My grandson Olin Osawamick Anishinaabe Nehiyaw is a Grass dancer who’s been dancing since he could walk Brad Callihoo
Introduction My home on the Wiikwemkoong reserve sits in a field of wild strawberries Strawberries are very important to me Meryca Shawongonabe When I was a little girl my family spent the summer holidays at my grandparents home in northern Ontario They lived on a farm in Wiikwemkoong a First Nation on Manitoulin Island far from the city where we lived The farm was on a reserve and my cousins aunties and uncles lived there too Both of my parents had been sent to an Indian residential school so they knew the hardships and trauma caused by it They thought we would get a better education if we left the reserve so we could go to public school We were the first generation to live away from our home reserve My cousins on the reserve had to chop wood for the woodstove to keep their home warm and haul pails of water in order to bathe In our home in Toronto Ontario besides being able to flip a switch to get heat or turn a tap 1
to get running water we also had a television Saturday morning cartoons made us laugh but when the cowboy and Indian movies came on I felt sad The TV Indians did not look or talk anything like my relatives on the reserve My grandma did not know how to speak English My cousins spoke in Anishinaabemowin most of the time not English The Hollywood version of Indians also caused a lot of teasing and bullying by other kids in our city neighborhood Life as the lone Indian family in the neighborhood was painful The good thing about television was that it gave me a window into dance When I watched Hollywood dance musicals I could leave my troubled reality and escape to another place The most famous dancing couple at the time was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers They would float across the floor their graceful fluid movement holding me in awe and taking me to a magical place In the privacy of my bedroom I would imitate their dance and try to find that enchanted space for myself Then I would swoop swirl and twirl up and down our narrow hallway No matter how engaging their dips and swirls were though their dance was worlds apart from what I knew As soon as school was finished in June we would start to get ready for the day-long drive north The excitement of being home with my grandparents and other relatives would keep me awake the night before we left There was also my grandma’s soup and homemade pies to look forward to and there was the powwow Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO Radio Pictures My granddaughter Kallan Pheasant Neganigwane Anishinaabe is a Traditional dancer Robert Snache 2 karen pheasant-neganigwane
introduction Hearing the drums and the power of the songs at the powwow and being with so many other First Nations people was incredibly exciting I urged my mom and auntie to make me a powwow dress so I could dance too It was as if once we put on our Indian dance clothes a power took over us on the dance floor The closer I moved to the dancing spirit the lighter my feet would become When I was little I would get lost among the dancers hiding from the tourists who were watching But as I began to feel the dance spirit I would forget about the tourists Those joyful dance moments were breathtaking They were also an escape from the harsh realities of being Indigenous in the city where we lived It wasn’t dance as I had experienced it watching Fred and Ginger from afar on the television screen It was a time of celebration and acceptance of identity if only for a moment Even after everything they had been through at Indian residential school my mom and dad had instilled in us pride in being Indigenous in being Anishinaabe My grandparents Mary Jane Pangowish and Alfred Mishibinijima in 1976 My Mishomis grandfather is holding my daughter Sophie Her dad Junior Pheasant is behind them Courtesy of Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane My granddaughter Francesca Pheasant Anishinaabe is a Fancy Shawl dancer She’s wearing beadwork that I designed and created for her Robert Snache 3
