Hitchhiking Adventures – Part 2

The driver was a huge, very big man, about 40 years old, with long hair and dark skin. He hardly managed to sit behind the steering wheel with his huge stomach. Him and the others were in good mood. By the others I mean his wife, their three kids, his brother and two others. We were cruising around, stopping at different places to buy sausages, snacks and also a 20-liter beer barrel. Everybody was in a good mood and the adults started to open some beer bottles that they bought extra.

I was in the minibus with an Ojibwe Indian family that was looking forward to have a good weekend. We were got into conversation quickly. It was a late afternoon on a sunny Thursday in July. Suddenly the driver stopped, rolled down the side window and called someone on the other side of the street he knew. "Hey, come over today, we are having a party. We have beer and a German who will stay until tomorrow." Oops, I understood that my plans had just changed then. Austin, the driver, could have asked me beforehand if I wanted to stay. But, because I really liked the idea of staying overnight with these funny people, I did not say anything. Shortly afterwards the same story, braking, cranking, another person on the sidewalk that Austin knew. "Hey, come over tonight. We have a visitor from Germany who will stay with us until Monday." Ok, that was already one, two, three, four nights. Well, I was not sure about the idea but I did not say anything. A few minutes later we turned off the main road. Now we were driving on a small road through a forest. After maybe four kilometers we stopped. There were just trees around us and the van still seemed ok. I had no idea why we stopped. I got a little nervous. Austin got out of the car and said in a solemn voice “Everybody comes out of the car!” We all got out in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if I should be scared then. I wasn’t, though, because of the children. Huge Austin wouldn’t do anything bad to me in front of his own children. I thought they would leave me there in the forest and I could walk back to the main road. Would be funny for them.

All eight lined up and became serious. Austin took my hand and while shaking it he said: “Welcome to our country! This is the entry to our reservation. Now we can get back on board.” My hosts were now even happier than before, knowing that they had made me nervous.

On the reservation

We passed by the first houses of the reservation. Some of them looked really nice and wealthy, some poor and in bad condition. Austin pointed to one of the houses: “In that house lives one of our four pipe-carriers.” He explained: “The pipe is so important to us. It connects us with our brothers and sisters. But our brothers and sisters are for us Indians also the trees, the animals, the soil, the stones, the water. When we sit in a circle and smoke our pipe, we always renew our connection with all our relatives. 20 years ago, we did not have a single pipe-carrier anymore. But the traditions are coming back, our people are becoming more interested again in who they are.”

A little later I sat in their home and we had a coffee, cake and a great chat. Austin did not stop talking. He explained that they are working on their independence as a nation and he himself was working on the constitution. He explained to me that for example the children will have many rights in his constitution. “Canada needs to negotiate with us, from country to country and it does not matter that we are just 600 who live on the reservation and nearly as many off the reservation, because on the reservation we do not have many jobs. So, a lot of people left us.”

Austin’s brother, probably 30 years old, had his own small house. He was without a job and without money. But he did not have to pay rent and he had enough opportunities to get drunk from time to time. His philosophy was: “If I work, I pay taxes and if I pay taxes, I support the Canadian Government. But by doing nothing, I can harm Canada the most.”

Great people and too much alcohol

The evening was very nice. We had a good time and I learned a lot from my hosts about their life, their traditions, beliefs and future plans. Later on, the brother took me to his place for the night, which was incredibly dirty, an unbelievable mess. The toilet looked like it hadn’t been working for a long time. The next day we went all together to one of the large lakes and spent a few hours on the beach in beautiful summer weather. The lake was so big. It felt like being at the seaside. It was impossible to see the other end of the lake. Unfortunately, we took the beer keg with us and Austin and his brother drank through the day. Soon there was really nothing I could to do with them anymore. I played with the kids but I felt sad because the alcohol started to spoil our day. For the kids it seemed to be somehow normal that their father and uncle got drunk. Also, in the evening, back on the reservation, not much happened besides the guys drinking more beer. I was frustrated and went to bed early with the idea to leave in the morning the next day. I was already asleep when the teenagers started a party in the very house where I was sleeping. The noise woke me up. There also seemed to be a lot of alcohol involved. They were so loud it was easy to follow the conversation through the wall. At some point they decided to go somewhere where there was more going on. They disappeared. It became quiet in the house and I was falling asleep again, until I woke up because some of the party people came back, shouting and screaming at each other, being scared. I listened and heard that some were involved during the night in a car-accident, that people from the party got injured and that the police was now on the way. They did not know what to do. They left again. Shitty alcohol, it can destroy everything.

The next morning Austin was not drunk anymore, but he had a headache, not feeling too well. His wife I have never seen drinking. After I told them that I had to leave my hosts became sad. The whole family took me a few miles from their house after breakfast, to a little harbor where a ferry boat took me to the other side of the lake. While waiting for the ship, Austin started to talk, to share everything that he still wanted to say and tell me about what he missed during the last days. He was talking about his traditional dancing group and how important it is to pass on the traditional knowledge to the young ones. Now I wanted to stay to keep up with the good times we had before they opened the beer barrel. But now it was too late. The farewell was very sad for all of us I think. On the boat I was thinking. What a pity. Such great people, yet too much alcohol.