In Episode 4, Doris invites Métis Elder Marjorie Beaucage to be featured as a special guest to talk about her 'hot off the press' published book titled, leave some for the birds - Movements for Justice. In this podcast storytelling episode, we hear in her own words about the movements in her life that culminated in the writing of her poetic memoir that highlights seven decades of living and seeking justice as a Two Spirit Métis woman who still retains her Michif language. Additionally, as part of celebrating Indigenous History Month and PRIDE Month, Marjorie is a beautiful fit for this special episode . Marjorie is an acclaimed filmmaker, art-ivist and educator, land protector and a water protector. Born in Vassar, Manitoba, to a large Métis family, Marjorie’s life’s work has been about creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right relations. She is a beloved Feast Centre Elder and a soul-filling storyteller!
For more information about Indigenous Sexual Futures, and to see the BIOs of our featured guests, please visit the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research podcast website @ https://feastcentre.mcmaster.ca/podcasts
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the following for their contributions towards Episode 4 of Indigenous Sexual Futures
Special Guest
Auntie Marjorie Beaucage
Host Storyteller/Producer
Doris Peltier
In Grandmother's Hands - Poem
Read by Marjorie Beaucage
Technical Producer
Paula Burrows - Jupiter Productions
ISF Theme Music and Creative Sound
Cozmic Cat, Classic Roots, Elder Gayle Pruden
Indigenous Knowledge Advisory
Feast Centre Council of Elders and Gathering Lodge Committee
Executive Producers
Feast Centre Co-Leads - Randall Jackson & Renée Masching
Feast Centre Staff
Will Gooding (National Director), Catherine Booker (Research Coordinator) and Doris Peltier (Community Engagement Coordinator) and Feast Centre Research Assistants Bridget Marsdin and Esther Kim
Podcast Branding Design
Compassion Creative
We acknowledge our funders
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Indigenous Sexual Futures is produced on the ancestral lands of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations within the lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon wampum. We acknowledge the ancestors of this territory, and we also acknowledge the lands and territories of all our guests.
Suggested Reading list coming soon...
In Episode 4, Doris invites Métis Elder Marjorie Beaucage to be featured as a special guest to talk about her 'hot off the press' published book titled, leave some for the birds - Movements for Justice. In this podcast storytelling episode, we hear in her own words about the movements in her life that culminated in the writing of her poetic memoir that highlights seven decades of living and seeking justice as a Two Spirit Métis woman who still retains her Michif language. Additionally, as part of celebrating Indigenous History Month and PRIDE Month, Marjorie is a beautiful fit for this special episode . Marjorie is an acclaimed filmmaker, art-ivist and educator, land protector and a water protector. Born in Vassar, Manitoba, to a large Métis family, Marjorie’s life’s work has been about creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right relations. She is a beloved Feast Centre Elder and a soul-filling storyteller!
For more information about Indigenous Sexual Futures, and to see the BIOs of our featured guests, please visit the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research podcast website @ https://feastcentre.mcmaster.ca/podcasts
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the following for their contributions towards Episode 4 of Indigenous Sexual Futures
Special Guest
Auntie Marjorie Beaucage
Host Storyteller/Producer
Doris Peltier
In Grandmother's Hands - Poem
Read by Marjorie Beaucage
Technical Producer
Paula Burrows - Jupiter Productions
ISF Theme Music and Creative Sound
Cozmic Cat, Classic Roots, Elder Gayle Pruden
Indigenous Knowledge Advisory
Feast Centre Council of Elders and Gathering Lodge Committee
Executive Producers
Feast Centre Co-Leads - Randall Jackson & Renée Masching
Feast Centre Staff
Will Gooding (National Director), Catherine Booker (Research Coordinator) and Doris Peltier (Community Engagement Coordinator) and Feast Centre Research Assistants Bridget Marsdin and Esther Kim
Podcast Branding Design
Compassion Creative
We acknowledge our funders
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Indigenous Sexual Futures is produced on the ancestral lands of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations within the lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon wampum. We acknowledge the ancestors of this territory, and we also acknowledge the lands and territories of all our guests.
Suggested Reading list coming soon...
Transcript of Episode 4 – ‘My Grandmother said “Leave some for the Birds”’
[DORIS] Indigenous Sexual Futures is produced by The Feast Center for Indigenous STBBI Research on the Ancestral Lands of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee Nations within the lands protected by the Dish With One Spoon wampum. We acknowledge the ancestors of this territory, and we also acknowledge the lands and territories of all our guests.
[MUSIC]
[DORIS] You are listening to Indigenous Sexual Futures, a podcast storytelling series that is produced by the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research. And yes, you heard the word ‘sexual’, ‘STBBIs’, and ‘research’ in my first sentence, hope that caught your attention. But you also heard the word ‘feast’, which is what we hope to do with all of you through this podcast storytelling series. You should also know that we are aligning this podcast series with a growing body of work by scholars, artists, writers, and community in Indigenous Futurisms. You will have to listen to our series to learn more about what Indigenous Futurisms is, and why we dropped the word ‘sexual’ into the middle of ‘Indigenous Futurisms’. Stay with us. Now, let’s get started.
[DORIS] Adiniwemaaganidook. E-amakawaataagoowazid dizhnigaas, waawaashkesh nidodem. Anishinaabe n’dow. Hello, and welcome to Indigenous Sexual Futures. My name is Doris Peltier. I am Anishinaabe and your host for this podcast storytelling series. For this episode, I am calling myself ‘Auntie D’, because we all know how important aunties are in our lives, right? Aunties play important roles – I think we all know that. At one time, my sisters and I had special names for each other as aunties. I was auntie-baayaadik, which is a play on words in what I call oji-glish. Baayaadik is an Anishnaabe word to denote, ‘they are here visiting.’ One sister called herself ‘auntie social’, another ‘auntie depressant’, and the one name I quite liked was ‘vigil auntie’. The latter auntie name, if you think about it, captures what we do as aunties. We may take a deeper dive into the role of aunties for a future episode. Today though, we will be talking to a very special auntie. On today’s podcast, we are so excited to be featuring newly published Métis author Marjorie Beaucage, whose book was just released. It is titled Leave Some for the Birds – Movements for Justice. It is a poetic memoir that encompasses seven decades of Marjorie’s life. From the little girl picking blueberries with her grandmother, to who she is now – a beautiful two-spirit Métis Elder, auntie, artist, educator, and much more. She is also an acclaimed filmmaker. Her film work stretches back to over thirty years. I first met Marjorie when she was a filmmaker many moons ago, when we both lived in Toronto. Our paths crossed again in 2015 in Saskatoon. I approached her about being an Elder for one of our visioning health research sites. She said yes. Today, she is an Elder and an auntie for many groups, including the Feast Centre Council of Elders. I would like to also acknowledge that today’s podcast is being launched during Indigenous History Month, which is also Pride Month. Yay! Happy Pride to everyone! This is a perfect time to feature Marjorie. You are in for a treat. I really enjoy speaking with her – she has many powerful truths to share. So, let’s get started, and listen to auntie Marjorie read one of her poems titled, ‘Grandma’s hands.’ And immediately after her reading, we will segway to the storytelling session.
[MARJORIE]
The old woman with heart wide open welcomes me home.
Sit down. Rest.
Night wrapped its arm around me.
I watched her shuffle around the kitchen
looking for the tin of gingersnaps.
She sits in her rocker
one leg out, the other under
picking up her crochet
fingers moving over the thread
like a spider weaving its web
grandma's hands.
How many babies has she guided
into the world
first contact
in those hands?
How many gardens had she planted and hoed
arms getting browner in the summer sun?
Those hands yanking out baby teeth as they loosened
wrapping scarves around resisting necks
kneading dough as if it was a feather
peeling apples in one curled motion
into a pie wedged into perfectly equal triangles
no room to argue over the biggest piece.
Those hands gathering eggs from under hens
without disturbing them.
Wielding an axe cleanly
for kindling.
Circling rosary beads in her lap
lips moving silently
with the rhythm of the words
over and over and over.
That pile of mending and darning
always there.
A torn knee, a hole in a heel, a shirt button gone
all receiving a scolding
as her hand repaired like new again.
The tightness of a newly sewn button
the comforting fresh darn of a sock.
If the damage was too great
scissors would carve out little squares that later reappeared
transformed on a quilt.
Sitting for hours,
poking her needle in and out of the frame
making little rivers of thread
through all those patches of colours.
She seemed in a trance
her hands circling in and out, over and under
looping the stitches across and back.
Sometimes humming a strange sound
between her teeth
it wasn’t a whistle
it wasn’t a hum
it seemed to come
from far down inside her
and float out onto the air.
Other times
those hands picked up jars to make
teas and poultices, healing potions and ointments.
Sometimes washing and preparing bodies for burial.
Those hands were messengers
of life and death
rough and ready to do what needed to be done.
Those hands.
[DORIS] I really see us as two aunties for this particular podcast. So we’ll just get started, we’ll cut to the chase and get started right away. So I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about who you are. I ask each guest to tell a little something about themselves that is much different from the standard bio introduction we might hear about you, if you were speaking on a webinar as a panelist. It might be about your upbringing or your connection to your identity as a Métis women, or your connection to the land as a Red River Métis. We want to know who Marjorie is, so this is your opportunity to give us that little story about who Marjorie is.
[MAJORIE] oh who am I today? I’m here in Duck lake. I’m 76, I just turned 76. And I’m feeling the weather. The weather is part of who I am. It’s like every day, I discover who I am depending on the weather. I was winter-born, I carry the winter as part of who I am. The seasons are very much a part of who I am. I grew up in the bush in Manitoba, and the first 15 years of my life, the bush raised me. I feel that’s my foundation for who I am. And after that, I’ve been moving, moving, moving, and moving through different parts of life, and different places and people. Part of me is being on the move. I guess my book about movements for justice, it’s the different movements I’ve made in my life. And it’s my childhood, the first 15 years in the bush, like I said, is the foundation. And then my journey as a woman through the different parts of life is huge. My relations to women, my relations to institutions that I’ve been building at forever, trying to bring about social change and justice. Asking questions I guess is who I am too. I’ve discovered that’s my gift, is to question. And sometimes it’s welcome and sometimes it’s not. But it is me, and that sort of curiosity and questioning always opens new possibilities and doorways for me and for the people around me. So it seems to be a way in to whatever it is we’re living. Well that’s who I am today, I guess.
[DORIS] In terms of if somebody were to ask you: how do you identify? That’s usually a big question right. So if you were to encapsulate that in one swoop, what would you say?
[MARJORIE] I hate that question but [laughter]… I’m Marjorie. I’m many things. There’s different aspects like, I’m a woman, I’m a two-spirit, I’m a Métis – those are all parts of me. But it’s like, all of it is Marjorie. I just don’t like labels and I know people want you to be this or that so they can put you in this little box, you know, but I never fit boxes very well.
[DORIS] Mhmm, thank you Marjorie. So I like what you said earlier about movements. And I have a question for you later on, like about what movement suggests for me is not only about Indigenous movements but there’s… we’ll come to that later on in this storytelling session. So we’re really excited that you have written a book, with the title ‘Leave Some for the Birds.’ Why did you decide to write a book at this time, Marjorie?
[MARJORIE] Well the book decided itself really. I was decluttering my life when I turned 70, and I found I had two box-fulls of journals, and I decided I don’t want other people to go through my stuff. I’ve seen what happens when people pass and a lot of things get thrown out or whatever. So what am I going to do with all this stuff. And so I decided to go through it myself. So I went to Santa Fe. There was an equal justice residency, and I applied and I got in. And I loaded up my journals and drove down to Santa Fe and started going through, and seeing what I could salvage from them, if anything. I wasn’t planning to write a book necessarily, I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I thought well I’ll go through and see what’s there, and what I could maybe share with others that might be helpful in their journey for justice. Social activists, maybe, for the generation, that maybe there’s something I learned in all these years that I could pass on. So it’s kind of a little bit of a legacy I guess, to share whatever insights and reflections I might have – that might be useful. Cause I’ve been through lots of different movements and what did I learn, and what can I offer? That was the question.
[DORIS] Were you surprised by some of the writings that you went through? Was there anything that stood out for you?
[MARJORIE] Yeah, well one of the things that I realized was I had a lot of poetry in there. And I had never shared it with anybody. And at the same time that I was in Santa Fe, I went to spoken word workshops. And reading your poetry out loud is very vulnerable, and it’s different than just seeing it on the page, you know? But it was a really good thing to do, and so that was one thing that I realized was worth saving, some of the poetry. And the other piece was, there was some things that kept repeating themselves over the years, like my essential questioning of myself, and who I was, and there was certain themes that just kept coming back, and that was kind of like – that’s my foundation stuff. There’s some things that haven’t changed, my basic values are still the same, but there’s lots of things that have changed. So it’s all about change too, and how you go about change for yourself and for the world around you. That was an interesting process to uncover as well. So those were the things I kept in my book, basically, those elements. The rest was vomit. It was survival. It was like, we know you write in your journal because you got no place else to say things where it’s safe. So writing was a way to keep me alive and safe many times. If I didn’t have writing I would be dead.
[DORIS] Wow, that must have been amazing to go through… how many years of writing?
[MARJORIE] well, for sure since the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s little bit… after I started filmmaking I wrote less, but I still wrote. But it was different.
[DORIS] It would be really good for all of us to read your book because I would imagine, you know, that many years of writing would also follow the movements as Indigenous peoples… it would follow what was happening in the world through those different times.
[MARJORIE] Yeah but mostly I was writing about what was happening in the world through me, like in my place in it kept changing.
[DORIS] Wow, yeah I really liked what you said about there were things that were repeating. [MARJORIE: Mhmm] What would be one of those things that seemed to repeat itself?
[MARJORIE] I doubted myself a lot, I didn’t have much confidence in my own being, or my questions. I guess because I wasn’t heard, I didn’t feel heard a lot of the time. And I would hide sometimes because it wasn’t safe. But always questioning… it was also all-or-nothing. Like there was this whole balancing back and forth between all-or-nothing, like either/or, like that duality of thinking. I realized it controlled me a lot in my earlier years especially. It was either this or that, there was not much grey. As I grew older, I could see that I was a little bit more in the grey and I had more room to breathe. But, yeah… I’m trying to think of the patterns. The thing about relationships too, I’m always looking for where I belong, because I oftentimes felt like a misfit, and I didn’t know where I belonged, because I felt too different than most everybody around me and most situations. And that was kind of hard to process because I wasn’t being completely myself because I was hiding. But I also didn’t know how to be myself, in my difference.
[DORIS] Wow, that sounds amazing Marjorie.
[MARJORIE] So those were the struggles that I had, and that I was trying to sort out in my journals. The big questions, you know: Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? Those are always, you know, the ones that we… where do I belong? They’re the big universal questions but those are the ones that I was struggling with too.
[DORIS] So did the writing, compiling all this – the poetry, the writings – show you something about who you are today?
[MARJORIE] Oh yeah, I’m there. Yeah, it’s pretty cool actually. I feel good about who I am today, and where I am today and what I put together. It’s not your usual memoir, I’m not good at details in stories. I realized I’m more of a philosopher. Philosopher poet. I’m very concise and distilling everything, so it’s kind of like little nuggets.
[DORIS] I really look forward to reading your book. I was going to ask you for a galley copy, but I thought, I’m just going to go into this storytelling session with Marjorie. And this podcast will actually come out around the same time as your book. So it’ll be really good promotion for your book as well. So I was just wondering about some of your process and going through your writings. I remember you telling me what you did when you came home with your writings.
[MARJORIE] Well, when I was in Santa Fe, I went through all my journals and then I kept the covers because I realized when I started writing in little scribblers and then as I valued myself more, I started to get nicer journals and nicer books and the covers were cool. So I kept those, I thought I’m going to make something with these. And I did make a quilt, a paper quilt with the covers and some excerpts from my journals that were kind of colourful. And then once I was finished and I had pulled out the things that I thought were worth keeping, then I had a ceremony on my 70th birthday up there in the desert, and I burnt them all. I had a big fire after the sweat and burnt them all. It took about two hours to burn them all, and it was so freeing to just keep feeding them in there and watching them be transformed, you know. My whole life being transformed for the fire. And then I thought, I had bought a jar to put all the ashes of my journals in this jar, like an urn you know, like cremation. And I… but then there were so many ashes and the jar was too small, so I had to go back to the hardware store and I got a big five gallon metal pail, you know a trash can with a lid. And I put those ashes in there. So I thought I’m going to do something with these ashes too. So I actually used some of them for the paint for some of the collages that I started after I came home. But I still have the whole pail full of ashes – I want to do an installation or something, I’m not sure yet what it’s going to be. But I know it’s an element for creating something new with it. And I had a lot of fun making my collages and using the paint in the ashes for that last winter. But yeah, it’s good to make something new out of the old.
[DORIS] Wow that sounds amazing, what a movement.
[MARJORIE] Yeah… the past and the present and the future, they’re all together in one moment all the time. And it was like I was making that happen with these collages, right. Cause I’m making something from my past today and passing it on…
[DORIS] You straddle both the past, present and the future, and we’re really good at that as Indigenous people. [MARJORIE: Yeah] You know, and I love that. So I wanted to ask you about the title for your book, ‘Leave Some for the Birds.’ As an auntie, what does ‘leave some for the birds’ evoke in terms of a title choice for your book?
[MARJORIE] Even finding a title – I had one, you know ‘the movements of my life’ but it wasn’t right. And they were pressuring me to give a title because they wanted to make the cover. And my editor, she said, well keep going through the book and the line – whatever the title, the line will come from one of your poems. And that’s what happened. And it’s actually the first poem in my book, and it’s also my first teaching from my grandmother when we were out picking blueberries, when I was seven or eight years old. You find a nice blue patch, and it’s velvet and beautiful you know on the rocks and the moss. And you just want to go out and eat them. And I feel my grandma’s hands on my hand, and she says: leave some for the birds. Remember where they come from, leave some for the birds. Those were the two things that I remember from that moment. And every time I go to a blueberry patch, I feel her hand on my hand like that. But I realized as I was doing this that, that’s my first teaching. And she never sat down and gave me a teaching. She lived it. And we were living it in that moment. And it contains everything: leave some for the birds. Like that generosity, that sharing, that respect, that reciprocity. Everything that I value is in that saying. And remember where they come from, that gratitude for everything and not taking it all. And that whole thing about greed and sharing… everything is in that teaching, which I didn’t – we never had teachings when I was growing up. Like people come to you and they want you to give them teachings. Well, you do it by living. And that’s the thing, my whole life is about living, not talking about it. Just living that, leave some for the birds.
[DORIS] Wow, I love that because I think the old ones, you know, our ancestors, actually didn’t sit us down and say I’m going to give you a teaching and I’m going to talk about the seven sacred teachings and teach you about that. No, you’re absolutely right. They lived those teachings.
[MARJORIE] We didn’t have that anyways. Like, when I was growing up, everything even ceremonies and everything were still against the law. We didn’t have those things because they were not allowed. And not till the late 60s and when it wasn’t against the law anymore, that the revival started. And I wrote about that in my book as well, that spiritual, cultural revival that happened after those things were no longer underground. And people were trying to reclaim them and share what they knew and revive those ceremonies. So what happened at that time was, also because of people’s experiences in residential schools and jails, a lot of people learned their culture in jails. And they came out and they became like preachers and missionaries, and they were very patriarchal in the way that those teachings were being shared. And it was mostly men who went to gatherings and everywhere else. And it was always men leading. There was nothing, nothing from the women. Certainly two-spirit didn’t even exist, was not even on the radar at that time. So a person of two-spirit only became… showed up with AIDS in the 90s when our brothers started dying of AIDS. And then we started to gather and started to identify and support each other. But you know, it wasn’t something that was you know taught. It was lived or it was hidden or it was all of those things. So that’s why I’m saying, in the midst of all of that trying to figure things out. And with the 70s there was also the women’s movement, and the feminism and alongside the Indigenous revival of the cultural, spiritual path, there was the women’s movement. And so like, sometimes those two were colliding. I was in the middle of all of those too. I’m a Métis and in the middle all the time, halfway between the two things. And as a two-spirit I’m between things. We’re the people in between, I mean that’s who we are. And that’s who I am. I’m an in-between person and balancing those roles all the time. So, I’m trying to figure out what my place is in it is. So it’s all of that, I guess. So, you figure it out as you go. You live and you think about what you’re living, what you’re learning, and my questioning helped me to sort out what was going on.
[DORIS] Mhmm, so do you write about that in your book?
[MARJORIE] Yeah, that is basically what I’m writing about.
[DORIS] Your journey specifically as a two-spirit Michif woman, navigating her way through what we’re now calling 2SLGBTQ+ and… that acronym is really getting long.
[MARJORIE] That’s another one of those label things. But yeah, figuring out who you are, who I am in all of that. All along the way, that’s… sometimes one thing takes more place than the other, you know? Sometimes it’s the spirit part, sometimes it’s the physical part, sometimes it’s – you know, the mental, or emotional. There’s different rhythms that go through about which one gets highlighted at different times in my life as I explore different things. So if I’m in the, even my journey from religion to spirituality, you know. My journey from being a feminist to two-spirit to now an elder, auntie. It’s all different layers, right?
[DORIS] Mhmm. Did you also write a little bit about the religious part of your story?
[MARJORIE] Yeah, that’s 15 years of my life, I have to reflect on that as well. What it brought to me, and what I learned from it, yeah.
[DORIS] Wow. Well, we’re not going to reveal everything that you wrote about there because people will need to buy the book to read more, I think. So, I wanted to now talk about the poetry as a form of writing in your book. So I did a little bit of research on poetry and what it evokes for people, and why poetry has been around for a long time, like 4300 years. It’s the oldest form of human literature, according to Google. And written poetry dates back that long, 4300 years or so. But the oral recitation of poems goes back even further. So, it suggests that this longevity is a testament to the emotional effects that it has for people. So, you tell your story through a moving journal memoir poetry collection. Has poetry been an entry point for you in writing about your experiences, and have you always written poetry?
[MARJORIE] Well that’s what I found in my journals, but yeah. I find that poetry captures the essence of something. It’s like getting rid of all the stuff and coming to what’s the heart of something. And it’s usually like a feeling or a moment in time… yeah, it just captures the essence of that moment in a way that say it otherwise. Like sometimes there are no words, but somehow poetry is like putting some order to the things that you can’t say otherwise.
[DORIS] It’s probably a very difficult writing modality for some people.
[MARJORIE] It’s my natural way of expression. I found that it is more my voice than anything else, like I said. Because I’m not like a storyteller, you know I can tell some stories or tell you something about what happened. But really, my natural way is poetry.
[DORIS] Wow. So this brings me to my question around movements for justice, because that is the subtitle of your book. And for some, the word ‘movement’ might be understood as referring to the Indigenous movements that have happened over the many years. Movements towards finding justice. Because you’re using poetry, I took it a slightly different understanding… I was thinking of the movements of music, and composition. That have crescendos and ends with a big crescendo usually at the end. And I think when you think about it as music movements, as a movement piece, I think it mirrors our lives in a way. And poetry captures that.
[MARJORIE] To me, movements like you say, is always changing. It’s not static, like if it’s moving it’s not static. And that’s one thing. But I was thinking of movements also like rivers, underground rivers in our souls, you know, and all the different movements that are going on in us. There are also the actual social movements that were going on in the world as well. Like the Indigenous revival, the feminist movement, like all the different… the peace movement. Like all the different movements that I’ve been a part of through my life to change things. So movement for me implies change and yeah there’s different, sometimes it’s fast sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s up and down and all around. Like you never know where it’s going to go because it’s in flux, it’s always changing. And that’s the exciting part of being alive, is that you’re in flux and you’re changing. If you stop changing, you’re dead.
[DORIS] Right [laughter].
[MARJORIE] It’s like breathing. It’s like there’s… in and out, up and down, all around. To me, that makes music, sometimes it’s harmony, sometimes it’s discord, sometimes it’s upsetting, sometimes it’s beautiful. Depending on that moment in time.
[DORIS] Mhmm. How does your book position itself when you think about the future? I know you touched on it earlier, but in terms of sexual futures.
[MARJORIE] What is that? No [laughter]. I always had trouble with that, what is that ‘sexual futures’? I suppose, I do have… the whole idea of how we express our sexuality is always changing too and in flux. And we’re in a time right now where the young people are challenging our assumptions about that. And I honour them and salute them for that. Because that binary that’s in the world, the duality that’s in the world, it’s not us. And we have always had a much more fluid way of being in the world, and not in little boxes. Like, it didn’t matter who was in your teepee for when you went to bed. It was about how if you were a good person, if you lived a good life, and if you took care of people. That was what mattered. And people have gotten so into pronouns and labels and all this and… for me, the future would be going back to the past where we didn’t have that. To finding those places where we could be our whole selves wherever we were, without all these boxes and barriers. That to me is the future that I want to see, with how we are as human beings and how we express ourselves in our whole beings, sexual physical… you know all of it. But it’s not in a box, you know.
[DORIS] Right, so one of the foundational pieces in terms of the Indigenous futurisms movements… one of the foundational pieces that they use is an Anishinaabe term is []. The way they conceptualize that word, it’s meaning is returning to ourselves.
[MARJORIE] Oh there you go, I guess I got it!
[DORIS] You got it! So that’s what Indigenous futurisms is about – returning to ourselves and moving into the future harnessing that knowledge before all this crap covered up everything. And there’s a comment you made one time, in the work you do as one of the Elders at Feast. And you talked about… we were talking about rekindling or reclaiming. And you pushed back against the usage of those words. And you said we haven’t lost our way. The pathway is still there.
[MARJORIE] Yeah, it’s still there. It’s just like, people say we’ve lost it and no it’s still there. And we get it when we’re sleeping. What happens when you sleep? You dream. What happens when you dream? You know, you get answers. That’s one way. There’s like bushwhacking. The trail is still there but you just got to clear it. But it’s there.
[DORIS] I love that! You know, there’s certain things that Elders say sometimes that just really stick to me and that’s one of the things that I’ve heard you say. Among many things, that one really stuck to me. And so, in terms of your book, how does your book position itself when you think about the future?
[MARJORIE] Well it’s about finding what was still there in my own life. Like going back to that source in me. Like we’re born with those gifts, and they get covered over but if we kind of excavate it again, we find that our truth and our purpose and our way forward. And that’s what the book illustrates for me, is that my life has been about that. And the different ways that I try to do that. Some more successful than others. [laughter] But it’s about the journey, it’s not about the end, you know. But being true as much as you can in your journey as I have been. I can say I have been. And I guess that’s something. So now we’re… I think we both have an understanding of what Indigenous sexual futures is, based on what we just touched on. I would love to hear one or two of your poems at this time, and if you could maybe… yeah, just share the poem with us. And then if you want to give some context about the writing of that particular poem, that would be wonderful.
[MARJORIE] Okay… there’s so many possibilities here. I’m looking for the one about the two-spirit gifts. This is one that I wrote for the youth to honour what they’re bringing to us.
Hello cruel world
time for a little kindness
show some respect for difference
many of us never got to explore sexuality as children
many of us were not taught about our bodies our
responsibilities our roles our gifts
many of us suffered sexual abuse in residential schools
from relatives in our own homes.
No one spoke up for us.
Today I salute this generation
asking for different kinds of relations
needing Two Spirit gifts acknowledged.
mamāhtāwisiwak
spiritual beings
Gifted Ones
wanting rites of passage
ceremonies to take our place
digging through the colonial trash
finding the original blessings
staying alive
rehoming
bringing medicine
balancing masculine and feminine
tastawewiniyak
standing in the middle
healing our communities
making spirit whole.
My prayer: Creator, clean our hearts of any emotional poison that we have. Free our minds from any judgment. That we can live in complete peace and complete love with respect for difference. Open our hearts without fear to share ourselves in freedom to be who we truly are. Rally the love inside each one of us to counter the hate and fear all around, to honour the gifts of Two Spirit.
We know our names best when we are loved.
[DORIS] Wow, that’s beautiful Marjorie.
[MARJORIE] Yeah, that’s for the youth. Then I have the one I’m going to read to you but from my grandma. The first one in the book… where the title comes from: ‘leave some for the birds.’ I could read it in Michif or I could read it in English or both.
[DORIS] Both would be nice.
[MARJORIE] Cause I first wrote it in French, Michif.
[MARJORIE]
Li bleuets tout ronds toute murs toute bleu.
Blueberries so round so ripe so blue.
Prends les pas toutes ma p’tite
Don’t take them all my girl
prends les pas toutes
don't take them all
laisse zen pour les oiseaux
leave some for the birds.
O lies oiseaux.
O the birds.
J’appris leur language dans le bois
I learn their language in the bush
leurs chuchottements leurs chansons
their twitterings their songs
leurs cantiques
their hymns
de remerciement.
of thanksgiving
Oublie pas ma p’tite.
Don’t forget my girl.
Oublie pas d’où sa vient.
Don’t forget where they come from.
Je me souviens mémère je me souviens.
I remember grandma, I remember.
[DORIS] Wow. [MARJORIE: There you go.] Wow, that is so beautiful, wow! Thank you for sharing those two poems. Is there another one that you want to share? Yeah, one more would be good.
[MARJORIE] One more… okay. Let’s see… My hand… I’ve got my grandma’s hands, but that’s a little bit longer. I’ll get a shorter one, I guess. Oh wait. Mmm… Looking for something sexy here [laughter]. I’ve got lots of – [DORIS: Let’s get sexy!] Okay, my first kiss. This one here called ‘first kiss.’ Okay, probably do that one. I was 30 years old then [laughter] when I first kissed with a woman, that is. Anyways…
A world flew into my mouth
with out first kiss
and its wings were dipped
in all the flavours of grief.
O my darling
tell me what love can mean in such a world.
You touched
with so much gentleness
my darkness.
You brought me clarity.
Gift after gift I wear.
If I have known beauty
let's say I came to it asking.
To sit emptily
in the sun
receiving fire
that is the way to mend.
Sitting perfectly still
and only remotely human.
Did you ever see a closeup of rain falling on the water?
Droplets of rain fall
Change into spinning tops
as they touch the surface
spiral together
in a dancing circle.
Laughing and giggling all the while.
Sky is dancing
with meteors and flashes of lightning
catching the beating of my heart.
The wind
the night
the trees
caress and comfort me.
Fire warming.
Woodsmoke rising.
Loving my woman self
woman to woman.
Coming to my senses
with artichokes and songs.
Birkenstocks, plaid shirts and overalls
making visible this new sisterhood.
[DORIS] Wow, I love that Marjorie! Oh you’ve got a very poetic way with words, I could see those images. Yeah, I love that. I also – maybe we’ll close now with… there’s another aspect of you that I’d like you to maybe touch on, and that’s your more recent role as a Water Walker. I hear water in your poetry and in your movement there’s a fluidness. And now in your late 70s, you’re a Water Walker. Tell us a little bit about that.
[MARJORIE] Yeah, water… I walked on water for the first 15 years of my life. I didn’t – when I started to think about water, the waters… my first waters were the waters under me. We didn’t have a lake close by, like it was 40 miles away, Moose Lake, and that was far when they had the bush camps there. But it wasn’t a part of my everyday life, and we had underground springs. The water came from underground. Artisan… like there was between the rocks, underground. And we walked on it all the time. It was like part of that movement under me, like I’m saying all these underground currents. That was the water that I grew up with. And came up in the well, where Butcher Hill where we got… you know. So, it’s part of that fluidity and the rock that I… I’m both the rock and the water, like in terms of how I was formed in those first 15 years. Like with that rock and that water. And that bush. And it’s always been what I connect to. When I first heard about Grandmother Josephine walking for the water down the East [] and she walked all the great lakes and many rivers and for 17 years every year she walked around a body of water. And I always wanted to… she was one of my heroes, and I always wanted to walk with her. And I read about this Japanese scientist who did experiments about water, that if you love it and you say positive things to it, you can change the water crystals. You can change the water and clear the water and clean the water. And that was very powerful. So, grandmother Jo[] she died, and at the same time I was sharing that story with that group, and next thing I know – when we were talking about the South Saskatchewan river where we live, and it’s very in danger. And it’s a huge, huge freshwater delta in North America. It’s the third largest freshwater delta in North America, the river that we live on. And it’s been threatened so badly by every farming and industrial pollution and oil and everything along the way. So, they came and asked me to do a water walk for the river. And yeah I thought, ‘oh my god, what are they asking, I don’t even know all of it.’ But I took the tobacco, and this will be my third summer this year. It’s a long river, we’re still not finished, it’s going to take four summers to do the whole thing. We did the North Saskatchewan and the south last year, and now we’re going to do another section. And then a final one north again with the two joining together. But, it’s one step at a time is the prayer. When you’re walking on the land by the water, you connect with everything in a whole different way, and you’re in ceremony the whole time, the whole thing with prayer. So, it’s easy because there’s nothing else to do except be there and be aware and take one step after another. And I look forward to it because you’re really totally, 100% present to what you’re doing and being in that moment. And we so seldom are 100% present to anything. So whether it’s a bug that’s been squished, or a truck that goes by and gives you the finger. It’s all part of the prayer. And you just offer it up and pray for them. Pray for the water, pray for the land. Like it’s all a prayer. And that’s all you do.
[DORIS] Wow. Yeah, I think many of us don’t even think about that connection to the water. I like what you said, you walked on water for the first 15 years and so, here you are. In your late 70s, walking for the water. I think that’s beautiful and I want to say miigwech to you for doing that for the water. And I also picked up on it’s going to take four summers. Well you’re walking in Saskatchewan, in Cree territory, and they are always about fours, they do things in four. Like the fasting, you do it in fours.
[MARJORIE] Yeah, it just happened that way.
[DORIS] Yeah, so thank you so much Marjorie for taking some time out of your afternoon to have a conversation with me and I want to say chii miigwech to you and congratulations.
[MARJORIE] I didn’t think it would go by so fast.
[DORIS] Yeah, it went by so fast. We’ve been on for about an hour now and that’s generally… I don’t want to keep people much longer than that.
[MARJORIE] That’s good, well thank you for having me and I’m going to go do my love in now. Some food and…
[DORIS] Kitchi Miigwech to my co-auntie and friend, Marjorie Beaucage. You leave us with much to reflect on Marjorie, particularly when you spoke about how the title for your book, Leave Some for the Birds, came from your kokum, from when the two of you were picking blueberries. You talked about how we learned back then, without specifically calling what we learned as teachings. You said, ‘we never had teachings.’ Your grandmother did not sit you down to teach you, she did it by living it. This is an important takeaway for all of us. The old ones embodied what we needed to learn. We learned by living it. Another big takeaway for me was when you talked about what movements signified for you in your own life. Movements that you witnessed, movements like your journey from religion to spirituality, movements like your journey from feminist to two-spirit to elder and auntie. As you said, you are a philosopher poet who uses poetry to encapsulate those movements in your own life. I also loved how you honour and support young Indigenous two-spirits. You said that we are in a time when our young people are challenging our assumptions, when you said we have always had fluidness in our lives and it should not matter who is in our teepees, is spot on. Thank you for sharing the poem that honours Indigenous two-spirit youth, and for sharing your gifts with all of us Marjorie. Listeners, I want to thank you too for tuning in to this podcast. I hope that, like me, you took what you needed in the moment from what auntie Marjorie shared with us. Miigwech to you too. This wraps up episode 4. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! In closing, we would like to acknowledge our founders, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, for making yet another aspect of the Feast Centre possible. Thank you for tuning in. This is Auntie D, your host, signing off! Baamaa-pii miniwas kakinoodidme. Miigwech.