Grannies' wisdom, humour key to Cree community
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Grannies' wisdom, humour key to Cree community
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Grannies' wisdom, humour key to Cree community
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Grannies' wisdom, humour key to Cree community
MONIQUE POLAK, Special to The Gazette
Published: Sunday, February 03
It's Tuesday afternoon, which means the gookums are gathered at the local wellness centre in this remote
northern community on the Maquatua River in Quebec's James Bay region. Gookum is Cree for "grandmother."
The gookums club meets every week. Its members knit, tell stories and laugh - a lot.
But the gookums do not just knit hats and scarves; they knit together their community, too. With half of the
town's residents under age 25, gookums play a vital role in passing on Cree culture. They also provide stability
in this community, about 900 kilometres north of Montreal, that has undergone radical change in the last halfcentury, and where, despite a prohibition on the sale of alcohol, booze and drug use are rampant.
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Grannies' wisdom, humour key to Cree community
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Mary Visitor doesn't lose a stitch as she tells her story. Like the other elders in Wemindji, she was born in a
teepee.
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"The old days were better," Visitor said, recalling her early childhood in the bush, where her father trapped
beaver. "There was no alcohol and no horny grandmothers!"
The other gookums giggle behind their knitting.
Humour is as much a part of life in Wemindji as the Ski-Doos and teepees up and down the main street. It is also
a trait that might help people like Visitor survive the hardships of aboriginal life in the North.
When she was 9 years old, Visitor was plucked out of her life in the bush by representatives of Canada's
Department of Indian Affairs and sent to Bishop Horden Hall, a residential school in Moose Factory, Ont.
An initiative of religious organizations and later of the Canadian government, the residential school system
began in the 1820s and continued until 1996, when Canada's last residential school was closed. The children
lived in substandard conditions, and many were subjected to emotional and physical abuse. They were also
forbidden to speak their own language.
"When one person did something bad, we were all punished," Visitor recounted. "I tried to be good, but
sometimes I got hit."
Visitor, who is 63, has lived in Wemindji for nearly 50 years. When she came to town, there were only 10
houses, an Anglican church and a Catholic mission. Today, she has six children, 15 grandchildren and another
grandchild on the way. One daughter and a son-in-law live with her. A grandson who had come down with a
cold was spending Tuesday night at her place, too. When Visitor's grandchildren need advice, they go to their
gookum. "My 14-year-old grandson asked me how to handle his parents' drinking. I told him: 'Watch out and
don't follow in their footsteps.' "
Minnie Matches and Annie Saganash cannot make it to the Tuesday afternoon club. That's because they are still
working. They are two of what Wemindji residents call the "sewing ladies." Their headquarters is the former
pool hall (the sign outside has not been changed) in the local mini-mall, next to the post office and not far from
the Northern, a chain of grocery stores that were once part of the Hudson's Bay Co.
Matches, 58, has 13 grandchildren - and one on the way. Her mother and aunt taught her to sew and make
baskets out of spruce and birch bark when they were living in the bush, and she's passing on these skills to her
children and grandchildren. Daughter Josephine Atsynia, 36, is also a sewing lady.
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