A Discussion with Joyce Toulouse, Member of Sagamok First Nation, Ontario, Canada
With: Joyce Toulouse Berkley Center Profile
June 5, 2015
Background:
As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship, in June 2015 student
Caitlin Snell interviewed Joyce Toulouse, a member of the Sagamok First Nation in Ontario, Canada.
In this interview Toulouse discusses her history and involvement in the
community, the role of the church in her life and the lives of others, and Native
cultural practices specific to her family.
How
long have you been a member of Sagamok First Nation?
Well, I was born in Sagamok and I left when I was 16, and I went back in 1993 and then I started working with the church when I went back, and I’ve been with the church since then.
How long has your family lived there?
Yeah, my parents lived there, we were from there and they looked after the church, too, when we were growing up, so I was always with the church. We lived near the church; we always did church stuff. And at that time there was not a lot of cultural or traditional stuff going on then, mainly just regular church.
How are you involved with the Sagamok community?
That’s mostly what I did was work with the church, just helping with the Sunday school and looking after the church and doing a student exchange, and we would have kids come from down south and stay in our community. We didn’t do so much with ours because they came to see us, but we did go down to see them in Clinton, a group ourselves, but getting involved I didn’t really do anything. When I first came back to Sagamok, I was a nurse’s aide. I did that for a year when I came back for Sagamok only because my daughter was getting married, and I took a year contract to help pay for the wedding. I didn’t really do anything besides babysit my grandchildren, which I still do, but I didn’t really do anything else to get involved with the community. With that you’d go to homes and do whatever you needed done there. When I lived outside of Sagamok, that’s what I did was work in a nursing home.
Why did you leave Sagamok when you were 16?
Well, I started having a family and I didn’t get married; I was just with a guy and I had four children, and it didn’t work out after four children after 11 years, then my mother was living in St. Katherine’s ‘cause she had separated from my dad, so I went over there and that’s where I raised my kids, and after they started growing up they came back to the reserve, just two of them, and then when the other kids got married I was by myself, and then I met Levi, my husband. I had met him before, he didn’t stay with us in St. Katherine’s before; he’s an alcoholic so it didn’t work out, but then he straightened out, and when he straightened out he went back to the reserve, and then I came. So I came back in 1993 and then I started, and we weren’t married and then that was another thing in the church, and at first I didn’t really want to get involved, I wanted to help but just in the background, but the priest that was there was always putting me in front, and I just ended up doing everything. Then the priest left and got married, and he couldn’t get a new priest to replace him, so he started asking me if I’d help run the church, and he felt really guilty for leaving and asking me, so I said alright and then I just started keeping the church running, and I always wanted to make it nice and clean and just encouraged to keeping the church going. So I started doing that for about eight years since he left.
How has your church in Sagamok changed from when you were younger?
Well, our priest wanted to get the great stuff, we burned sage to purify us—it’s just like incense to purify our body—and he wanted to use the sage instead of the incense, but some people weren’t ready for it. There were excuses about allergies and such, but they didn’t realize it’s the same thing, and he’d want us to interpret the Gospel in our language, and there was one woman who started doing it, but she got sick. There was this big board outside with stuff in our language and the four colors; the four colors are important and you see them when you walk in each direction. For Easter or Christmas we would put something on the wall in our language, starting off with little things like that, but I remember my daughter-in-law was coming to church a lot with me every Sunday, and all of a sudden she stopped and I asked her one time and she said, “Oh, my mom said the church is turning traditional,” and her mom was a Catholic, but she turned Pentecostal so just seeing the colors I guess or the feather, even though we didn’t use it all the time, a lot of people weren’t really ready. Now we use sage and no one says anything, and it’s regular. And we have powwows and everyone goes to the powwow; it’s a ceremony, it’s sacred. We have the sacred fire there, and it’s all the same thing so I think everyone’s accepted it, but not in my day, there was nothing like that, just Latin.
What’s a smudge?
It’s just purifying your body, like holy water: you bless yourself and you ask God to come to you, and you always do everything in fours, your mind, your spirit, intellectual, etc. Always in fours, you bless your whole being. Sometimes Margaret, our DOS [Diocesan Order of Service], won’t go in right away because she’s not comfortable and doesn’t want to offend anybody, so she’ll stand outside with the smudge and do that. You still use holy water, but it’s the same thing.
What are some of the other situations for a smudge?
Oh, you do it at home, it’s a shell that you put the four medicines—tobacco, sage, cedar, and sweet grass—and you use those. I made all those for my kids and grandkids, when I finish running around doing stuff. I make these kits for all my kids and grandkids with the shell in there and the four medicines in little baggies and eagle feathers; you just decorate them with leather, so everyone has a kit now in my family. And there’s a story to it, it’s the same as holy water, it’s sacred. It’s a sacred kit, so everyone has that in my family now.
What challenges prevent the further preservation of your culture or prevent members of your community from learning about their culture?
There are people who just want to learn about the culture now, and it’s taught in schools and there’s books starting to come out that we didn’t normally have. We have a teacher of the language who’s putting books together for the schools because our schools are integrating the language, and they’re up to grade three and the following year they’re going up to grade four. [My friend] was the principal there and when she left it stopped, and they just have a class where each class goes, where before they were doing one class a year so they started at kindergarten, then grade one, two, and now it’s all the way up to grade three, but now I think they stopped at grade three and said they didn’t have any teachers to teach the language, so now it’s back to where it was started, but there are books and they are working on them, but there’s a lot of interest. Everyone wants to learn about our culture now, and they’re teaching it at outside schools now. My grandkids go to Massey in town because it’s a Catholic school; we only have public school here, and they have a language school there at Massey and my grandkids like it. It’s not just at the schools here. I think they have it in Espanola, too; they have it at all the schools, and they don’t just have to take French so that’s good sign. I don’t know if it will ever come back, but they’re trying.
Can you describe a memory of a tradition you share or celebrate with your family?
Well, with my granddaughter Jayden, I was watching her since she was 9 months old. We were always burying tobacco, offer tobacco, put it under a nice tree or someplace where the dogs aren’t going to go mess with it. We had a spot where we’d go every day and bury tobacco and say our prayers, that was one of the things we always did, but I have my grandson now. I don’t do it with him, I just did it with Jayden, she was more into it, I guess, than Jake, but that’s what we’d do, me and Jayden, and she did it when she was older. Her dad is a trucker and he was getting so upset about something with his truck and started yelling, and Jayden was really upset, so she came and asked me for some tobacco, so she went out in the woods and said some prayers for her dad so she knows that stuff. She was really so happy to get that kit, and Levi and her went and made a drum, too, so she has a drum. She doesn’t drum though.
At one point she wanted to be a jingle dancer in the powwow, she really wanted to, and you have to help her with that; either the grandmother or something makes the dress a certain color, and you got to go ask for gifts from an elder, and she’ll tell you what color. There’s a procedure to it, and I’d already started asking people if they’d help me make that cause I’m not a fancy sewer. A jingle dancer is one that dances for health like a healing dancer, that’s what a jingle dancer does, so it’s really something when you think of it as a young girl who wanted to be a jingle dancer, and now she wants to be a doctor. She always had it in her; she didn’t become a jingle dancer though. She got involved with too much stuff, doing all these speeches and we were all over the place, and she has her piano lessons and she’s in sports and then trying to be a jingle dancer is just too much.
Well, I was born in Sagamok and I left when I was 16, and I went back in 1993 and then I started working with the church when I went back, and I’ve been with the church since then.
How long has your family lived there?
Yeah, my parents lived there, we were from there and they looked after the church, too, when we were growing up, so I was always with the church. We lived near the church; we always did church stuff. And at that time there was not a lot of cultural or traditional stuff going on then, mainly just regular church.
How are you involved with the Sagamok community?
That’s mostly what I did was work with the church, just helping with the Sunday school and looking after the church and doing a student exchange, and we would have kids come from down south and stay in our community. We didn’t do so much with ours because they came to see us, but we did go down to see them in Clinton, a group ourselves, but getting involved I didn’t really do anything. When I first came back to Sagamok, I was a nurse’s aide. I did that for a year when I came back for Sagamok only because my daughter was getting married, and I took a year contract to help pay for the wedding. I didn’t really do anything besides babysit my grandchildren, which I still do, but I didn’t really do anything else to get involved with the community. With that you’d go to homes and do whatever you needed done there. When I lived outside of Sagamok, that’s what I did was work in a nursing home.
Why did you leave Sagamok when you were 16?
Well, I started having a family and I didn’t get married; I was just with a guy and I had four children, and it didn’t work out after four children after 11 years, then my mother was living in St. Katherine’s ‘cause she had separated from my dad, so I went over there and that’s where I raised my kids, and after they started growing up they came back to the reserve, just two of them, and then when the other kids got married I was by myself, and then I met Levi, my husband. I had met him before, he didn’t stay with us in St. Katherine’s before; he’s an alcoholic so it didn’t work out, but then he straightened out, and when he straightened out he went back to the reserve, and then I came. So I came back in 1993 and then I started, and we weren’t married and then that was another thing in the church, and at first I didn’t really want to get involved, I wanted to help but just in the background, but the priest that was there was always putting me in front, and I just ended up doing everything. Then the priest left and got married, and he couldn’t get a new priest to replace him, so he started asking me if I’d help run the church, and he felt really guilty for leaving and asking me, so I said alright and then I just started keeping the church running, and I always wanted to make it nice and clean and just encouraged to keeping the church going. So I started doing that for about eight years since he left.
How has your church in Sagamok changed from when you were younger?
Well, our priest wanted to get the great stuff, we burned sage to purify us—it’s just like incense to purify our body—and he wanted to use the sage instead of the incense, but some people weren’t ready for it. There were excuses about allergies and such, but they didn’t realize it’s the same thing, and he’d want us to interpret the Gospel in our language, and there was one woman who started doing it, but she got sick. There was this big board outside with stuff in our language and the four colors; the four colors are important and you see them when you walk in each direction. For Easter or Christmas we would put something on the wall in our language, starting off with little things like that, but I remember my daughter-in-law was coming to church a lot with me every Sunday, and all of a sudden she stopped and I asked her one time and she said, “Oh, my mom said the church is turning traditional,” and her mom was a Catholic, but she turned Pentecostal so just seeing the colors I guess or the feather, even though we didn’t use it all the time, a lot of people weren’t really ready. Now we use sage and no one says anything, and it’s regular. And we have powwows and everyone goes to the powwow; it’s a ceremony, it’s sacred. We have the sacred fire there, and it’s all the same thing so I think everyone’s accepted it, but not in my day, there was nothing like that, just Latin.
What’s a smudge?
It’s just purifying your body, like holy water: you bless yourself and you ask God to come to you, and you always do everything in fours, your mind, your spirit, intellectual, etc. Always in fours, you bless your whole being. Sometimes Margaret, our DOS [Diocesan Order of Service], won’t go in right away because she’s not comfortable and doesn’t want to offend anybody, so she’ll stand outside with the smudge and do that. You still use holy water, but it’s the same thing.
What are some of the other situations for a smudge?
Oh, you do it at home, it’s a shell that you put the four medicines—tobacco, sage, cedar, and sweet grass—and you use those. I made all those for my kids and grandkids, when I finish running around doing stuff. I make these kits for all my kids and grandkids with the shell in there and the four medicines in little baggies and eagle feathers; you just decorate them with leather, so everyone has a kit now in my family. And there’s a story to it, it’s the same as holy water, it’s sacred. It’s a sacred kit, so everyone has that in my family now.
What challenges prevent the further preservation of your culture or prevent members of your community from learning about their culture?
There are people who just want to learn about the culture now, and it’s taught in schools and there’s books starting to come out that we didn’t normally have. We have a teacher of the language who’s putting books together for the schools because our schools are integrating the language, and they’re up to grade three and the following year they’re going up to grade four. [My friend] was the principal there and when she left it stopped, and they just have a class where each class goes, where before they were doing one class a year so they started at kindergarten, then grade one, two, and now it’s all the way up to grade three, but now I think they stopped at grade three and said they didn’t have any teachers to teach the language, so now it’s back to where it was started, but there are books and they are working on them, but there’s a lot of interest. Everyone wants to learn about our culture now, and they’re teaching it at outside schools now. My grandkids go to Massey in town because it’s a Catholic school; we only have public school here, and they have a language school there at Massey and my grandkids like it. It’s not just at the schools here. I think they have it in Espanola, too; they have it at all the schools, and they don’t just have to take French so that’s good sign. I don’t know if it will ever come back, but they’re trying.
Can you describe a memory of a tradition you share or celebrate with your family?
Well, with my granddaughter Jayden, I was watching her since she was 9 months old. We were always burying tobacco, offer tobacco, put it under a nice tree or someplace where the dogs aren’t going to go mess with it. We had a spot where we’d go every day and bury tobacco and say our prayers, that was one of the things we always did, but I have my grandson now. I don’t do it with him, I just did it with Jayden, she was more into it, I guess, than Jake, but that’s what we’d do, me and Jayden, and she did it when she was older. Her dad is a trucker and he was getting so upset about something with his truck and started yelling, and Jayden was really upset, so she came and asked me for some tobacco, so she went out in the woods and said some prayers for her dad so she knows that stuff. She was really so happy to get that kit, and Levi and her went and made a drum, too, so she has a drum. She doesn’t drum though.
At one point she wanted to be a jingle dancer in the powwow, she really wanted to, and you have to help her with that; either the grandmother or something makes the dress a certain color, and you got to go ask for gifts from an elder, and she’ll tell you what color. There’s a procedure to it, and I’d already started asking people if they’d help me make that cause I’m not a fancy sewer. A jingle dancer is one that dances for health like a healing dancer, that’s what a jingle dancer does, so it’s really something when you think of it as a young girl who wanted to be a jingle dancer, and now she wants to be a doctor. She always had it in her; she didn’t become a jingle dancer though. She got involved with too much stuff, doing all these speeches and we were all over the place, and she has her piano lessons and she’s in sports and then trying to be a jingle dancer is just too much.
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