(Editor’s note:) Rita Joe, who died earlier this week, was an acclaimed poet, often referred to as the Poet Laureate of the Mi’kmaq Nation. She was born in Whycocomagh and lived much of her adult life in Eskasoni, the largest reserve in Nova Scotia. She was a mother of ten, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She was a weaver of baskets and a maker of jewellery.

Several years ago, I spent a day with her, surrounded by her crafts and those of her family and community in her Eskasoni shop.

    I lost my talk
    The talk you took away.
    When I was a little girl
    At Shubenacadie school.

    You snatched it away:
    I speak like you
    I think like you
    I create like you
    The scrambled ballad, about my world.

    Two ways I talk
    Both ways I say,
    Your way is more powerful.

    So gently I offer my hand and ask,
    Let me find my talk
    So I can teach you about me.

I describe myself as Native — Mi’kmaq. I’m in my 60s now. When I started writing, I was in my 30s, and I saw a need: that was to create a beautiful image of my people. When I was a little girl, I was called a little savage, a cannibal. I didn’t know what cannibal meant — all these derogatory things I heard when I was a little girl.

When my children used to bring their books home and see something bad like that, they’d point it out to me. “Look Mum, look what it says here,” and I would read it.

And I would hear myself say, we were not the writers of our own history. Then I would say to myself, why aren’t any books written about the beautiful part of our culture? So it dawned on me that there has to be somebody to document the beautiful part. So I began to write.

    I am the Indian
    and the burden lies
    just with me.

I have spoken across the nation and when I read that little three-line poem, there is heavy discussion. They’re trying to find out, what is the burden, what is the burden that Rita Joe is talking about? I tell them: the burden I’m carrying came from you, the European. You have made me carry my burden because you’re the ones who documented our lives and it was not the truth.

In any culture, any culture on this earth, when you look for the good, you’ll find the good. That’s what I look for so I can present it to the people who look down on us. I have been doing it so long that my own perception of my own culture — to me, it is beautiful. Everything about my life, since I was a little girl and what I have seen since is beautiful.

When I was a little girl — my mother died when I was five — I was put in a succession of foster homes, all over Nova Scotia. I can’t tell you how many different foster homes I was in but I had a lot of mothers, I had a lot of dads.

I came back to live with my own father just before he died. I was nine and I lived with him for a year. I used to see him open a book of hieroglyphics. That’s why I say in one of my books, the written part of our life is for us to read which you did not recognize — same with Egyptian writing, that was not recognized. I saw my dad open a book a lot of times and read and I saw him explain these symbols and I know there was a written part of our life — that’s why I said in a poem “that the world chooses to deny.”

I was mostly in native homes, not that many non-native homes, and they were as poor as I was. There were times when I didn’t have enough to eat.

All these homes, Mi’kmaq was spoken. All my life, I’ve spoken Mi’kmaq. When my dad died I was 10. I was placed in a home with this woman and she told me, “Go home and pick up your clothes — don’t bring them all because I’ll make dresses for you.” I loved her, she was a good person. I went home and got my little box. Right at the time I was putting my clothes together, somebody came up the stairs. A woman took me by the hand and told me to come with her.

When you’re 10 years old, you listen to older people — especially if your dad is dead and there’s no one advising you. So this woman took me by the hand and led me away and put me on the train. They took me to a non-native community and I went to school there. I was 11 when I went to school there and of course, they made fun — they were all non-natives. They jeered and I made a vow at that time that I would get higher learning. I would teach these people that I’m just as good as they are.

I was 12 years old when I put myself into the Shubenacadie Residential School. It was that determination to learn — to learn to cook, to sew and all these things.

When I arrived there, I admired the place. It was so beautiful — the shining floors, the pictures on the walls, the beautiful building. The priest at the time when I was there, we became good friends because he was also from where I just came from — Cumberland County. He would never remember my name, Rita, but he would call me Cumberland County. He was a nice gentle old man, he was so kind.

I had some bad experiences in school but the way I look at life, I forget about the bad things that happened and I look for the good. I always look for the good. I consider it being Christian to be forgiving, not to carry injustices on your shoulder all your life.

I read a book written by an anthropologist about a writer who lived 300 years ago and he wrote this: they have no religion; they have no art. He was observing Native people, and I just threw this book down. The gall of this person to say that we had no religion. We had a beautiful spiritual part of our lives that they did not know.

Me, I never accepted it. When I was told by the nuns, “your religion is no good,” I always knew in my mind sure, it’s good, it might even be better than yours.

There’s an oral tradition with my people. We’re always talking amongst ourselves. My husband’s family was from Newfoundland. At the time when my husband-to-be and I met in Boston, he asked me to marry him the second week after we met. At the time when he proposed to me, he said we’re not related, are we? Native people are always concerned about that.

The sweat lodge is a very religious experience. Part of the tradition is traditional food — deer meat, or meat of other animals we have killed — moose and deer and salmon, not something that we’ve bought from the supermarket. Or something that was donated from the people in the community — eels maybe.

The two sweats that I have taken part in, the first one was here in Eskasoni. Everything that I write about, I try to take part in it. I did not know when I went in there what one experiences. So it was very frightening at times what I experienced. The learning I got from the sweat lodge did not come from the live people who were in there with me — there were 13 of us — the teaching I gained from that sweat lodge came from the spirits that were there.

It’s very hot, even hotter than a sauna. The medicine woman who was sitting next to me kept touching me and saying are you alright Rita, do you want to leave? I said no, I wanted to stay, and I stayed for two hours and 40 minutes. I stayed in one in Restigouche for five hours. They were all women there.

The all-woman sweats are more powerful than the men’s. Women have more spiritual power than men. Men have spiritual power too but women have more. Everybody knows that — even the men recognize that.

One time, when I was in Vancouver, I took the baskets that I make with me. Some of them are made from sweet grass. They scolded me for them. You’re not supposed to use sweet grass in basket-making, they said. It’s a sacred grass and it’s supposed to be used only for sacred purposes. The way I explained it was when I make my baskets, I make them for people to enjoy the basket. Because whoever purchases the basket, they do it because they love the little basket and when they’re sweet grass, people want them, right away.

So I was explaining to the Natives up there, when I use sweet grass in my baskets, it makes people feel good and I don’t think our Creator is going to get angry with us for making other people feel good.

    Sometimes, I weave sweet grass into braids
    and I tie them on each end
    and when I’m doing it,
    I’m thinking about love.