by Rosemary Brown
This past month was spent reading about the lives of two extraordinary people: one a formidable Indigenous advocate, and the other a comedian and broadcast personality. Both are inspirational.
Hòt’a! Enough! George Erasmus’ Fifty Years Battle for Indigenous Rights combines biography and autobiography, with Wayne K. Spear introducing each section followed by personal reflections from Erasmus. Wayne K. Spear is Mohawk, and an author and journalist.
Born in Fort Rae, Northwest Territories, Erasmus was raised in Yellowknife from the age of one. His father was Cree, and his mother was Tlicho (Dene). Hòt’a! Enough! recounts his early years as the eldest of 11 siblings; learning to hunt, trap, and fish; and attending high school in Yellowknife.
Then we follow Erasmus’ political career beginning with the Company of Young Canadians, going on to the Indian Brotherhood which later became the Dene Nation, the Assembly of First Nations, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and as a Dene negotiator for land rights. Throughout his political career Erasmus demonstrated a commitment to grassroots community organizing, and the principles of self-determination and commitment to not extinguishing Indigenous title to the land. He never sold out and was a formidable negotiator.
Spear points out that those who knew Erasmus only as a political figure did not always see the private man who was known to be very kind and caring to family and friends, who lived with cats, built with his hands, and loved to feed the birds rather than hunt them. Now in his late 70s, Erasmus is a man we can all learn from.
Twenty years after Georges Erasmus’ birth, and on the other side of the country, Candy Palmater was born in the small town of Point La Nim, near Dalhousie, New Brunswick. Her father was Mi’kmaq and her mother was white. They were in their 40s when they had Cindy, the youngest of seven children. Cindy was a member of the Eel River Bar First nation.
Upon starting her memoir Running Down a Dream, I felt as if I had been invited to sit down at a kitchen table and have a chat over a cup of tea, and that feeling continued throughout the book as Palmater is a brilliant storyteller. The anecdotes from her childhood and later life are captivating.
Her book is framed around three themes; “It’s not too late; you will fail; and you are enough.”
Palmater is very candid about her failings and the many mistakes she made throughout her 20s in her personal life. In her late twenties she became a lawyer, a profession she left after three years at age 32. At this time, she also left a long-term dysfunctional relationship and began living with Denise Tompkins, who became her wife.
She then worked for the provincial government as a civil servant in various roles, the last in Indigenous Education. She realized during this time that she was increasingly drawn to public speaking and later performance. Several years followed of being a civil servant by day and a stand-up comedian at conferences at night and on weekends, until she left her day job to pursue her dream of having her own program, “The Candy Show” on APTN. She also appeared on CBC’s “Q” and “Because News”, among many other things. Her observations about the relationship between a performer and the audience are fascinating.
Palmater described herself as a Queer, Indigenous recovered lawyer who became a feminist comic. Sadly, she died at home on Christmas Day 2021 at the age of 53, succumbing to a disease for which she had been treated at St Michaels’ Hospital in Toronto. One can’t help but wonder what other dreams Palmater would have chased—all the while remembering that “It’s not too late; you will fail; and you are enough.”
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