And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:52:40 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: funeral today for Gloria Ogima
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Thanksgiving Day Thunder Bay Ontario
I attended a funeral service today for Gloria Ogima who died in a house
fire last week, across the street from Shelter House where she has lived
for many years. Gloria was a street person with a bicycle and a flair for
costumes. I always thought each of her outfits told a story about someone
who lived inside her - some who had forced their way inside her body first,
her psyche a few seconds later.
I have seen her bloodied and bruised returning from a few hours on the
street, coming back to the women's 'dorm' to sleep. I have seen her sober
and riding in the wind on her bicycle. I have seen her smiling. And now I
have seen her powdered to whiteness by a funeral home cosmetician - looking
like a church lady lying in a plain wooden box.
The chapel was packed. The minister was quite nice and actually had known
Gloria which is extraordinary in itself. I believe he has been doing his
theological internship at Shelter House. Taped music played three times and
people's shoulders shook as they cried. Those who wept are still grieving
the acts that pierced and altered their psyches. Many more sat stone-quiet,
frozen. Some had grass and bits of dirt on the backs of their jackets. Some
were dressed in very good clothes. I heard later that this was the first
family reunion the Ogimas had - only now, with the passing of Gloria who
looked for cigarette butts and empties on the streets, always smiling
except when she was bloodied and bruised. I spoke with brothers, nieces,
aunts, cousins, sisters and heard stunning fragments of stories about
residential schools, foster homes, blood families being scattered and held
against their will in strange and toxic places.
Just now finding long-lost family members, one by one.
I had to shake my head when the taped version of "Peace in the
Valley" by Elvis Presley rounded the masonic corners of Blake
Funeral Chapel. Is he dead? If he's not dead then maybe Gloria will get up
out of that wood box and wipe that pinkey-white face powder
off her face and just look at all of us with a big grin. Is he
part Indian? Am I remembering correctly? What happened to his twin brother?
Why did Priscilla marry pinkey-white face powder pedophile Michael Jackson?
Gloria, if you're up there, will you ask a few questions?
We were each given a copy of a remembrance sheet with words for the
service. I scanned ahead on the page as the service began and read "O
merciful saviour - acknowledge, we humbly pray thee, a sheep of your fold,
a lamb of your flock, a sinner of your redeeming. Receive her into the arms
of your mercy etc etc." My blood just started to boil and my teeth
gritted. A sinner my white ass. Gloria never sinned in her life. Mike
Harris is the f...ng devil. There's a sinner for you. And all the men who
f...ed Gloria and left her face bruised and bleeding, rolled her over in
the gutter and took what was in her pockets, shook her down among the
cigarette butts and spit on the side streets and in the bushes ... that's
sin. Not original sin like the devil Harris, but sin just the same.
Then the minister said if any of you want to come up here and say a few
words about Gloria please do so. No one got up from the pews so I had to. I
had to get up and go to the front and say "I remember Gloria and her
bicycle. I wish we had a hundred bicycles parked outside this funeral home
and when the service is over we could all just jump on a bicycle - they
would all have streamers and baseball cards clipped on to the spokes with
clothespins - and horns, they would have horns and bells - I wish we could
all ride down the street on bicycles in honour of Gloria. I remember her
smiling and I remember her bicycle. And something I really have to say -
later on in the service we are supposed to pray for Gloria and call her a
sinner. Gloria was not a sinner. She was an Ojibway woman who was born
into a First Nation at a time when the government and the churches were
doing everything in their power to try and break the spirits of the Indian
babies and children - to try and kill them really. That's where the real
sin lies. Not with Gloria. She was not a sinner, never. It was a miracle
she lived as long as she did. Gloria was a miracle."
I knew I had blown the rest of the sermon for the minister and I didn't
care. How dare the word 'sin' be said over the plywood box of a woman who
should have been a kokum, a medicine woman, an elder?
Her spirit blew over all of us. She brought everyone together for the first
time in the light of day. Some of the street people came up to me
afterwards and said I am so glad you got up and spoke. I wanted to say
something about Gloria but I was too afraid. Some of the brothers and
sisters and nieces and cousins came up to me afterwards and said thank you
for saying that and I began to hear the fragments of the stories about how
they all got scattered, destroyed, about electroshock at age 10, about the
mother who died three years ago after alcohol and the pain of residential
school, about meeting cousins and nieces and nephews for the first time.
I heard stories about how the Ogimas (who are generation back medicine
people) don't know how to find an Elder, don't know how use sweetgrass,
cedar, sage and tobacco - but want to. The nieces and nephews are looking
for the teachings. Gloria. Gloria. Gloria.
"Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia" it said on your printed service
'remembrance'. That's not enough. You deserved more than three alleluias.
But you know what Gloria? The chapel was packed with your blood relatives
and your friends and the people who work at Shelter House. Just packed. And
after the gathering at Shelter House with sandwiches, and cold meats,
cakes, cookies, and salad - your family got together in front of the house
where you died - the house with the punched out windows and the yellow
police tape strung around it like a ribbon. I found a ladder leaning
against the shed in the back (next to the absentee landlord's beet garden)
and your nephew propped it up against the house and climbed up on the porch
roof and put the big flower arrangement below the window where you last
lived so people could pay tribute to you. A memorial, like the ones people
place next to the highway said one of your nieces, after a car crash.
Yeah. Your life was like being hit by a car, day after day. You would
stumble up on your feet, sleep it off, go out the next day and get knocked
down again, day after day after day. It wasn't the fists or the boots or
the alcohol that put you to rest. It was the smoke from the fire. But you
know what? Your family is coming together. And the young ones are
collecting the pieces of the stories and they are bringing the Ogimas back
to the medicine. Back to their power. Nothing to do with sin Gloria.
Nothing to do with alleluia either.
Sister. Bicycle rider. Black and blue. Yeah I'm angry. Another bed in the
women's dorm is empty and it isn't because your life got better. It just
ended. Tell that to the bean-counters. Tell them how the numbers get
adjusted. And by the way Gloria. Ask Elvis how he feels about his tapes
being played in christian chapels - making people's shoulders shake because
they can't remember how they got there in the first place.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
