CPT Aboriginal Justice Delegation Day 9: Breakfast

16 Aug 2014

Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!

Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.

##Pancake Breakfast

raising funds for addiction related groups alcoholism (genetic) is one of the biggest threats to physical and cultural health.

Yesterday we visited the general store, and spent a good deal of time in conversation with its owner, JB. said the skills of how to live off the land haven’t been taught to the next generation, and a lot of this probably has to do with the effect of alcoholism in destroying relationships and family structures.

JB also showed us a collection of arrowheads and stone tools he found recently on the edge of the lake. Most of them are 6000-12000 years old, showing how long the Anishinaabe people have continuously inhabited the English River area. He said that he’d love to spend a couple hours talking to the hand that made them, and find out what sort of people they were. It’s heart-wrenchingly sad to think that the tradition of living sustainably with and off the wildlife of the area could be broken by the legacy of colonialism, with alcoholism and other addictions being a majorly destructive one, alongside the direct attacks from settler industry and governments.

But the breakfast showed that the community is capable of responding to these challenges in a communal way. The role of local alcoholics in long-term recovery (one cook this morning had been sober 27 years) cannot be underestimated in its power to combat addiction and give hope and direction to others who desparately need to recover. One settler import has also been of utmost importance here: Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA seems to have been integrated fairly seamlessly into reserve life here. In the Grassy Narrows Trapper Center, where two AA meetings a week are chaired and attended by local recovered alcoholics, the textbook of AA (the book entitled “Alcoholics Anonymous”) can be seen sitting openly just under diagrams on how to prepare the wild pelts of muskrat, lynx, mink, beaver, sable, marten, squirrel, and other local animals for trade. The “Serenity Prayer”, a text adopted by many AA members, hangs on the wall close to a pair of snowshoes tied with moose-hide (both are no doubt hung by the same trapper). As the AA program is fundamentally one of spiritual cleansing and renewal, the considerable ambient spiritual resources of Anishinaabe communities also bodes well for a way out of the alcoholic trap that was so unfortunately exported to these shores just a few hundred years ago.