Day Seventeen

Conspire. Jude 20–21

Who said a black man in the Illuminati?

Last time I checked, that was the biggest racist party

Last time I checked, we was racing with Marcus Garvey

On the freeway to Africa ’til I wreck my Audi

And I want everybody to view my autopsy

So you can see exactly where the government had shot me

No conspiracy, my fate is inevitable

They play musical chairs once I’m on that pedestal

—Kendrick Lamar, Hiiipower

Jimmy Sandy Memorial School, which houses both Elementary and Secondary classes on the Kawawachikamach First Nation

When I was kid, my school changed teachers so quickly that sometimes they didn’t even last a month. I lived on the Naskapi First Nation of Kawawachikamach, which was really remote, and a lot of the teachers just couldn’t cut it. Most of them were fresh out of college, and while they’d been enticed by the high pay, free housing and free transportation, most weren’t prepared to deal with the isolation, cold, and the challenge of teaching students who had a completely different language and culture from them.

Consequently, every fall a new batch of teachers would take the long 14 hour train ride to the village to replace those who gave up. It was like having a substitute teacher every year, at least for the first few weeks.

We often pulled a variety of pranks on the new teachers; hiding all the writing utensils, turning off the heat to the room, swapping names with each other… but our favourite prank was to pretend that none of us could speak English.

Naskapi people come in a variety of beautiful shades, from a deep auburn-chestnut, to a golden-amber, to others who are paler than me. The latter is pretty significant, given my Polish and Irish ancestry, but it allowed me to blend right in and be invisible to the incoming teachers who never suspected I wasn’t Native.

One teacher in particular we got really good. Her first day, she entered the class with her books and began writing in on the board, and then turned and asked us our names. Of course, none of us responded, pretending not to understand a word, until finally my friend Sonny stepped forward and pretended to translate for her.

“I’m gonna help you, Miss,” Sonny said, “Just tell me what you want to say, and I’ll tell them.”

“Well, tell them I’m very pleased to meet them, and look forward to teaching them about economics.” she said, clearly relieved to have help.

“<She apologizes for the smell of her armpits, and hopes we aren’t all offended by her poor taste in clothes.>” Sonny said in Naskapi, keeping a straight face. The class snickered, trying to remain composed.

The teacher eyed Sonny suspiciously, but went on. “Please ask them to say their names so that I can take attendance.”

“<She says the reason she is so skinny is that she only eats whitepeople food, and hopes some nice strong Naskapi man will marry her and hunt for her so she grows strong and thick.>” said Sonny in Naskapi. The class exploded in giggles, and a boy in the back of the class hollered “<I volunteer! I’ll make sure I make her a nice tent out in Greenbush (a hunting ground several days drive from the school)!>”.

The students began rattling off the most ridiculous Naskapi words as names, each trying to outdo the last, pretending to be in the wrong seat, and switching desks. Eventually everyone was out of their seats in a mass jumble of comedic confusion, and of course none of the names any of us were giving were on attendance list.

When it finally came my turn, I blurted out “Waamistikushiish!”, which means “white boy”, and Sonny just lost it. “Yup!” he said through tears, “That’s him! He’s the Waamistikushiish!” As he and the class howled with laughter, the teacher retreated behind her desk, glaring angrily at us.

As we laughed, she got more and more exasperated with us only speaking Naskapi, and began to get visibly angry. “I can’t stand it!” she finally screamed, slamming the attendance book down on the desk, “I know SOME of you have got to speak English, this is Secondary 4!”

“<Shut up, you skinny white mouse! You don’t know anything about anybody!> Maybe learn to speak before you teach!” shouted one of the boys back at her. The latter part he said in English, and the teachers eyes got wide. “I knew it!” she shouted, “This is all just a huge conspiracy against me!” and with that, she gathered he things and stormed out.

We laughed, we had won.

Later, during lunch, I thought more about what she’d said. Conspiracy. I didn’t know exactly what it meant. So after playing some floor hockey in the gym, I went to the library to investigate.

The view from outside the Library window

Sometimes when I would get bullied, I’d retreat to the library to read. It was dark and warm and quiet. I pulled the dictionary off the metal shelf and headed back to my spot by the back windows near the heater.

There were multiple definitions, but the one that stuck out to me was the one about uniting to work together to achieve a particular result. Of course, we had done that. We’d conspired to unseat her as an authority, and to undermine her.

But it also surprised me to realize that we felt the same way about her. To Naskapi kids, she represented a conspiracy of oppression, and of culture erasure. Here she was, coming up from the south with her comrades, to teach ONLY in English, using textbooks steeped in white Western culture. Some of the history books we read didn’t even mention Natives at all.

Though this was the first point in which I truly understood the word, I’d heard it before in the lyrics of rap music that had taken the community by storm. Someone had gone down south and brought up “The Score” by The Fugees, made over 30 copies of it to distribute to everyone, and from that point up until today, hip-hop and rap are still the top genres consumed by youth in the Naskapi nation.

Conspiracy was something that was done against black and brown people. It represented plans and techniques and methods to undermine and subjugate people of melanin, but even those who recognized it would get dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”, and ignored.