with several sugar bush veterans in camp I decided it was not going to be a problem. In fact, I told Laura that the fire had learned a new dance. She smiled and glanced into the flames but said nothing. When she went out to stack the woodpile I was alone with the fire.
Soon I smelled plastic burning. I checked my boots then stepped out to tell Annie and Laura to check their boots, too. When I re-entered the shelter I was hit by a terrible odor. Then the roof burst into flames. Burning tarpaper and melted plastic began falling into our boiling barrels. I shouted “Fire!” and we flew into action. We formed an instant bucket brigade with Annie climbing to the roof while Laura and I passed buckets of sap from the holding barrel. I went back inside and began throwing cans of sap against the inside of the roof. After many desperate minutes we got the blaze under control but there was a great loss of syrup and sap, not to mention the gaping hole in the roof.
On the following day the roof was repaired and we were back in business. The sap was still running and we were still boiling it into syrup. We finished 15 quarts that day.
On Easter Sunday we had a big dinner and egg hunt at the camp and the fire seemed quite forgotten. However, Annie was later presented with a book of spent matches. The award was given in recognition of her being the camp supervisor at the time of the fire.
It was soon decided that we would close down the camp because we had all the syrup we need for the coming year. Usually we close camp when the maple tree buds are as big as squirrel ears but this year we closed early.
We began pulling taps and bagging up catch cans. The cookers and holding barrel were still full. Some of the men said they would finish cooking the remaining sap and the resulting syrup would be given to some of our hard working helpers.
We had opened the camp with a naming ceremony, give away and feast. Now we were closing with a family dinner.
I watched the smoke drift away through the trees and listened to the voices around me but I heard no words at all. I was only aware of a certain contentment that hummed about me. Closing my eyes I felt like a fetus that had been carried into the sugar bush camp within her mother’s womb.
When I opened my eyes I looked up through the bare branches above and thanked Creator for another good gathering. I asked that I be allowed to return to the sugar bush next year and enjoy the sweet smoky blues without burning a hole in the roof.
Anne M. Dunn is an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom

#6 – Anne M. Dunn: SUGAR BUSH VOICES 2009

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UPDATE SEP 5, 2013: Other posts by Anne Dunn: May 3, 2009; Dec 13, 2012, July 18, 2013. Anne is also featured in this post about a concert at La Farm Aug. 31, 2013
Those who gather maple sap can name the signs that tell them when it’s time to tap the trees. Many will say the sap begins to rise when warm days are followed by freezing nights. This is true and this we know.
But I prefer the sign my mother waited for. She used to tell me, “When the box elders begin to weep, it’s time to tap the maples.”
So I spent some time looking up into the branches of the tall box elders that surrounded our old house (on tract 33, Cass Lake, MN). Sometimes I would listen for their weeping in the night but Mom said they wept in the warmth of the afternoon. Then one day it happened that a box elder tear fell upon my upturned face and I knew that what she said was true. The box elders were weeping.
So this year when we drove out to the sugar bush camp and parked the car at the end of the tar I was keenly aware of the privilege I had of entering this small but rich domain. Once again I was greeted by sugar bush voices.
The great white pines reach high into the April sky, poised and waiting for the wind. One after another they join their voices as the song moves from tree to tree. I raise my hands and touch the sighing breath around me before stepping off toward the camp. As my boots crush the snow beneath each step, new and unique voices rise around my feet. It’s many steps to the camp and the icy songs enrich my journey.
Everyone is out emptying catch cans so I am alone at the fire. I put a sprig of cedar on the coals for symbolic cleansing and wash my hands in the smoke. The excited voices of the flaming tongues offer their fiery poems.
Later I take a bucket and go out among the trees. I put down a bit of tobacco and than Creator for the generous gift of nourishing sap. Then I empty a can into the bucket, re-hang the can and listen as the sap drops sing against the metal. After emptying and re-hanging several cans I listen to this sweet song of life. When all the cans are emptied we return to camp and our varied voices join the chorus.
The crackling fire must be fed. So someone begins splitting wood. The boiling sap sizzles, bubbles and hisses. Of course, these lyrical voices are also blended into the sugar bush symphony.
The shouts and laughter of playful children punctuate the great song. Then a weary child is lifted into the blanket swing and the rope squeaks against the bark of the supporting trees. A grandmother sings a soft lullaby and leans into the swing to kiss the little one. The child smiles once, the eyelids flutter and close.
When the sap is boiled down to syrup it’s poured into a clean bucket, covered with a dishtowel and carried back to the road. It’s been a warm day and the snow has melted. Now the boots make sucking sounds as we follow one another through the mud. A nation of small birds flyover us and their thin raspy songs trail behind them.
I listen carefully for the voices of the ancestors whispering around us as we leave with our precious gift. They are saying that even in the midst of great and widespread change the sugar bush voices remain the same.
Postscript April 12, 2009: We pulled the taps today and called an end to the gathering of sap. We usually do that when the buds are as big as squirrel ears. But it has been an abundant flow and we have all we need. Tomorrow we return for a final boil and I will use the last bucket to make sugar.
Anne
Anne M. Dunn is an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom