Journal

((I wrote this this morning - hoping it will help the healing))

In a lucid dream I had the other night an Elder told me it was time to speak. I will speak of what I do remember first and then speculation and remembering dreams later. Somewhere between 2 and 5 I remember our adoptive mother’s brother scaring my brother and I as we were playing just inside the edge of the woods. Those were fun times for me. Then came the time when they took my mother (she was having her first baby) away and I threw a temper-tantrum that even my oldest sister and cousin couldn’t settle. My mother’s mother came and got me and all was well for a time. I went to school with my brother and sisters and learned to read and write – not much fun for someone that preferred being outside. Now we lived in a little 5 room house. All seems to be quiet in my head from the time that that little guy was born till I was about 8 or 9 when my eldest sisters baby died – I told my cousin and the old man took me by the ears and beat my head on the 2” side of a two-by-four and him screaming at me the whole time. Then my moon times started and I remember Mom telling me that I had to be a good girl now – um what was she talking about – wasn’t I being good – doing all I was told to? Then came the week that I got nightly beatings for ‘lying’ – not that I can remember doing – I hadn’t gotten my homework done – missed a question or some such. Vaguely I thought if he can lie why am I getting beaten when I don’t lie -------??????????? Too many questions there. One night after a beating he told me he was just showing me God’s love since he was God’s representative and I remember thinking at that time ‘if this is God’s love I don’t want any part of it’. When I was about 16 the old man was doing his type of praying and I heard a Voice that came from the same direction – all this Voice said was “Judy” nothing else. I continued being ‘slave’ for the household until I was 19 when again the old man came to me to have sex this is the first time I remember him wanting sex with me – that my dear was the first time I said NO to him but I remember that spring so clearly – it all of a sudden seemed like the sun was brighter. I left there shortly after that episode. I had been beaten for things his kids did or on a whim of his. No I didn’t get highschool – oh he set me up with correspondence but that didn’t cost him like me going to a high school would have.
I realize now that the rapes had been blocked – this came about from a discussion with a shrink about a dream that had plagued me most of my life. From there it has been one step at a time in this healing process. When I found out that I had been raped I asked the Creator/Mother that I not know the details – just when it all started. That revelation came in a dream and here it is:

The old man was constantly calling us girls ‘whores’ and ‘no better than the Indians’ – well the People were much better than he was to my way of thinking – I remember two Ladies of the Cree nation close to us – they had on beautiful moccasins and they smelled of wood smoke and tanned leather and outside and I wondered why they were so much ‘lower’ than our family was. He was always going to the elders of the church we were associating with asking ‘forgiveness’ (bragging to my way of thinking) for his out of marital relationships he had but then he would turn around and do it again and again but still he condemned the catholics for asking forgiveness for drinking and returning to the drinks. Everyone was lower than he was in his eyes so that made them fair game for him to tramp on. I suspect he has children all over the reservation from rapes he did there too. I now know that most of that 11 yrs is a blank because it was what I thought was expected of me just like doing the housework and making the meals and all the rest of it. I think that the beatings when I was 13 was because Mom had told him to leave me alone – so this was a two pronged attack – one on me and one on her. Any time she showed me any positive attention I got a beating – no wonder I was ‘rejected’ but at the time all I knew was that I wasn’t loved and felt that I was only there to do what was too low for the rest of the family.
The rest of my bio-family got the same – my sisters were raped and beaten, my oldest sister ran away because she didn’t want to be his sex slave any more but it was the middle of winter and she headed to the rez hoping to get some protection. Fortunately she didn’t get pregnant from him but my next sister did and she got pawned off onto a poor unsuspecting guy in the town near us. My brother wasn’t spared but for him he got fists in the face and where ever was convenient and the general verbal abuse that the rest of us did. I think that a lot of it had to do with ‘putting us in our place’ because of our native background because it was well known that our Grandmother was Metis from Quebec.
I look at myself in the mirror sometimes after I have read of the depredations the Europeans have done to the Native peoples and really don’t like the blue eyes and blond hair – because that was the colouring of the people that did all they could to wipe out the Native Peoples. You know something – it is still happening – oh not so openly – but underhandedly. I remember hearing about the Oka and Caledon situations when I lived in Alberta and felt there was more than what the papers and news casters were putting out – there is ALWAYS two sides to the coin – so what weren’t the papers and news casters not saying. I found out – just the same as when the Europeans first came to the Americans – take the land the Natives aren’t using it and we need it for our games and gains.