A momentous race, at home and in 'Nam

A few summers ago, while researching for Seeking the Center, I read a number of books about sport in Native American/First Nations cultures. (If you're a member of Goodreads, you can follow me there and see what's on my bookshelf.) American Indian Sports Heritage by Joseph B. Oxendine, in particular, stresses the centrality of sport to Native life and belief, as does Tom Vennum in his American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War, which I wrote about here. 

I'm reading Year in Nam, now, Leroy TeCube's memoir of his experiences serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. TeCube is Jicarilla Apache, and in his book he often reflects on the role his heritage played in his actions and ultimate survival. In light of my earlier research, I found the following passage especially interesting. It weaves together TeCube's memory of a traditional tribal relay race with a life-or-death race to cross a bridge under enemy fire in Vietnam.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. Winner of the 1996 North American Indian Prose Award.

As I ran across the narrow bridge I had a flashback to my youth. On September 15 of every year my tribe has a traditional relay race between our two clans. The outcome of the race determines the type of year ahead. Depending on which clan won, there would be more wild game or crops. This race gives my people an idea of how to plan their activities for the year to come.

The relay race is on a racetrack three hundred yards long and about ten yards wide. Head runners are determined at a preliminary race the day before. Before the race starts, elderly men paint the runners in an aspen kiva, conduct prayers for them, and run down the track blessing it. When they finish the race starts with the head runners running at a full sprint down the track. When they reach the end of the track another set of runners runs back. This goes back and forth until a clan gets ahead by a full length of the track. When that happens the clan in the lead wins the race. If the runners from each clan are evenly matched the race could take several hours.

I had participated in the race several times. It could be very deceptive, especially going in an easterly direction. That is because in that direction about three-fourths of the way down is a slight rise that looks like the finish line. If you are not aware of the illusion your energy is expended when you reach this point, and you have to continue on with heavy legs. Elderly men holding aspen branches give you words of encouragement and whip you on the legs with the branches for added strength. It works. You find the burst of energy needed to take you to the finish line

I was now about three-fourths of the way across the narrow bridge. My legs were heavy from carrying my pack. I thought of the elderly men in our traditional race. In an instant, just that thought gave me the encouragement to continue. I ran off the bridge on the other side and took cover next to the trail. After catching my breath I fired toward the wood line. Out of the corner of my right eye I could see the others running the same race. Eventually, we all made it across without a casualty.

As TeCube describes, the ritual relay race has spiritual and practical dimensions, but also serves as a way to build and inspire courage and determination. It would be interesting to know whether, traditionally, the race was in any way considered to be, like American Indian lacrosse, a "little brother of war," or if it just worked out that way for TeCube in this instance. In any case, it was a treat to, unexpectedly, come across this intriguing recollection.

Romance, girl power and the Women's March

Romance novels sometimes get a bum rap - denigrated for taking on "trivial" subjects such as love and relationships. And, let's be real: the fact that the majority of their audience is female also earns them a fair amount of disrespect.

I've had enough of this. These so-called "women's issues"  - the issues that concern the creation of families, reproduction, and nurturing - are indisputably central to human life. Let's not allow them to be marginalized.

But I digress (slightly).

Not every novel has to be serious. A thriller in which a secret agent saves the world from an evil overlord can be flighty and fun, and that's fine. By the same token, romance per se is not trivial. It can be quite weighty.

Early on in Seeking the Center, Agnes identifies the force against which she will struggle during the course of the novel. She muses: 

Dad didn't want her to move to Wapahaska. He was afraid that she would never come back. From Wapahaska she would be lured to Thompson, or some other big city, a place that had mutated, like the cannibal Windigo of the old stories, into a silent, howling flash-freeze, parched and ravenous. But instead of feasting on her flesh, it would feast on her spirit.

Agnes was well aware of the dangers, though, and they didn't lurk in any particular geographical location. Being young, female, and brown-skinned meant that she was expendable, and set her up for the worst anyone anywhere cared to dish out. Huddling in fear at home in St. Cyp was no guarantee of safety, much less of vanquishing Windigo and feeding her own spirit.

Traditionally, Windigo is the cannibal spirit of the Algonquin tribes of sub-Arctic Canada, a place where, during the long, cold winters, starvation often threatened. In that difficult environment, in what must rank as one of the cruelest reversals imaginable, Windigo could possess a person so that, instead of feeding their family, that person would eat their family. Notice that the primary issue wasn't that Windigo could cause death, but rather that it could unravel our most important relationships and interdependencies. It could undermine the very foundation of society itself, and threaten the survival of humankind. 

During the centuries since Europeans first came to North America, Windigo has come to represent the greed of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism which, in the words of scholar Grace Dillon, "makes sense because imperialism is cannibalism: the consumption of one people by another." (In my mind, at least, this links up with the longstanding, tragic issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women: these women have simply been consumed.) In Agnes's mind - and in her father's - Windigo is a force that threatens to swallow her up, either physically, spiritually or both.

What I didn't know when I first wrote Seeking the Center was the degree to which, in the traditional Windigo stories, the spirit targets women - often young women - by disrupting their potential marriages and their reproductive and nurturing roles. Windigo was no dummy - it struck at the very heart of the family and therefore of society. But what I also didn't know was that, in those same stories, women are the people most able to defeat Windigo, using tools and attributes associated with their traditional roles: i.e., pots, pans, knives, bodily fluids, and that extra-special something they possess when menstruating.

I bring all this up to say that these northern people put young women and their relationships front and center in the battle for the preservation of society. In Seeking, as in romance in general, the characters are looking to create relationships and, the implication often is, become a family unit, thus perpetuating society and humankind. Male as well as female - people of any gender - these romance characters win their personal battles to the extent that they engage their nurturing impulses, their capacity for love.

As Claude the hockey enforcer says in Seeking, "There's fighting on the outside, but the inside battle is what it's about. You know, taking care of each other." 

Which brings us to today, January 21, 2017, the start of a new era. Windigo threatens. Let's get out our pots and pans, and whatever we've got, and march, and fight. Our families and our society are depending on us.

Who's my favorite character?

Someone just asked me to name my favorite character in Seeking the Center. This is tough. I love all my characters. But, while I reserve the right to change my mind without notice, at this moment I'd have to say that Claude (a.k.a Deuce) is my favorite. Why? Well, what's not to like?

As Achille says, "he's big, he's strong, he's--". And then the poor guy starts coughing and can't finish his sentence. But you can fill in the blank.

As Agnes notes, "Wow."

And as far as Owen is concerned, "even though he liked old Deuce, and respected him, it pained him to remember the Wolves' dressing room, and being up close and personal with the big guy and his goddamn perfect muscles and his huge, fighter's hands and his golden skin and all the rest of it."

But, beyond the admirable physical specimen that he is, what I love most about Claude is his courageous, straight-ahead nature. He doesn't let concerns about consequences stop him from doing what he needs to do. He's not afraid to drop the gloves, but he doesn't hesitate to offer his hand to a person in need, either. He's not too good to yank your chain when the occasion calls for it, but he's not above laughing at himself, either.

Above all, he doesn't blame other people for his problems. And while he's a player in what he thinks of as "this white man's game," he is his own person. In his own quiet but deliberate way, he makes things happen. (Except on the one occasion when he needs a little push. But you'll have to read about that for yourself.)

And that's why I love Claude.

A visit with some awesome sixth graders

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with some sixth graders who were, in the words of their teachers, beginning a unit in which they would "look at the past through the lenses of both historical fiction and factual information." They asked me to speak with them briefly about how I used research in writing Seeking the Center.

Seeking the Center takes place in the 1990s, so it's not a deeply historical novel. But because my characters are very much affected by past events, I did quite a bit of research on the history of their region.

The students were bright and engaged and asked great questions. I thoroughly enjoyed being with them and I hope they got a sense of how much fun it is to let your natural interest and curiosity lead you, from one source to another, into a whole new (or old) time and place!

Do the little things

A week ago tonight I celebrated the release of Seeking the Center with friends and family here in the town where I live. When I was thinking about the evening ahead of time, I wanted to be sure to thank my guests properly for all the support they've given me over the years. 

There's the support that came in the form of encouragement, and questions about my progress as I made my way through the process of researching, writing, editing and publishing. But there's also been support on a deeper level.

In hockey, there's a stock phrase - one of those hockey cliches - that is often applied to players who aren't necessarily flashy, but who are consistent, reliable, and conscientious. They are said to "do the little things." Implied in that is a type of faith - faith that those "little things" will add up to success for the team in the long run.

I'm lucky to live in a community where we're not only privileged to begin with - we are, and we can't forget that - but also, where so many are committed to "doing the little things": volunteering in the community, in the schools, and with our kids' sports teams; taking an interest in each other and looking out for each other. It's worth noting that many of us are also, in this Washington, DC, suburb, career government servants who work hard every day for the people of our country and the world.

We don't expect some savior to come in and score the winning goal off some flashy play. But we have faith that, if we all try to do the little things, it'll mean success for all of us.

In life as in hockey, true awesomeness resides in those who get up every morning, for years and years, and try to make things better, one little thing at a time. Many thanks to everyone who has helped to make this a place where we can enjoy the peace of mind to do what we're inspired to do. And let's keep trying to make things better, both within our little community and beyond.

Wearing Our Identity: an exhibit of Native clothing at the McCord Museum

Seeking the Center's Agnes Demers is hockey player and a tough, unsentimental young woman. But she also loves to cook for her friends and family, and is a craftswoman as well. Many of the women in my family also take pleasure in making clothing for their loved ones, especially for their children and grandchildren. The impulse to do this is ages old and, I think, very moving. 

Porter Son Identité (Wearing Our Identity), an exhibit at The McCord Museum in Montreal, has been a major source of inspiration to me in writing Seeking. It is an installation of First Nations, Inuit and Métis clothing that has to be seen to be believed. Next time you're in Montreal, do yourself a favor and check it out.

I also invite you to go to the webpage, look at the photos, and watch the short video narrated by Guislaine Lemay, one of the show's curators. (You can also find it on YouTube.) It's in French with English subtitles, and it touchingly conveys the very tangible expression of love that I tried to express in Seeking.

When Girls Became Lions

I grew up female, a teenager in the late '70s and '80s. Now my daughter is as old as I was then. I'm always telling her how different things are for her than they were for me. I know it must get tiresome, maybe even burdensome, for her to hear, but I think it's important.

It's actually not that easy to wrap your head around. The deep, pervasive sexism that kept parents and teachers from encouraging girls to play sports seems so incredibly stupid in retrospect, that it's hard even for me, who lived through it, to believe. But that is the way it was.

When I was my daughter's age, there was a nominal acceptance of the fact that, theoretically, girls had the right to equal opportunities in sports. But the fact is, girls playing sports was not, at that time, a thing. Almost no girls played anything--not in my community and socio-economic category, anyhow. And no one seemed to think it was a problem. I loved watching Tatum O'Neal in the original Bad News Bears (1976)--if you haven't seen it, you should; it's a highly entertaining portrayal of how things were back in those Dark Ages--but it certainly did not precipitate a rush to get girls into Little League.

I resisted reading this novel, by Valerie J. Gin and Jo Kadlecek, because it had an "agenda." But it was interesting and far exceeded  my expectations. A good read and one that tells an important story.

When Girls Became Lions (2015) tells part of the story of how we got from there to here. Set in 1983-4, in a small Ohio town, the novel is a fictionalized account of what happens when, more than a decade after the passage of Title IX, a public high school is threatened with the withdrawal of athletic funding unless it forms a girls soccer team--something its athletic director has resisted for years. It's also the story of how, a generation later, the new coach of the girls soccer team uncovers that original team's story--one that had been purposely suppressed because, well, who cares? They're girls.

Aside from being a compelling read, When Girls Became Lions documents an important piece of women's history, the history of our struggle to get our fair share of our communities' financial and, equally important, its emotional resources.

Every once in a while it's necessary to stop and reflect on what ties us together, as female human beings, across generations. And in my case, to be grateful to those women and men who stepped up so that my daughter can enjoy opportunities that I couldn't.

Getting just a wee bit political, maybe

Last night I attended the concert that showcases and honors this year's National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows. The National Heritage Fellowships are awarded by the Arts Endowment to "recognize the recipients' artistic excellence and support their continuing contributions to our nation's traditional arts heritage."

A basket woven by Theresa Secord, Penobscot Nation

In other words, the awardees are people who have taken a traditional art form--for example, Dakota flute making and performance or Laotian khaen playing, white oak basket making or Huastecan son performance--brought it, through their own personal passion, persistence, and skill, to the next level, and--very importantly--been persistent in their efforts to assure their art's survival by being teachers, spokespeople, and/or advocates.

The concert at which each year's honorees present their art is always an incredibly moving affair, presented by the National Council for the Traditional Arts and a small cadre of devoted folklorists who come back year after year to assist. This year it was broadcast live over the internet, and you can watch it here.

Believe me, I don't want to take anything away from the artists themselves, from the amazing variety and beauty of the traditions represented, or from the profound nature of taking a precious tradition, with deep roots, and carrying it forward to future generations. But to me the evening represented another sort of continuity as well. It began with a set of tunes performed by awardee Billy McComiskey, an Irish button accordion player from Baltimore, joined, to my surprise, by two previous heritage fellowship awardees Mick Moloney, a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, and Liz Carroll of Chicago, one of the greatest Irish fiddle players you'll ever have the good fortune to hear. I have special places in my heart for both Mick and Liz, because I remember them as good people and great to work with. But Liz is special to me--I don't know why, maybe because she's a woman and not many years older than I am.

When Liz was awarded her heritage fellowship back in 1994, I was a young person working in the field of folklore in DC, lucky enough to score an invitation to the ceremony on Capitol Hill. First Lady Hillary Clinton officiated, and she was very engaged, taking time to greet and congratulate all the fellows, especially D.L. Menard, a Cajun musician from her home state of Louisiana. But she also expressed particular interest in Liz and in Liz's entourage, which included her two young children.

Twenty-two years later? I don't want to make this post political, but I can't help noting that Liz, her children now grown, continues to honor us with her lively, nuanced fiddle playing, and Mrs. Clinton, now a grandmother, is still seeking to further serve our nation.

I have great admiration for people who show such persistence in their true passion over the course of a lifetime. The wisdom and experience that they have accrued and are so willing to share are things that we can't afford to throw away. 

A bit about athletes and activism

If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game. 

--John Tortorella, coach of the U.S. national team in this fall's World Cup of Hockey

John Tortorella is but one of countless people, inside and outside sports, who have weighed in on 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to call attention to racial injustice by sitting (or more recently, taking a knee) during the pre-game playing of the national anthem. But being a hockey fan, my ears pricked up when I heard about Tortorella's stance, and being the author of a hockey novel, I immediately tried to put myself in the shoes (or rather, the skates) of Torts's players.

It's common to assume that professional athletes--at least the ones who play in the big-money men's leagues--are privileged, and that their wealth and status afford them protection that the rest of us don't enjoy. I believe that that's true in some cases, yet these athletes remain vulnerable in other ways. 

This vulnerability is one of the themes in my novel Seeking the Center. While the story revolves around Agnes, a character who is locked out of professional hockey altogether because she's female (we're talking the mid-1990s, before the CWHL or NWHL), many of the characters are male professional players who love the game yet struggle to feel comfortable within the cultural confines of their locker rooms and leagues. 

Claude, for example, knows that he must watch his behavior on and off the ice. He's not a top-skill kind of player and he understands that he's considered replaceable. The fact that he's not white makes his position even more tenuous, as Coach obliquely indicates. Likewise, Owen's no fan of the ugly misogyny and racism that he witnesses on the ice and in the dressing room, but he doesn't feel that he has the option to speak out against it. 

These athletes are members of teams, relatively small groups of "guys" (even the ubiquitous use of the term "guys" as opposed to "men" seems to reflect something about the way they're supposed to think of themselves and each other) situated within relatively small communities (leagues) in which conformity and the financial bottom line are paramount. Positions on these teams are highly competitive and no matter how great a player's skill, his days are numbered and he is ultimately disposable. 

Deciding when to stand up and say something (or when to sit down) can be a difficult calculation, and I have to acknowledge the courage of those who take action. For some interesting thoughts on the subject by professional baseball players, check out this link.

Métis fiddler Jimmie LaRocque of Turtle Mountain

Back in the 1990s, as production associate for the Folk Masters concert and radio series, I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Jimmie LaRocque, a Métis fiddle player from the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.

I will never forget this remarkably energetic, enthusiastic sixty-something year-old man who drove the entire way from his home near Belcourt, North Dakota (practically on the Canadian border) to Washington, DC (a distance of almost 1600 miles!) and arrived none the worse for wear.

As a young person, Mr. LaRocque absorbed many influences and, like so many musicians, was eager to play the popular music of the day. By age 17 he was in Texas, playing with a band called The Western Kings out of Corpus Christi. Later, he lived in California and played backup fiddle for touring country bands including Grand Ol' Opry performers Kitty Wells, Ray Price and Ernest Tubb.

But he never forgot the traditional tunes that he taught himself to play on his dad's fiddle as a boy. He is quoted in the 1994 Folk Masters program book:

The Indian old-time fiddle music is a lot different. It seems like it's got a lot more meaning. In my mind sometimes I play fiddle here, and I swear to God I close my eyes a little bit and I can see my dad sit there by me with his fiddle. You play this Indian music and then it's like the whole sky, it's like a great big movie camera is showing a big picture on there. On the sky you can see Indians coming on spotted horses and you can see the wind blow.

Mr. LaRocque passed away in 2009.

This link will take you to a short sample of Mr. LaRocque playing the Métis fiddle tune "Road to Batoche" on the Smithsonian Folkways recording Wood That Sings. Batoche (the Smithsonian Folkways listing misspells the name) was a Métis settlement in Saskatchewan and the headquarters of their fight against Canadian forces in 1885. Métis people sometimes call that resistance la guerre nationale "the national war," (i.e., the war of the Métis nation), which gives you a sense of its importance to them as a people.

Batoche is now a Parks Canada National Historic site, as well as the home of "Back to Batoche," the Métis nation's annual commemoration of its culture, traditions and heritage.

Batoche in 1885. Unknown photographer. This image is available from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec under the reference number P600,S6,D5,P1309. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44641160