Aboriginal Arts & Stories competition celebrates decade of excellence

It began modestly ten years ago as a way to promote young Aboriginal writers. Today it’s a showcase event that celebrates outstanding new indigenous writing and art.

Earlier this year, the Aboriginal Arts & Stories competition marked its tenth anniversary with a gala celebration at the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa.

Capturing top prize in the junior writing category this year was Andrea Lanouette, a sixteen-year-old from Surrey, British Columbia. Her story, “Tears,” tells of an Aboriginal girl who in 1969 is murdered while hitchhiking along the infamous Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia.

The winner of the senior category was Aviaq Johnston of Iqaluit, Nunavut. The twenty-year-old’s story, “Tarnikuluk,” draws on traditional Inuit tales to explore the impacts of youth suicide and colonialism.

The winners of the art competition were Mercedes Sandy, of Christian Island, Ontario (junior category), and Nicole Paul, of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, (senior category).

The competition is run by Historica Canada. Canada’s History Society is a key sponsor, as is Enbridge.

Here are the winning entries in the story competition:

Andrea Lanouette

Age 16, Haisla

Surrey, British Columbia

Tears

Sitting here in this worn-out, faux-velvet recliner when I’ve got my cigarette in hand, I always find myself feeling a bit nostalgic. I end the day here every night, and as soon as I sit down it seems my Caroline is always the first thing that comes to mind. It’s almost become a ritual, reliving every moment I spent with her, searching for some kind of closure.

I met her back in high school. She was sixteen at the time. I was the new kid in town; my dad scored a better job in forestry there, and so we dropped everything in Vancouver and headed north into the damp, foggy mass that was Prince Rupert. By then it was just the two of us. My mother died in a hit-and-run when I was just a baby. She had my older brother in the back seat — Dad said his name was James.

At eighteen I was tall and fragile-boned. Standing next to my father, I more closely resembled a pipe cleaner than a human. Worse still, I was a white pipe cleaner with a crimson Afro. Think Napoleon Dynamite, minus the glasses. Orange freckles dotted my face and shoulders, my eyebrows were transparent, my pants were about four inches too short, and overall it was just a catastrophic combination of features for a boy.

Caroline was born and raised on the coast, and she was just as wild and unpredictable as the ocean that surrounded her. She was well-known around town for being the sweetest thing you ever saw. The men called her Bambi, for her soft brown eyes and smooth copper skin. Females spat her name in hushed voices when she walked by, unaware that their animosity only made her even more appealing. Her hair was always tossed effortlessly around her shoulder in loose chestnut waves down to her waist, though I think the thing I remember mostly clearly is the cigarette that hung loosely between her fingertips. It seemed she couldn’t exist without it.

Her parents were both alcoholics. I used to take her on long drives when she was upset and her parents were drinking. I’d park the car off the side of the road somewhere on Highway 16, and she’d tell me awful stories about when she was little and both of her parents would leave her alone for days when the welfare cheque came around. She would be spewing tears of rage one minute, and then a moment later she’d be a silent. She held a blank, desolate look on her face when she told me about having to go to the neighbours’ houses for food and having to make up excuses for her parents when they were away. Then she’d blow me away by flashing a huge, sudden smile. She’d tell me how the neighbours knew she was lying the whole time. They kept her secret because native communities were “pretty much just like big families.”

“My secrets were theirs too,” she’d say. She couldn’t decide whether the closeness was the best or the worst part of living in a town filled with people who look, speak, and dress exactly the same. “Sometimes it’s great, but when it comes to meeting cute boys it’s a little ridiculous,” she said once. “You can’t focus on flirting when the thought of one day finding out he’s your cousin keeps floating in and out of your mind.” I’d try to smile then, sort of. I found it hard to wrap my head around the speed and ease at which she slid from one emotion to the next. Neither my head nor my heart could catch up to her.

One night she’d already smoked about a half a pack of smokes, and my car was filled with smog to the point that I could barely make out her silhouette huddled in the passenger’s seat. I wasn’t a smoker then. I knew all too well what it would do to my lungs, and so I opted to crack the window a bit.

Without warning she leaned over me, reaching behind my back for the window dial so she could roll the window back up. She said she was cold, so I didn’t argue. She stayed there for a moment, a little too close for me to keep my cool. I really wish I could crack open a window, I thought. “You smoke?” she asked — her face only inches from mine. “Nope. Never have, never will.” I said, trying to sound confident. She looked down at me with her big doe eyes then, taking a nice long drag before resting her delicate little hands on my chest. I parted my lips as she exhaled slowly. The smoke burned my throat, but I inhaled anyway because I could almost taste her watermelon lip gloss. Then suddenly I could taste her watermelon lip gloss. Shocked, I gasped quietly, and to my mild embarrassment I could feel her smirking more than I could see it. I was hooked on nicotine the minute it hit my lungs, but it was nothing in comparison to my addiction to her.

After an immeasurable amount of time, we decided we’d go lay down in the back seat. That was probably the most memorable part of the night, for me. It was nice just laying next to her and talking about nothing. I kept a blanket and some pillows back there most of the time, so it was pretty comfortable. I held her while she rested her head against my chest, and she told me she liked the sound of my heartbeat.

She seemed to be calmed down by this point, so I sat up. I figured I should be getting her home before her dad came after me with his hunting rifle. Everything seemed fine, when out of nowhere she suggested “running away together.” I laughed at first; I figured she was joking. One look at her face told me otherwise. Tried to explain to her that it was better we didn’t, that we’d never graduate, we’d end up dirt poor in a homeless shelter in Terrace or someplace, but she wouldn’t accept it.

She decided if I wouldn’t come with her she’d go alone. No way was I letting her out of this car by herself in the middle of the night on an empty highway, so I just kept driving towards home. That is, until she started screaming and grabbing for the steering wheel.

“Are you crazy?” I screamed. What on earth was she doing, trying to get us killed? I pulled over to talk to her, but she just turned and got out of the car. She shut the door with a slam and started walking in the opposite direction from where I was driving. Just a stunt for attention, I thought. Nobody’s that stupid. So I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t even get out of the car. I just sat there behind the steering wheel for I don’t know how long before I somehow fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning the sky was bright grey, which I had to admit was pretty darn good for Prince Rupert. That was when I realized that she never showed up last night. A sickening feeling took root in my gut and stayed there for the entire ride back into town. Please, please, please let her be at home.

The more I thought it through, the easier it was to convince myself she was safe and sound, probably asleep at home. After all, it was just like her to be too proud to ask for a ride home. She’s the type of person that was more likely to do things the hard way. By the time I finally got to her house, it must’ve been about 7:30 in the morning. I walked up the three creaky wooden steps and knocked loudly on the door for a bit longer than I usually did. No answer. So I went around the back of the shabby one-storey house, into the backyard, which was bigger than you expected it to be and peered through the back door; nothing, other than the faint sound of the TV in the background.

By the end of the day I had the whole town mad at me, but at least we were working together to try to find her. We had people calling relatives all over B.C. to keep an eye out for her. It wasn’t until three days later that her parents received a call from the police saying they found her body in the woods about ten kilometres east of Highway 16. Not far from where I’d spent the night. They got a tip from an anonymous source, who said they’d seen her trying to hitch a ride south. It was 1969 that year, and she was the first victim in a series of murders that happened on Highway 16.

Something inside me changed that day. I didn’t feel like a naive teenager anymore. It seemed I aged a lifetime in just one day. People tend to say that I was just a kid when it happened — “Eighteen is so young, you can’t blame yourself forever” — but they forget that she was only sixteen. Sixteen. That was when I decided I wanted to be a police officer. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t able to help solve what happened to Caroline.

It took a lot of hard work, but I made it. After a lot of gruelling training from the experts and an unimaginable amount of protein shakes, I bulked up quite a bit in that first year. I finished high school a semester early and went straight into training with the RCMP.

It’s fourteen years and nine victims later, and we still haven’t found the killer. It’s getting harder and harder to drag myself out of bed every morning, but I always manage after what seems like a hundred cigarettes and a hundred cups of coffee. A lot of times I look at the empty side of my bed and try to imagine what it would be like waking up next to her. Most days I just smile to myself because I know that there would be no getting out of bed. Everything I’d need would be in that bed right next to me. Then I need just one more cigarette to clear my head, and, as I take that first drag, I think I can almost taste watermelon.

Aviaq Johnston

Age 21, Inuit

Iqaluit, Nunavut

Tarnikuluk

Tulugak stood on the sturdy telephone pole in front of a church in the community. To the people gathering at the small building, he only appeared as a raven observing the view. It seemed as if the whole community had come to the church today; people were overflowing out of the structure, spilling onto the street. There was a mess of vehicles parked: pickup trucks, small SUVs, and dozens of snowmobiles. Weepy singing lilted out of the church as the people sang their sorrows. A death had come to the community again, and this was the funeral for yet another young soul that tripped into the idea that dying by one’s own hand might make their sadness end.

Another soul joined Tulugak on the telephone pole in the form of a smaller, less majestic raven. She was shy and hesitant, confused at why there were so many people below them. Tulugak waited for her to gain enough courage to speak. Several moments later, in a squawk, she asked, “Is that my funeral?”

He nodded his head in assent and looked at Little Soul, so crumpled and quiet. In her life, she did not often know happiness. Her spirit was a mixture of bland colours that did not even begin to convey how beautiful and inspirational she had the potential to be. She had let these colours overbear her, hiding the true magenta, turquoise, cobalt, and gold of her essence. She stared at the crowd for a long time, eventually asking, “Why are there so many?”

“Your death created quite a morose atmosphere in the community,” Tulugak narrated, “as all deaths do. However, the death of a soul so young and vulnerable creates such a tear in the fabric of the town. They can’t understand why you did something so drastic as to end your own life.”

A silence followed as Little Soul contemplated the meaning of what Tulugak had detailed. As the mournful sounds below them grew louder, more frightened and upset, they bore witness as a closed, non-stately wooden casket was carried out by six uniformed cadets. Little Soul remembered that she had been one of them and had had the chance to go on trips to Whitehorse for Cadet Camp in the summers, but had never gone because she would instead go camping on the land with her grandparents. Her fellow cadets carried the wooden box and gently placed it in the bed of a pickup truck. She could see their glistened cheeks from the top of the telephone pole.

Alive, she hadn’t been very close to any of them. In fact, in her final months of life, she hadn’t been close to anyone. Her abusive mother had been unbearably nasty; she’d never known her father very well. She wasn’t close to her siblings. Little Soul had found refuge in her cousins, but, after a while, even spending time with them could not overshadow how dejected she always felt. Most of her friendships had fallen apart, which didn’t surprise her. Growing up in poverty and a poor home environment led Little Soul to tarnish all her other relationships. She’d stolen money and little trinkets from the families of her friends and had alienated herself by saying things behind their backs, knowing that someone would overhear her. It wasn’t something she could control; Little Soul had to lash out, ending up with ruined friendships with people who seemed to care about her. She’d wanted to hurt them before she could be hurt.

Little Soul sat on the telephone pole, watching the whole community file out of the building. First, community members, peers from school, teachers, and childhood friends came out with all their sorrowful eyes. Then her relatives from out of town, her cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, and, lastly, her mother. All their grief-stricken faces stung Little Soul, but it was the vacant look in her mother’s face that haunted her the most.

Tulugak noticed Little Soul’s trembling at the sight of her family, the denial in her eyes. At first, he assumed she was denying that she was dead. Then, in an unhappy squawk, Little Soul cried, “My mother still doesn’t care! Still! How can she be so cruel to me, even now? She always hated me!”

Throughout his immortal life — as punishment for tricking Nuliajuk into marrying him and terrifying her father into drowning her — Tulugak had guided innumerable souls from their suicides to their next spiritual forms. He’d encountered an infinity of lonely and anxious souls. They were all insecure, hurt, victimized, and accusatory of someone in their human life, vulnerable to that one person. It did not surprise him that Little Soul reacted this way to her mother’s seemingly emotionless appearance.

“She is mourning her youngest daughter, Little Soul,” Tulugak cooed. “Everyone processes their grief differently.”

“She never loved me!” Little Soul repeated skeptically, ignoring him. Tulugak patiently waited for her anger to pass. For several moments, she mourned her life for all its difficulty, all the cruelty she had suffered. An abusive mother, one older brother that was adopted to their grandparents, a half-sister that lived with her father — none of them could relate to her or make Little Soul feel loved. Only in her cousins did she actually find some form of kinship. Then, her closest cousin had been flown to Ottawa by medivac for surgery from a snowmobiling accident. She’d been alone for weeks, alone with her awful mother. “She hit me and yelled at me, embarrassed me. She was evil! And now, she acts like she didn’t do anything! She acts like she didn’t force me to … to ….”

Though Little Soul drifted off mid-speech, Tulugak knew exactly what she was thinking: “To kill myself.”

Every time he heard the stories, Tulugak shrank. His life’s purpose had been about mischief, making himself happy, playing jokes on people, and getting whatever he wanted. He used to shift his skin into a variety of forms, from giants to insects. He would use people’s secrets that he overheard as leverage, use his various shapes to steal whatever he pleased, from beautifully crafted ivory snow knives to gorgeous women. He’d misjudged the situation with Nuliajuk. Ever after she had become a sea goddess through his malice, Tulugak couldn’t stop thinking about how petty he had once been. He’d started out as a vibrant celestial being. Now, he couldn’t grow any larger than the raven form he took.

Each time the souls came, Tulugak dimmed. He fell. He hurt.

Their lives carried such darkness and apathy. To live life on a constant edge, inching closer each and every moment that someone sneered at them, raised a hand to them, every time they felt lonely or foolish. Until one day someone just says one word, any single word, and suddenly it all tumbles down on top of them. They lose their footing on that cliff’s edge and they can’t remember the things that had kept them together for so long. Tulugak swallowed their painful lives in order to bring them to their next spiritual life in a way that would rid them of their terrible sadness, but doing this led him to soak it all up. He became more and more tired, more and more remorseful. Tulugak was falling into an abyss of absolute depression. Year after year, the number of souls multiplied as the standard of living became ever more dismal. Tulugak had absorbed hundreds of thousands of these suicidal souls seeking escape.

Still, Tulugak had to help Little Soul see that she must move on. “Take me away,” Little Soul sobbed. “Please, just take me somewhere so I don’t feel like this anymore. I need to … I need to feel something different. I need to feel better.”

“Little one,” Tulugak spoke, his eons of life resounding through his voice, “oh, little one, you must see. You will never be truly happy, in no matter which form of life, whether human, or spiritual, or as a god, you will never be fully satisfied. You have closed yourself off from that possibility.”

“You don’t know!” Little Soul wept. “You don’t understand what it was like! You don’t know how I lived!”

Yes, Little Soul, I do, he thought quietly to himself. I know how the forty-year-old man felt when he killed himself last week, after his wife of twenty years left him. I know how the sixteen-year-old teenage girl felt when she decided to hang herself a month ago. I know how the thirteen-year-old boy felt when he did the same thing four years ago. I know how the fifty-year-old women felt when she decided to drive into nothingness. I know how the eleven-year-old felt. I know how you, the fifteen-year-old, felt.

“I do, little one.” He inclined his head toward her, brushing away his heavy thoughts: “You have let your sadness and your obstacles become you. Until you break free from those, I cannot help.”

Little Soul whimpered softly to herself. Below, the crowd had dispersed. The family had gone with her body, off to the cemetery at the edge of town, whilst her old friends and other members of the community made their ways home. Stores, office buildings, and the schools were temporarily closed for the service. Her old classmates and teachers would all be returning to classes tomorrow. Men and women would return to their jobs until five.

Tulugak could feel her vulnerability, her undiluted despondency. She was sinking lower, but he was used to this. Tulugak hopped closer to her and listened while she breathed heavily between her sobs. Why, she wondered, why was everyone around her so much stronger while she was too weak even to hold herself up?

“I am here,” Tulugak began to explain, “so that I may help you move on, to carry onward and learn to accept yourself for who you are, that life isn’t meant to be perfect, that there will always be better days and better people in your life. I am here to help you see that there are better ways to overcome your obstacles. When you accept yourself and the world, you accept life and all its harshness, but also its joys. When you accept these things, you may move on, and this will bring you a happiness that cannot be shaken, no matter which form you are given after this. You could move on to be human again, or take the form of a creature, or you may become celestial, like myself. You can dance in the stars or swim in the ocean. Your acceptance of yourself is what will free you. Your acceptance of your circumstances is your deliverance. This will be very hard, indeed. It will also be truly rewarding.”

“But I don’t care about me,” Little Soul murmured, “I mean, yes I do … but I could accept myself and everything just fine. I just can’t … I can’t accept them. My mother, my father, the bullies. I can’t do that. They hurt me too much.”

“Ah, hatred,” Tulugak responded, “such an awful thing. Hatred holds people back. It victimizes them, accuses them of terrible things, and leads them down a dark, dark path. Hatred is your excuse for not living. There is far too much hatred in the world, I think. Too much hatred and not enough love. Not enough forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” she echoed.

“Forgiveness,” Tulugak looked at her pointedly. “I’ve done wrong, little one. I’ve done such terrible wrong unto others, none of whom have forgiven me. For millennia, those I hurt have punished me, making me pay my due for the pain I’ve caused them. Though they feel that they are in the right, they are causing me such suffering. And I forgive them, though they had sought revenge rather than forgiveness. I forgive them for inflicting their hatred upon me, because I deserved it once, and they do not feel that I have redeemed myself.”

“You think I should forgive my mother?” Little Soul scorned. “My father? My bullies and the others who were mean to me? You think they deserve it? Just like you think you deserve the ones you’ve hurt to forgive you?”

“I think everyone deserves redemption and forgiveness. It heals those who are unhealthy, mends those who are broken. You know … some of those people that went to your funeral are angry at you. They think you are selfish and cowardly. They think you left them behind, that you took yourself from being important in anybody else’s life, from their life and the future generation’s lives. Yet, they forgive you, because they cared for you. I think you deserve forgiveness. I think your mother deserves forgiveness, and all the others in your life. People aren’t born evil, they are moulded. Your mother suffered long and hard as a child; she doesn’t know how else to live.”

Silence bore the air between them. It wore on for a string of time that none could measure, lasting both a minute and a century. They sat comfortably, even with the thick tension between their hunched shoulders.

Finally, Little Soul spoke, her voice carrying beautiful strength: “Okay.”

“You forgive?” he prompted.

“I forgive them,” she spoke gently into the wind. “I forgive them all: those that you have wronged, you for hurting them, my family, my mother, my friends.” She looked over the town, cloaked in white snow, puffs of smoke wafting from chimneys, growling engines of snowmobiles riling in the distance. Little Soul took a deep breath, saying, “I forgive myself.”

As she flew away, light bearing upon her soul, taking her to new places, new life, Tulugak remembered that at least one of those he had wronged had forgiven him. Nuliajuk may have given him this job as punishment, but she also knew how rewarding and uplifting it felt to send a passing soul soaring into the sunlight.