Wren sees the new outdoor kiln as a herald of new beginnings, new traditions and new stories in the rich history of the farmhouse. She’s always felt like the farmhouse was like a warm and comfortable quilt, rich in colour and memory. As she unpacks a new clump of clay, her mind wanders to places of the past.
The farmhouse is an old Eaton’s catalogue design. It’s been in the family since the 1920s, nestled in among a range of buttes and coulees that minimize the persistent Saskatchewan wind. The land is well-treed and a creek runs through the property. The creek empties into the big lake, which is close enough to walk to and enjoy a short, scenic hike. The lake is even closer if you ride a bike. On any given day, a family of deer wander by the property, usually gathering around the apple and pear trees Wren’s grandfather planted years ago.
It’s the perfect place to dream and raise a family, where Wren and Raven spent so much of their childhood. It’s where their mother was raised. Wren remembers the stories she told them. Some of these memories are vague, because their mother left the family when the twins were so young. But so precious for the same reason.
“Your grandfather was a section worker for the rail line,” Wren can still hear her mom’s voice say. “The train used to run alongside the lake in the valley back then.” Today, the rail line is a scenic bike path. “But because your granddad worked for cp, he was given a discount on shipping fees. Piece by piece, materials arrived on that train, and this home is what he built.”
Wren remembers another story her mother told of how her grandparents met.
“She was just a young girl, out picking berries in Kinookimaw.”
Kinookimaw is the Cree word for long lake. It’s a place where so many love stories begin. An area where generations of First Nations peoples gathered and set up teepees. A combination of hills, valley and meadow. The landscape is stunning. Everything anyone might need grows in Kinookimaw: wild mushrooms and berries for harvest, roots and barks for medicines. No need for a drugstore here; the land provides.
When settlers came, they felt entitled to their newfound bounty and claimed the land that had sustained Kohkum’s family. Abundant stock from the lake was overfished and their numbers dwindled. The animals that were hunted disappeared. Slowly, their way of life disappeared too, replaced by heavy steel ties that later became the rail line, changing the pace of what once was a quiet valley.
But those ties are how the family came to be—how Wren’s kohkum met her granddad and how two cultures came together. Theirs was a legacy that began with creosote, sweat, hard work and saskatoon berries. As the story goes, Kohkum was completely focused on picking the plump fruit at the top of a bush. That’s why she was startled when she heard a male voice ask, “What are you doing?” She hadn’t heard the man’s footsteps approaching and was immediately struck by the handsome features of his white face, blue eyes and welcoming smile. Kohkum replied that she was gathering saskatoon berries to prepare for a feast.
Wren squishes the hard clay through her fingers and once again hears her mother’s voice in her mind. “Your granddad admired Kohkum’s devotion to the land. He fell in love with the sparkle in her eyes. The same sparkle you have,” Wren’s mother would remark. “It didn’t take long before the spot where they first met became their usual meeting place—the point where land meets water, across the shore from where the little arm of land meets the lake. That’s where your granddad and your kohkum fell in love.”
Interracial relationships were not common back then, and often not condoned. Maybe that’s the reason Wren’s granddad decided to build the family farmhouse just outside of town, though still close enough for a determined walk or a short car ride.
As Wren looks out at the land from her studio’s picture window, she feels happiness and gratitude that her childhood memories here will be shared by another generation. She pats her belly and vows to go out and make a tobacco offering to the land. She will do her best to say it in Cree—Kohkum always told her that the trees want to be addressed in the old language.
Wren also vows that she won’t tell Lord about the baby, not until the first trimester has passed. Babies go away sometimes, she knows this.
RAVEN ARRIVES
Before loading up her bright pink carry-on luggage into the hatch of her car, Raven makes sure to include her pair of cowboy boots. They’ve been worn only once. She bought them when last year’s Calgary Stampede was in full swing. While stylish, the boots pinch her feet, so she’s giving them up. Wren can use them to decorate the fence post, along with that pair of granny boots Wren wore at their high school graduation.
Decorating the fence with footwear is a quirky tradition started by the girls’ mooshum. Their granddad was the first to hang up a pair of old boots on the fence post the year he retired. He believed the gesture was symbolic of new beginnings. He believed that displaying his trusty old footwear, the very boots that helped him make a living and raise his family, displayed his gratitude for everyone to see. “The spirits will know,” she remembers him saying. “It will make them happy and they will continue to bring good fortune.” Sure, the boots got the neighbours talking, but before long, some of those neighbours hung up old boots as well, wanting to participate in something that added character to the landscape, and maybe delivered good fortune, too.
Raven looks forward to returning to that familiar land, to take off her shoes and let her toes sink into the soft mud of the creek bed just as she and her sister did as girls. Maybe they could even look for frogs, and at night sit on the veranda and listen to crickets. As Raven reaches for her cooled tea from the cup holder of her Chrysler, she realizes she needs this return to simpler times. Life in the big city just moves too quickly, even though studying law was her choice.
“Education is the new buffalo,” their grandmother would say. Raven can hear her grandmother uttering the phrase as clearly as if she was sitting in the car with her. It’s a saying her kohkum would often repeat, especially during high school when Raven toyed with the idea of dropping out. Her grandmother would remind her that before settlers arrived, everyone in the community had a role. Each held a purpose.
It’s why she taught the girls how to harvest the land, why she passed on traditional ways of thinking: like women forming the backbone of community and family, and the a matriarchal rite of including the perspective of women in major decisions. Kohkum would talk about how white-man ways shifted this notion and caused imbalance. “That is why you need to learn,” she’d remind Raven. “Don’t let other people decide your path. We need to take care of each other, our children and our communities.”
Raven decided pursuing a career in law would become her way of doing this, but it hasn’t been easy. Lately, she’s witnessed heartbreak and testimony about how families and communities are trying to cope with losing a daughter, granddaughter or other female relative. There are harsh stories about indifference. It still bothers her that an rcmp officer once commented that, “The problem with missing and murdered Indigenous women is drunk and angry Native men.” Raven swears she would have clawed him in the face if he hadn’t promptly left the premises in his police cruiser.
Raven is taking an active part in trying to change the status quo of indifference. She remembers the name of Helen Betty Osborne so often, and it breaks her heart. Helen was a Cree teenager who was found raped and murdered in northern Manitoba in the early seventies. Everyone in The Pas, Manitoba, knows the story. The community knew what happened but no one came forward for decades. Their silence condoned the murder and protected those who caused harm. Even sitting here, driving toward a much-needed visit with her sister, Raven feels uneasy remembering what happened to Helen. She sips back the last of her tea, frustrated that almost five decades later, not much has changed.