Cruelty | Charles Joseph | EP 223

[Music] Hello everybody! I'm pleased to be talking today with my friend and brother, Charles Joseph. Charles is a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw people, who have lived for thousands of years on what is now the west coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia. He's an accomplished artist who works primarily in cedar carving and has produced a body of work within and extending his native tradition, including a 50-foot totem pole, which was installed in 2017 on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal, in front of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and which stands there to this day.

I met Charles about 15 years ago when I attended a little craft fair in Comox on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I thought it would be all hippies and candles, and mostly it was, but my wife, Tammy, convinced me to go, so I did. Charles had set up an exhibit there in a tent on the advice of his wife, as it turned out, and he'd placed a couple of his carvings outside. I walked by and thought whoever did that is a real artist, not just a hippie, and went in.

I told him how much I liked his work. I always liked that style of work, that native western style of carving ever since I was a kid. He showed me a photo album which contained an almost unbelievably large range of carving styles and motifs. That day I bought a couple of small pieces, but we made an agreement that he would send me a carving every six months around then, and I would buy it, and we just continued doing that for as long as we were both happy with the arrangement. That lasted for about 10 years before we started on a more major project together. I'll tell you the rest of that story as we continue our discussion.

As I got to know Charles over a few years, eventually inviting him out to Toronto, he revealed more of his history, and we're going to talk about that today along with discussing his arts, traditions, and sources of inspiration. I need to tell all you people watching and listening that this is not going to be an easy conversation, and I'm not saying that lightly. We're going to start by thanking the crew, Chris Wycott, that helped Charles set up this interview from inside his carving tent, Sugar Cane, just outside of Williams Lake in central British Columbia. The property owner there is Daryl Sellers.

Hey Charles!

Hey Jared, good to see you man. It's been a long time.

Yes, really good to see you!

Yeah, yeah, it has been a couple of years. So why don't you tell what you remember about our first meeting?

Okay, it was in Comox, and the art show was called Nautical Days. I got invited to go by my, I was reluctant to go at first because I wasn't sure what was gonna happen there. I've never been to it, but I decided I care to set up a table. At that time, the first couple of days there were barely anybody reaching my table. So I brought my bastard house and my fastest home bastard homes were there that day, and you and your wife showed up.

I said, “Could I pet your dogs?” And then you guys walked in and started looking at all the button blankets that were hanging behind me and all the art that was on the table. From that day on, we became close friends, and I love it!

Yeah, well you told me something striking that day or not long after that. I think you told me that I was the first white guy that you'd really made a friendship with, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. The reason for that, Jordan, I was reluctant to have non-native friends because of my residential past. I wasn't sure if I could trust anybody that way.

Well you told me the story, and that's one of the things I want you to do today, and that unfolded for us over a couple of years as we got to know each other. It was pretty damn harrowing to listen to, to say the least. One of the things we could do today is, well, I'd like you to tell your story right from the beginning. You told me about your grandparents and about when you were young, when you were in the hospital. People should know this.

Well, it started off as I grew up with my great-grandparents, and my mother and father gave me to my great-grandparents on my father's side. My great-great-grandparents were there, and my great-grandparents were the ones that grew me up, looked after me. Then when I got put into a residential school, they were there trying to retrieve me back because they took me from the hospital, right? Like the residential school people grabbed me from the hospital without three other kids. At that time, I was five years old, just turning, just about probably five, five and a half years old when they grabbed me.

Yeah, well you told me you'd spent quite a bit of time in the hospital because you got sick with a number of things simultaneously, and at that time, you also didn't speak English.

No, no English at all. I got chickenpox, measles, and lumps all in all, and one after another, so I was stuck in the incubator for quite a while. First, they took me out of Alert Bay, and I can't remember where it was, you know what hospital was, but I was in this plastic, oh I guess there was an incubator, plastic singer. There were no blankets on you or nothing because your blankets would get stuck to me or anything like that when I had chickenpox and measles. But when I was this young boy and there was nobody in the room with me, no one seemed to be allowed to come around me but this young boy. I always remember this story because he's the first one that gave me a toy to play with in this incubator thing because I had nothing to play with.

Right, so he stacked up these books that reached the crib that I was in. That's how small we were, five years old, so I was in this party. He stacked these books up, and he threw a toy over, and he couldn't completely reach over, so he threw it in and then climbed back down off those books. I had to tie my hand, and I guess I was excited just for that toy and him for doing it, right? I got to play with that toy until I got to leave that hospital, and then when they ended up back in Alert Bay hospital, all of a sudden, I got picked up by this residential school.

Well, I think you told me, I think you told me that you were on the dock waiting for your grandparents, your great-grandparents, to pick you up.

No, no, I was in the hospital in the waiting room and they were down at the dock waiting for a taxi, but they got there too late, right? I was already picked up by these people, and I never knew them. I couldn't speak English to ask where I was going. So by the time that happened, I was in this residential school, and it was a big red brick building.

Now as soon as I got inside those doors, my life changed within seconds because I got thrown to the floor, and I cut my hair, took all my clothes off, and put these funny-looking clothes on me and shoes four times too big for me.

And, uh, just a minute. Yep, and I was sitting on my bed. They put me towards him; I wasn't sure what was going on then because I had these funny-looking clothes on and I had a haircut, and they were treating me. Three o'clock came around, there's kids everywhere hanging on to my bed very tightly, wondering what kind of hospital is this? Why are they allowed to run around and I'm not? These three boys are standing there, there's a new kid; this new kid was me.

From that day on, those three boys became my friends, my brothers. We grew up together in there for quite a few years, trying to look after each other's backs, I guess you might say. They were teaching me the ropes of residential school, what not to do and what to do. I still never caught on because I couldn't speak English properly, so I wasn't really, couldn't really understand what they were teaching me, so I got whipped and strapped and thrown in the closet quite a bit because of that, not knowing, and it got worse from there. Just like I got hurt by a nun and then a preacher the following day.

So you were confused then throughout the years about whether you should be with a woman or a man because of what they did to you?

And I never, I never got to learn how to read or write properly.

You told me, Charles, that you had a hard time finding enough to eat when you were in the residential school.

Um, I'm only laughing because it hurts. They, uh, you could smell all the good food like corn cob roasts, stuff like that, and you've never seen it. It wasn't on your plate, but you could smell it, and it made your stomach growl really loud because you never got to eat like that. Sometimes your porridge would be moving in your, in the same cords for days until it's all gone and they wouldn't change it or renew your big pot of porridge until you ate it all.

And sometimes your bread should have been thrown away, but they gave us for sandwich baking, and all he had was peanut butter. To this day I have a hard time with pickles and peanut butter because that's all you got for your sandwich and your lunch. There were no apples or oranges or juice, you know, it was just that and water, and the water came out of the tap from the school.

You said you used to forage with some of the kids for eggs and so forth and try to cook them under the hot water taps.

We used to crawl around on the beach and sneak out at night and go down and get mussels off the beach. I don't know why I knew that, but we’d get these little mussels and then we'd put them in our t-shirt and fold our t-shirt up like a bag so we could carry it in and sneak back. You know that?

And then in the spring we'd go into the forest, always sneak into the forest, and take robin's eggs and bring them back to the dormitory and boil them under our taps under hot water. Little did we know that the mussels smell; you could smell it, so the dormitory got caught doing that, right? They wanted to know, “Where's the shells? Where's that food?” We, the whole dormitory took a licking that time. We got a strapping and a whipping because no one would own up because they knew we were feeding someone hungry that day, so we all took a beating for it.

You talked about the closet.

Wonder we're done with?

Well, when you’re done with some, um, I'm asking you, you’re sitting in a closet for five, five days. You start in the closet where you can't stand or sit down properly or lay down. You just sit there with your legs bent up to your chest. It's really dark in there, and when they, when you're probably out of the closet, it’s so bright out that you're black opera. Then you wake up on the floor getting kicked around, "Get up, do your chores."

Oh yeah, get put back in there again. And you're waking up from being kicked around, and then you don't even know what your chores are because you're blacked out when they’re telling you what they want you to do. So you get into more trouble because you don't know where your chores are, what you're supposed to be doing.

How long were you in this school?

I was in there for nine years. Probably three, four years of it, you weren't allowed to go home.

What did you think about your family not being there?

I thought I never really thought more of them. I thought, “What did I do so wrong that they left me there?” I couldn't figure out what was it that I did that they put me in such a bad place like this.

And then witnessing probably the third time, they tried to come around to come and get me, and I seen the RCMP escorting them away from the residential area and escorting them right down to the dock. I told them that if they came back, they were gonna be put to jail. Come back and try to get me, so they never ever came back. So I've seen that!

So before I seen that, I was blaming my grandparents and my dad because that's where I grew up with. I was mad at them for leaving me in such an awful place. And then wondering why they left me there, with the help of my older relatives that were there made it a little bit easier at the end because then some of the native people started getting hired to work there at the end of the one before it closed.

But before all that, you start to wonder today, where do they find all these mean people who want to be like that? And then the other one is, how could I be like them as supposedly a Christian or whatever? You didn't treat people like that. It sort of more drew me away from that then wanting to know more about it because of those reasons. I don't believe in God; I don't believe in Jesus; I don't believe in it because if there's such a thing, these things wouldn't happen.

Just as kids, you said recently, when we talked, that there’s been news in Canada about unmarked graves found outside residential schools again, and you said that although you'd recovered from a lot of this to some degree and weren't having nightmares about it anymore, that that sort of brought it back. And then you told me some pretty terrible stories about that situation too.

When I met you, Jordan, and a couple of other friends, I started working on things because I trusted in it. I trusted in the words that you were asking me to do. I trusted that because we were friends for a long time, and I started working on myself without going to a treatment center or places like that, because I do things culturally. I remember my grandparents’ teachings and cultural forms, that it made it easier for me to live my life without feeling like that because stinking thinking can kill a person inside out. You won't even know that I'm hurting because as a child coming out of St. Mike's, you start to learn how to cover up those kind of pains and cover up your tears because you know what people are like. You feel ashamed of yourself and your dislike for yourself and what happened.

You told me a story about what was done with bodies at St. Mike's and the incinerator.

No, Jordan, they would wrap these kids up, whether they died from hep C or tuberculosis, and wrap them up and put them inside this big thing called the incinerator. There was a big drum, really huge drum, about six feet tall, maybe taller, and you'd fill that up with paper and put that wrapped child in there, and they would make us light that fire, and the whole time it would stink, the whole place of that area would stink. It could smell the bodies burning.

Charles, you must be how old are you now, you’re 60-something?

Hey, how old are you? You're 62!

So you’ve had a long time to think about this, Charles. Why in the world do you think someone would do something like that? Do you have any...

You know, that comes from, Jordan, I’m nervous. I often thought about that. There were, where’s how much anger and pain come from? How does it grow like that, you know? And then I wonder how come these people never got put in jail for what they did wrong, you know? If that was me doing that, I’d be in jail for a long time or condemned from the world. You can't get a job, and you’d be on TV saying, “Oh, this guy's a rapist or a molester,” but these guys have hurt us. Not one of them is on pictures or that stuff. Not one of them being shown that these other guys did that through Christianity and hiding behind that skirt. So that’s the things I think about, Jordan. How come they never got charged for that? How come they didn’t do time? Here we are suffering for the rest of our lives, and then when you talked about what happened, like these bodies that they're finding today, nobody believes us. We were called liars. “That doesn't happen. People like that don’t do that.” You know, and that’s the truth is coming out slowly but there’s more to it. You know, there’s going to be more to it—like how many of those? How many of these people, young ladies that were in there, had children from them being raped and molested in there? You know, those are the things that still haven't surfaced, and why they’re not doing that. Why are they not working with these women that are hurt so badly as a child?

So you look at the reserves, we all walk around, and we've got children having children because we don’t know the difference from what happened as a result of this.

You got out of there when you were about 13, and you were angry for a long time, right?

Yeah, because I blamed the world after I didn't know who to blame, so I blamed everybody, mostly white people.

You told me about going back to see your grandparents and recovering some of what you had when you were a kid.

The best thing ever happened to me, Jordan, was having my great-grandparents live when I went home forever. They were there in open arms crying. It sort of scared me because I wasn't sure what they were crying for, but it was crying and happiness that I got to go home and stay home.

So I wasn’t allowed to go inside the house; they stopped me at the doorway, and I said, “Wait, Isa,” which means wait. So I stood there, and they asked me if I still know how to speak our language, and I answered them, and how I answered them was, “Yes”, you know, that means yes.

So my grandfather said, “Who could I listen to you? We're gonna go into the forest business, and you're gonna go learn who you really are, not what they thought you should be.”

I was really scared; I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. So as we were entering into the forest, my grandfather asked me to take my residential clothes off and leave it right there wherever it comes off.

We were heading up this creek behind Sam Charlie's house, Sikhi's house, chief. There was a creek behind her house, and it went up towards the back of the reserve, and there were these four big trees that were there and a spot to sit in the middle of these trees. He brought me there, and he sat me down and put a blanket on me. It wasn’t any blanket; it was his chief's pointed with buttons on there, and a story that told his story of what he had pressed on his in his treasure on his blanket. So I was really proud to wear that, and I sat there, and he gave me a pebble, a feather, and a rattle.

I’m sitting there trying to spare, “Well, what are these for?” and my grandfather says, “You can't leave this area at night time; you’ve gotta stay here no matter what. If this or things scare you through the night, you use your feather and your rattle and pray with your brother. You ask your spirit people to come watch over you, and you use your rattle to prepare the ground so that the spirit people can come and look after their circle where you’re at. When you get dry, son, don't leave the circle. Put that pebble in your mouth; it'll help your mouth stay moist until you’re done with what you do and until you're allowed to leave that area, and perhaps your bath and have a drink of water.”

So I did those things, and then after about the fourth day, these trees were talking to me. It was amazing that these trees were talking to me in our language.

Anyway, the amazing thing was that when you look at the 12-step book today that they used for treatment centers, they were doing it in their language but in fours, not one step but in fours to me. Then reading me positive affirmations about who I am and then nurturing that little boy. At first, I couldn't understand what little boy, and that little boy was me when I got first put in St. Mike's and then worked my way up to being able to handle what was going on in my life without hurting myself and watching other people suffer the way they suffer today, knowing that there’s just a little bit of comfort that you could find. You start that stinking thinking.

Alright, Charles, did you tell me that when that was happening to you out in the forest, your great-grandfather had people behind the trees and talk to you?

They were standing there, yeah, but I thought their trees were talking to you.

But when I finally got up and walked out to go walk home, these people were behind me, and I looked back, and there were these chiefs standing there behind these trees, and they were nodding their head, and that means it’s okay to leave the circle. I got enough; you can go home now. Tell your grandparents what you learn and how you feel, but when I was walking, I felt like I was on clouds walking on cars because a lot of that pain and pressure that I was inside me felt like some of it disappeared through the positive affirmation.

What were they telling you, what were they telling you? Why did it help?

Because they brought me to my childhood. They made me envision myself standing there, being hugged, nurtured, and looked after where I should have been. And you’re speaking in our language in that form, and when you speak in our language, Jordan, it's different. It's like, it means more than just the sentence itself; it means more than that. When you're sitting there listening to them tell you these good things about yourself, you start to look at what they're saying and what the other guy's saying because the weather is like this. It's nice out there; the smells in the forest, who you are, what's your native name. All that gave me strength for some reason, and then they started talking about who I should be today, what you should be learning, what you should do to make yourself feel more comfortable with life, and to meditate to the spirit people about strength and be able to learn from what it is that you're doing here, why are you here, and why I was there was to let go of this pain that I'm carrying still today but to be able to live through it without hurting myself or others.

Charles, can you tell talk more about what happened to you in the residential school? I know these are terrible things to talk about, but people need to know.

Just give me a second, yep. Watershed before we did this, before I knew we were going to sit down and do this, I was meditating to my grandparents about giving me strength here up in Williams Lake. My family and my wife and my children are from here, so I wanted them to learn the Shuswap way besides my own.

So I wanted to thank the Sugar Cane tribe for allowing me to be here doing this today because I'm working on some things for them about that residential school that they had here and some history that they taught me here and what I could put on their panel.

First of all, if you could think of all the abuses you can say in English or whatever, it happened and it really happened, and it hit it so well that people didn’t even know what was going on right next to them. I was five, five and a half years old when I got raped by a nun, and then I got raped by a preacher the next day. So they sort of shut me down. I didn’t want to be around that; I didn't want to be hurt like that; I didn’t want to live like that.

So they didn’t really learn anything by that; what they're doing, they're being very mean every which way you could think of, and they were tolerant Bible study time, and you never seen the Bible. So I really sort of don't know what's in that Bible because I don't care about it. I probably would have learned more about it than actually showed us what it was that we were supposed to learn, but you get brought down to the boiler room when they would just rape you and bless you and make you do things to them.

If you don’t abide by their rules, you're gonna either get really hurt or you're gonna be a memory. As a little kid, you get really scared of that stuff because you don’t know. There's nobody there to help you; there are no parents to stop them from what they're doing. There's nobody there, not even another child could help you because they would just get hurt with you.

I can talk about it today because it's not happening anymore, and I don't allow that around my family, and I don't wish that kind of pain on anybody—not even my worst enemy. I still, when they found out about these graves, I started having bad nightmares all over again. I started sweating really bad, my palms, and I wake up mad because of what I was dreaming about.

Hey Charles, do you remember when we talked about your dreams a few years ago?

I was a little kid in your dreams, and you told me you hadn't looked in the mirror for 40 years.

That you wouldn't look in the mirror?

Jordan, for 22 years, I wouldn't see myself in my face or anything because I was ashamed of myself. You practiced looking in the mirror to see how old you were; your dreams started to update.

I phoned you that time. It was three years ago, four years ago. I was living in Surrey, and I told you that out of the blue, I told you that, “You know, Jordan, I don't shave. I don't look in the mirror. I don't look at myself in the mirror, and I rarely comb my hair because I don't even know what my face looks like.”

And then it was funny that when I seen myself on Patricia's camera, “Oh, that’s me!” And then I realized I was looking in the mirror and spinning my face back to my knees. Frankie was okay in the bathroom. I made a big thumper, and I could barely say I was okay without letting her know I'm crying. I was crying because I missed out on 20 years of watching my face and my hair and my body get older. I missed out on looking at myself, and because of that, because of my shame of myself of what happened to me in residential school, I transformed my dreams to my grandparents. They're the ones, my great-grandparents—they're the ones that were teachers at that time.

So I thought when my great-grandmother went to the hospital when she had an injury on her left leg on the top of her foot, she's diabetic, had a really hard time eating, and they wanted to amputate her foot that time, and she told them that in our culture, when a person loses a limb or finger or whatever in this world, that you've done something so bad that you got to fix it in the next world next time. So there's no way you're taking my foot off! I told the doctor just to leave, call my family.

So she called me in and told me what she was doing in there, sitting there, figuring out to do that because I still needed to learn more from her. She says, “You’re moving. Wouldn’t you maybe not move?” Well, you're stitching with me. I have family members up your house right now packing you and your family out and you're moving on the last barrier, you're moving to Campbell River, and I don't want you to see me the way you're gonna swear I'm gonna be.

I want you to remember me who I am and what I'm not—not when I get sick and I'm begging her not to do that because we still needed her. And I still needed more knowledge from her. She said, “No son, I'm tired. I can't be here no more.” So the last fear came around, and I was like, “No, I don't.” I was on the ferry wondering what the heck I'm doing, why am I leaving?

And that was what she asked of me to do, straight up. And then when I came back for the funeral, I was, I no, no, I became like a drunk because everybody passed away. Seemed like everybody that I got close to or really, really close to and loved very much seemed to pass away on me. So I started using my jinx.

Every time someone got close, they either get sick and die, or something bad happens. So for the longest time after my great-grandmother died, I wouldn't take anybody as a friend for all that close because of those dudes.

And yeah, that’s how I lived for always. So I just sat in a closet, drank, and then started drinking with the street people for a few years, and then I sobered up because of my great-grandfather. He said that you have to come home and learn who you are.

How old were you then, Charles?

What's that? How old were you then?

17.

17?

Yeah!

You’re still underage, 17, 18 years old. And then not too long after that, they passed away.

Sure, I was having a hard time with that because I had nowhere to go and sit and talk to anybody anymore. No more elders to learn from, so I thought for a while because I closed myself in. I didn’t want to look for a new grandpa; I knew I needed a grandmother to teach me. I just, I was too hurt, so I stuck to myself for a while.

And then the first time I walked into a ceremony house after a few years and met up with Bo Dick and Wayne Alfred and those guys, and they woke up that carver guy inside me. Since that time, I just started looking forward on how to look better and feel better for myself and looking for people that are positive, so I could inhale some of that positivity, you know, and learn what it feels like.

Let's talk about your carving. You said that when you met Beau Dick and his, he was a famous carver, and the people that he was with woke something up inside of you, and that was associated with what you'd learned from your great-grandparents when you were a kid. They were artists; they’re all carvers—my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, and my dad—they were all carvers and were professional dancers.

I wanted to be like my dad; I wanted to be like my grandfather. When I got to hang out with the Albert carvers, it felt like I was sitting with them, you know? And then when I was sitting with these elders learning how to carve, and then I started sitting in a bowl and weighing the people that I grew up with, you know, and amongst another of the elder carvers like Doug Cramer and Bruce Alfred and watching how they create these beautiful things and make it look really easy, I thought, “Geez, I want to be that guy one day. I want to do that.”

So I started carving more and more and more, and then started missing out on my job that I used to have. I used to be a logger and a fisherman. I just recently sold my boat because I like carving more than I would fishing.

And the thing about the carving lifestyle is I’m still sitting here in Williams Lake, by myself carving, always by myself, but I don't feel like I'm by myself. Sometimes I feel, sometimes I get scared to tell the story that a lot of the stuff that I do comes from my dreams, and my dreams, my great-grandfather and my dad come to my dreams, and they correct me in my carving if I get stuck or if there's something that I think is wrong, they'll remind me how to fix it.

When you told me too that I was really struck by your carvings when I saw that photo album, and I’ve got a lot of them now. And, well, that whole project really exploded. We could talk about that later, but you told me that very often in your dreams, you dream in the images that you're carving—those animals and those figures and people, those spirits as well that you carve, they're there in your dreams.

Yeah, let's say for instance, I'm sitting there, and I'm working on a bear and a raven or an eagle, and I always start from the bottom up—from the bottom of my pole or bottom of my plaque—and I’ll work my way up to the top exterior that I always start with at the bottom and work my way up. Sometimes when I'm sitting there in my dreams, these bears come to life, jump out of the plaque, jump out of the wood, and they're there right in front of me.

And the designs that are on them are still on them; it's just weird how that is, and they’re speaking in our language, not in English. Speaking my language makes me feel good that I could practice my language without getting whipped or strapped, I guess that’s why that's there.

Yeah, dreams really help me out. I’m going through the dreams that I get from my great-grandparents and my dad. I always look forward to that the next night because it’s always giving me something that I wanted to learn, you know, teach from, teaching me from it.

Sometimes it gets scary because some of these big animals come to life. I don't know; they're gonna look in my dream or hurt me or eat me because the bears are huge, and the wild woman is huge, you know? These things are massive! Like in my dreams, they’re real! I mean, like the story that you’re tall, it’s not the carving itself; it’s the story that is given to us for that and the legends and how it’s dancing used and saying that's what brings the strength of that bear because it's greater than what he actually looks like.

When he's in your dream, he's big as a house. He's bigger than the car, right? You know what I mean? That's how big the grizzly bears are in my dream. And the wild woman, she’s tall as the trees! And you know what I mean; she’s massive, like big, big tall people. And then you got the book question that they're so tiny that they're under three feet tall and could disappear just like that.

Those come under my dreams, and when that happens, I always wake up, or I'll try to wake up right away and sketch it before I forget it. If I do forget it, and the reason why I don't forget my dreams is because as soon as I wake up, I talk about it, and I keep talking about it until I get it now.

How do you understand the relationship between your art and your dreams and your ability to stop drinking and your willingness and wish to straighten out your life?

And you haven't had a drink for how long now?

I haven't drank for 31 years.

I think the reason why I quit drinking and drugging was because it didn't go hand in hand with what I was doing with art and culture. It wasn’t there, right? It didn't have those feelings that you have when you're sitting around the art or watching the dance go on or the singing. It means more to me when I'm in cultural—it feels, it feels like it's my church, let's put it that way.

I think that’s how I want to feel; it feels like I’m in my church when I’m doing these things. It feels like when they’re singing and the drums are going, there are young kids to our elders. When their elders walk into the ceremony hall, whether they're in a wheelchair or they got a cane, that just gets put down, and it's like there's no pain in that hour because of that singing and drumming.

It’s just okay; this is how my great-grandfather told me one time that you draw the energy from the guests, and then when you're dancing, you give it back. So the age is going around like this to them through your guests and then on the floor to the dentist and then back to the guests, back to you, back to them like that.

That positive feeling, good feeling just goes around and running around. When you leave, you leave feeling like that—like you're that dancer; you're that singer; you're all of it. By witnessing that, and I think you witnessed some of those feelings that we’ve done at your house.

Plus that ceremony stationed back in corporate when we had our potlatch, and that was like, I was in my glory when those things go on. It makes me feel really good. None of my childhood pain surfaces when I'm in that zone.

One of the things I found really fascinating about the carvings was the relationship between them and your dreams; that was extremely interesting. But also the fact that these figures that you create are associated in your tradition with songs and with dances, and that your families have songs and dances that are specific to them and carvings that are passed down that are specific to them.

It’s very remarkable, and so maybe you could talk a little bit about that, if you would.

Geez, that kind of art goes back generations after generation, but we're always told when you first get put into a dance or a mask and your name is, you're not the owner of it. You're just a carrier; that you’re sharing it for your chief, your family, your treasure box.

So when you put all that in one box, it’s like the treasure box. You start to look in there and see what your family, how it started, where it created from, why it belonged to us, why don’t we use these ones in it. My grandfather's daughter said, “When you learn who you are, son, there's no end to learning.”

So when you're doing cultural work or being a native and doing cultural things the way we do to stay be a survivor, or a hunter, fisherman, or just being a father, those teachings are inside those carvings. And when I dream about those things, there's always something like—for instance, Jordan, when we were talking about your holes in your house there, and you know when you're talking about your bear?

So in my dream, that bear is holding you, hugging you, and letting you know that you’re the chief of your house, you're the speaker of your family. You’re that man, you’re the teacher. And then when the eagle, if your wife won, the eagle came to the house, that was your wife's story.

And so we incorporated that eagle and her and your son and daughter into that for wrapping around them, wrapped around the mother. You know, Charles, my friends used to call my dad Wally Bear.

And so that's interesting, and then I didn't realize until after you've made those poles for me that are up on the third floor. I didn't know this; I should have—my middle name, Bernd, is from my great-grandfather, and it's derived from the word for bear.

Yeah, wow! Good one!

It's amazing how things come together, and it fits the story both sides, like mine and yours.

Yes, it is amazing how things come together in stories at times, there's no doubt about that. Right? That story was already yours; I just put it in that form.

Right! So we love that third floor! Yeah, and same with your wife. That was her eagle story, so I just made it how I heard it, right?

And how I've seen it in my dream, and a lot of times my dreams give me my own answers and how I want to carve or draw something. And then I’ll show my class, like, it’s all from clients that say, “Have a look at this. It just came from a dream,” and my dream told me this.

So most of the time, they say, “Oh, we should go with your dream because it means something.” There’s a story that comes with that carving or that dream, and it follows that carving.

And I started just sitting, pondering how this story is going to come to life when I’m carving. As I'm carving, I could see it coming to life, but I can't see it when I'm just looking at this block of wood or this block. But once it starts forming into a totem pole or a carving mask, then I start to see that story that's coming from that; that’s when it comes to life is when I start to carve it.

Actually, I can't tell you this; sometimes the full story comes as soon as I finish drawing or carving it, because as I'm doing that, I remember stuff in my dream, what they're saying, and how I should say it in English.

So when you came out to Toronto, we started to talk about my third floor. Tammy and I kind of had this weird dream of putting a log cabin on the top of our little house in Toronto. You know, it’s an absurd thing in some sense, but that's really what happened because the hole inside of that now is wood from my great-grandfather's barn, and it's full of your carvings.

I think there's 30 of them up there— a lot of them from the potlatch that you hosted on Vancouver Island and that we had the privilege of attending, which was an amazing thing. And when you came out here, we won't mention who he was, but I introduced you to a good friend of mine, and he commissioned a lot of work from you, including that huge totem pole.

So maybe you could tell the story about carving that 50-foot totem pole.

Yeah, 54.

54 feet, yeah, 54 feet with the horns on stuff. It started off with, when we first, like you, when you first brought me to Toronto, and then we were talking about Sammy, and his name is also Charles. Another rest, he passed away on the train tracks.

Anyway, when you guys were telling that story at the dining table there and then you, um, I was listening to the story, and I guess geez, how do they know me already? I thought you guys were already talking about me, because you brought up the— they brought up Charles's name a few times, and that’s Jamie's name, and that’s my name.

So I thought you guys were already talking about me, so I thought, “Geez, I didn't even have to say nothing. You guys already know.” But then you said, “Oh Charles has a similar story to Jamie's.”

So I was looking at you, and I was looking at, you know, and that just be— and I said, “Just give me a minute; I need to go outside.” And I seen there were trees out there right close to the house we were at there, we were having lunch that time.

So I went over those trees right away and went out there and asked for my grandparents to come give me strength to come and talk about this over here way over in Toronto. And then I felt that big breeze come through, and, “Oh, yeah, they're here.”

I went back in, and then we started talking about that day about my residential school, and I just, I sort of gave it to you guys in a short form that time. I think you danced then too!

Oh, do you remember that?

It wasn’t long; no, it was really striking! You know, I was really amazed to watch you dance because you fell into it in such a deep manner that it was immediately entrancing.

Yeah, it makes you feel that way. That’s why I love the cultural dance, the way we dance and how we, you know, use our masks and what it is that I carry for my family today. It’s the Hamaza, right? And that's a very important dance that our chief carries, and he puts it on his son to become the next chief, up and coming chief.

I was really, really thankful and grateful and honored to be asked to be the Hamaza in our apartments that we had with you guys that are in.

Well, it was 2016, I think; or was it ’15?

But that was from the Joseph side of the family, and I was married my great-grandfather Billy Joseph’s chieftainship. My auntie and uncle asked if I could be that dancer that day because we wanted to put it on my son and then put it on—oh, there's their son because it belonged in that side of the family.

But the family said, “We want it on you.” I mean, I said, I got thrown back by that because I thought they would point at my son, but he said, “No, we want it on you first, so you could put it on him later down the road.”

Oh! But it belongs to your son, and he says, “No, we want it on you.” My son can't dance; my son’s not ready for culture. So I stood up, and that’s probably around the first time I ever really started crying and hugging people was around that time, and I still do that today.

Now, oh monster, I'm not a huggy kind of guy; I didn't like it.

Yeah, no wonder!

Anyways, but at that time, I was honored to be that guy, and then when I started dancing with Bo Dick and Wayne Alfred's family and different ceremonies up in our hometown, like there must have been invited to about maybe 50 different classes in my lifetime.

So yeah, so when I, well, as you know, when I get into regalia and become myself, I transform. I feel really good; I got no arthritis, I got no pain. I’m really happy; my heart just jumps for joy when I'm doing cultural work. It makes you feel really good; it makes you let go of all that stuff, right?

You know? Yeah, it puts you in a different place. It's partly why I like having that art around, well, and good art, period, because it has that capability to— that beauty and that depth to take you somewhere better.

Yeah, now this pole, you carved some Christian religious figures into that pole.

Okay, uh, I'll tell you a short story on starting from the bottom of the pole. The bottom of the pole is the owners of the bull and family. I'm still not allowed to use names because of the media and stuff, but anyway, and then on after that, it's there; it's the cedar rope.

I carved like you see the rope underneath the bottom of the woman's legs, and that cedar rope is true for safety or wherever that pole goes up, built because us as Kwakwaka'wakw people will use cedar for dancing and ceremony and for healing.

So that’s why I put that there. And then there's a woman on top of that cedar rope, and she's kneeling down, and she has her arm out, and under each arm, she's got a boy and a girl, and that’s welcoming the kids home from residential school.

And then above that, it’s a whale, and on the whale, it has faces on that whale, and those faces represent the children that got adopted out and never got to come home and be themselves. And why it's on the whale is because that whale goes around the world and comes back to where it belongs.

I thought that was fitting that the children did that, went somewhere and then came back and didn’t feel like they belonged. So I put that on the whale. And then after the whale, I made a raven, and that raven, you know, this was a trickster, you know?

They’re very smart; ravens like to play too. So I thought what would be spitting on that raven was I put a preacher and a nun on the wings, and then I put a cross down the middle of that raven's chest.

The reason why I used the raven was because of how these Christian people tricked our people into taking our elders first, and it didn’t work, so they put the elders back and took the children away and put us in these residential schools.

But they first they tried to do that with elders and then they put them back because they didn’t—were kids are still learning, so they put the elders back and took the kids away, and that’s when they found it as more effective.

So you know it’s the thing about when your life changes over and over like when I first met you guys, I wanted to live like that. I want to feel like that.

So I look for people like that now; I look for positive people that feel good about themselves, and I'm not trying to brag or anything, but it feels good to feel like that. It makes me feel good that when I'm like that, I can carve happy masks.

I’m not frustrated inside or hurt inside where my mask is gonna feel like that, right? Or am I crying? So when I do totem poles, I want to feel like that, and when I'm not feeling good about things, I won't go to that pole the next day or something. If I'm feeling down or there's something sad or a death going on, I won't go around my art until I feel better.

I don’t know why I do that; it’s just something out of respect for the spirit people or respect for the teachers that taught me the art. I guess that’s learning how to deal with respect in that way.

Look, there's, with alcoholism, there’s a scientific literature on alcohol abuse, and one of the most effective treatments for alcohol abuse is spiritual transformation. It’s the only treatment so to speak for alcoholism that's really been validated.

And so that's really quite something. You know, you said that you found something that was more important fundamentally.

I mean, there’s more to it than that, but that's to be taken seriously, you know? I quit drinking when I was about 28, and the reason I quit was because I was writing. Well, there were a couple of reasons; I was having kids, and I wasn’t going to drink when I had little kids; that just wasn't a good idea.

And you know, the only time I was doing things that I would be ashamed of the next day or a week later or something was always if I was drinking. And so I thought, “Well, maybe I don't want to do things I'm ashamed of anymore.”

But also because I was writing and I was writing about mythology and stories and all of that, it was very hard work and very emotionally demanding, but I couldn't do it well if I was hungover.

And so I thought, “Well, which do I want to be? Do I want to write this book or do I want to be hungover?” And so I stopped, and I stopped for 30 years, I guess. I drank a little bit again when I was in my early 50s, but I quit again after that because I found that even though about 25 years had gone by, if I drank again, I usually drank too much, and then I, you know, was likely to do something stupid, and I thought, “Well, no, it’s just not worth it at all.”

It's not worth it.

Yeah, I'm laughing with you.

Yeah, I know, I understand. And so how many people worked with you on that, on those big poles that you produced?

I mean, you produced some eight-footers for me, eight and ten feet, I guess, the welcome figure must be nine feet.

Well, when I worked on your stuff, just the family: me, Oceana, James, and Frankie. And when I worked on that big 54-foot project, there was Oceana, James, Frankie, myself, my brother Leonard, my brother Gordon, my late nephew Johnny, and my nephew Mike, and Orbit and Leonard Jr.

And I said, I said, if it was like I’ve always done, there’s always family effort, right? I make sure I keep my family involved, and then they keep in touch with culture, and then when we had that ceremony, a lot of my family members didn't make it, but when the ones that did make it, they were never introduced to the culture because they lived in Vancouver all their lives and were urbanized.

So when they got to come home, there was a big teaching for them too, right? Because they were, you've never ever been involved in it. So it's good to see that it works.

Was it good for them to do the carving?

Oh, Jesus! To see how they felt when it got stood up, they were so proud of being part of that, you know what I mean? And I was proud to see how happy they looked when they seen the creation that we did together as a family stood up somewhere where we're never going to probably go again, you know? Who knows?

Yeah, that was it.

And so what do you think about it being in Montreal and the busiest street there? Pretty much Sherbrooke's a major street. I mean, it’s one of the main streets of Montreal; it’s a beautiful street, and it’s in front of the Museum of Fine Art, which is really something because that's definitely one of the finest museums in Canada.

It doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon, no.

Well, I mentioned to them that, you know, one day you guys should return this pole and get your own. [Laughter]

But, um, I tried to approach them with another idea, that I would like to take a log there to the Mohawk people or raw log and then work with the Mohawk artist and see what we could come up with.

And that’s one of the ideas I had, just to rekindle what our elders did before us, you know, and get back to being related in all the nations across Canada, I guess, right?

So when you've approached the museum with that idea, what happened?

Because that's a great idea! Do you have Mohawk carvers that are interested?

I knew of a couple that were, and then we were gonna first get that idea on the table. Then I was gonna bring it to the Mohawk chiefs that I invited to the poll region and then see what would become of it.

Yeah, so I haven’t heard nothing back from that yet, but one good thing that came out of that since that time—though as they had this thing that they were talking about the totem pole inside the museum, and then they had people make footprints and what they thought about the story of the pole, and then they leave their footprint behind.

I think that's one of the things that they did there, and then on the 30th of last month, they weren’t national with the story of the pole. I haven’t got any feedback on my site and stuff about it yet, but soon, I guess.

So can I ask you a political question or two?

Yeah, why not?

Well, you know, Canada is hypothetically engaging in this soul-searching process, this reconciliation process, and I'm kind of curious about, I mean, there are parts of it that I'm really not very—I don’t feel good about.

Like for example, now before most ceremonies, before my most public events in Eastern Canada, there is a statement about the land that these people, this land once belonged to.

I don’t like that because it seems hypocritical to me and, and not real, and I think it's showy and false.

Well, that might just be me, but I’m pretty curious about you looking at this from—well, from a completely different perspective than me.

And like, what do you think about this reconciliation effort, and has it been helpful to you and to the people you know? And is it real?

Okay, Jordan, I need to ask you something. This has been on my mind for a while, and I wanted to ask you that quite a while ago, but what does that mean, “reconciliation”?

I've noticed that in my mind that that means two parties that are—are two parties that are saying they did something wrong and trying to fix it. That's what my thoughts of reconciliation mean.

But that’s why I don’t agree with it because we’re not the ones in the fall here; they are.

I’m going to tell you a story, Charles. Okay? I want to tell you a story. This is a story that a friend of mine who committed suicide wrote. He lived up in High Prairie, High Level, I think it was High Level in Alberta, and there were a lot of native kids there, and he was probably around 10 or so.

He used to get beat up fairly regularly, and it was often by the native kids, and he wouldn't fight back. And the reason he wouldn't fight back was because he felt guilty.

And that guilt, you know, that guilt about—I don't know, it’s the horrible hand of history, I suppose, Charles. That guilt, like that, eventually ate him up and killed him. Now he had other problems but—

Okay, where did his guilt come from?

Well, he felt that he was an interloper, and he was an occupier, and he didn’t have the right to fight back. And so he wouldn't fight back, and you know, then he decided when he was a teenager that anything he did that was sort of masculine and achievement-oriented and ambitious was wrong because it was associated with all this historical cruelty.

And so he just stopped himself from doing anything, and it killed him. It’s not that uncommon, you know. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot.

You look into the history of mankind and it’s pretty damn bleak, you know? There’s a lot of horror in the past; a lot of bloodshed, a lot of warfare, a lot of cruelty, a lot of malevolence, and we all have to contend with that.

And like for me, the—you asked about reconciliation. For me, it’s getting to know you! You know, I had some native friends when I grew up. It was hard; there was a big gap.

Yeah. You know, I'll tell you a story. I'll remember this man. So I had this friend—off and on friend. He was a native guy; his name was Dennis Helly. I think Dennis is still alive.

And we kind of had a friendship in grade six, and he was a big rough kid and I was a bit afraid of him, but he was a good guy. Good-looking kid. He was smart, but—and we were trying to have a friendship, and I’d invited him to go to the movie with me that night.

And then we were sitting in class, and my dad was teaching the class, and Dennis was chewing gum. My dad said, “Dennis, stop chewing that gum; you sound like a cow.” And I said, “Dennis the cow! Ha ha!”

And then he looked at me, and he meant, “You’re dead after school!” And so I was terrified the whole damn day!

And after school, I zipped out by where the bikes were, and Dennis came after me, and I was sort of running around the bikes and trying to stay away from him, and I sort of hid behind this—I don't know what it was; there was some structure there, and he was on the other side of it.

And I said, “Dennis, you know, we could stop fighting. I'd still like to go to the movie with you tonight.”

And he broke into tears and ran home!

Yeah, so reconciliation—that’s a hard thing, eh?

Yeah, and maybe that’s kind of what you and I are doing.

I think so. But what I wanted to do—it’s not easy, you know? Because there’s a lot of bad blood and there’s a lot of horror and none of us really know how to do it, you know? We come from very different places, and we don’t know how to make that work.

It’s not a simple thing or why it happened. You know, why are we so separated?

And then the greatest thing is now we’re together—

Not just, well, that’s something, isn’t it? And the totem pole is in Montreal, and that’s something too.

We’re not just friends; we’re family.

Yeah, that's what I mean about the greatest thing for me is how we reconnect is right and how you and I met.

And why!

You know, I think a lot of this sort of thing has to be done at the individual level. You know?

And then what I love about it is that we stay, we’re still connected; we’re still growing.

Yeah, we’re doing our best, man.

Yeah, I love that it makes me feel good that I’m part of that.

Yeah, me too! It’s really been something, Charles. This, all these things that we've been through, it was hard. You know, I’ve been sick for about three years now, and I haven't talked to you much, didn’t have the stamina for it, you know? I was pretty isolated myself from pretty much everybody except my immediate family.

But we’ve been on some great adventures, you and me—that potlatch was really something, that ceremony. You know when you and your guys came, and you and your wife too, your whole family came to my house to do the ceremony to open the third floor? That was the same day.

So that was when I was inducted into your family! You know, people have made fun of that and said that I was lying, and well, it’s not a lie, and that was the same day that I was being accused of being a bigot and a racist at the university.

It was the same goddamn day!

The same day! The debate—there was a big debate there when everything blew up around me. So I went from this debate where, you know, I was basically being accused of being a racist and a bigot to this ceremony in my house where I was inducted into your family. It was a pretty damn weird day, I can tell you that!

Okay, we’ve got to change that word from abducted!

When we were, when we chose our family, we had a meeting, and we had a meeting with all of my Joseph family and some hereditary chiefs about adopting you and your family into our family in the ceremony house.

And then the chiefs had asked me what was their reason for doing that, and I explained to them how we met and how long I've been friends with you and your wife and kids and then the importance of hanging on to that friendship and the importance of what I was not just sharing with you, but also learning from you and your family and what it was that I really was yearning for was that living in a happy positive way that you guys lived in.

And I wanted some of that hungry part, so I wanted to inhale all I could from you guys and learn from it, and it makes me feel really good to be part of that because who would have thought that I would understand those feelings?

But I do, and it's an awesome feeling to have.

Is it being able to have positiveness in your feelings, even if it’s just for a moment?

Yeah, yeah. I know, Charles. I'm going to say goodbye for today.

Hey, Jordan, it’s been awesome talking, and it's good to see you, bro! And you keep up the good work, hey! I'm looking forward to seeing what you produce in your dreams for my new house!

[Music]