Separate, not equal: the story of Canada in a Manitoba valley

People say Manitoba is so flat that you can watch a dog run away for days. Not here, though—here, there is a valley, the parting gift of a retreating glacier. Along the floor of this valley winds the Birdtail River. It is not the mightiest of rivers; some maps acknowledge a mere creek. Still, the current was once strong enough to drown a boy. That’s how the Birdtail River got its name, or so an old story goes. Sioux Indians on a buffalo hunt had set up teepees beside the river. The sun was high and bright when the chief's son, a toddler, noticed an enchanting bird over the water. Its feathers were turquoise, except for its breast, which was as red as a raspberry. Transfixed, the boy walked to the edge of the river. As the boy watched, a hawk swooped from above to attack the colourful bird, which narrowly dodged the predator’s talons with a sudden contortion. The movement dislodged from the bird’s tail a single blue feather, which floated slowly downward, twirling in the breeze. It was falling close to the boy—so close that he reached out to grasp it. But he leaned too far and fell into the river. Later, too late, the boy’s body was recovered downstream, bobbing like driftwood. One of his tiny hands was balled into a fist. Inside was the bird’s bright blue feather. After the drowning, the river was called the Bird’s Tail, which became, in time, the Birdtail. In 1877, federal surveyors marked out an Indian reserve near the river’s western bank. The community assumed the name of its leader, Waywayseecappo, which means “The Man Proud of Standing Upright.” Two years later, a group of settlers decided to plant a crop of potatoes on the other side of the river. They called their new town Rossburn, in honour of the man who built its first school, Richard Ross. According to a local history written in 1951, “Nowhere in Manitoba is there a finer sight than the valley of the Birdtail, just west of the present town of Rossburn. It must have grieved the early settlers to find it set aside as an Indian Reserve.” Waywayseecappo and Rossburn have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. The town and the reserve are divided by a valley, a river, and almost 150 years of racism. Today, the average family income in Rossburn is near the national average, and more than a third of adults have graduated from university. By contrast, the average family in Waywayseecappo lives below the national poverty line, and less than a third of adults have graduated from high school. This book is about how these two communities became separate and unequal, and what it means for the rest of us. The story of Waywayseecappo and Rossburn reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. * * * Her mom gave her a day to pack. Maureen, aged 10, wanted to stay in Winnipeg, but Linda was tired of raising kids alone in a jagged corner of the city. Maureen knew better than to ask too many questions. She grabbed a camo-patterned duffle bag and filled it with a few of her favourite books and a disproportionately red wardrobe. The last item she packed was her teddy bear, a Christmas gift from recent foster parents. It was white, soft, and huggable, with a crimson hat and matching suit. One of her sisters used to have the same bear from the same foster parents, until her brother ripped its head off. Maureen’s favourite thing about Winnipeg was her public school, Greenway Elementary, where she wrote rhyming poems in the quiet library and had a quirky teacher who wore a jean dress backwards during Spirit Week. Maureen liked school so much that she tagged along when her younger sister, Samantha, had been forced to attend summer classes. One day after school, Maureen was running in a park, through a row of trees, figure-eight style. She raced with arms outstretched, enjoying the whoosh in her ears. “I’m Pocahontas!” she shouted to her older sister, Jacinda. Maureen had just seen the Disney film, so nothing was cooler than being like Pocahontas. Jacinda laughed and said, “You know that’s what we are, right?” Actually, no. Until that moment, Maureen had never thought of herself as Indigenous. Now her mom was moving them to the reserve, whatever that meant. “Mom, what is a reserve?” Maureen asked. “It’s where our family lives.” Maureen had already been there once, when she was seven, to spend time with a stranger named Maurice whom her mom had introduced as Maureen’s dad. He had picked her up in Winnipeg and then they drove to Waywayseecappo, just the two of them. He let Maureen sit in the front seat. As he spotted cows in the fields, he shouted, “Hamburger! Hamburger!” Maureen was relieved to have something to laugh about. When they arrived at her dad’s home, she was struck by the quiet. Compared with the cacophony of downtown Winnipeg, everything felt impossibly calm and spread out. She spent a lot of time playing alone among the trees, all those willows and poplars, and caught dark green lizards that felt cold to the touch. Under a canopy of branches, she came across a pocket knife, half-buried in the ground. It was sharp and rusty. She took it back to show her dad, who gently folded the blade into the handle and set it aside. After that trip, Maureen started writing her father elaborately decorated holiday cards. “Merry Xmas dad, I love you!” Maureen pictured her dad sticking the cards on his fridge, smiling at the thought of his brilliant daughter. But Maureen never actually mailed anything to him. She was too scared that he wouldn’t write back. Three years after that first visit, Maureen was returning to the reserve with her mom, sisters, and teddy bear, this time to stay. The drive from Winnipeg to Waywayseecappo takes about three-and-a-half hours by car, but Linda didn’t own a car, so it took closer to six on a Greyhound bus. Maureen sat alone in a separate row and stared out the window, lost in whys and whats and wheres. The flatness, which extended all the way to the horizon, left even more room for the sky. The bus travelled north and mostly west, through farmland frosted by snow. Linda tapped Maureen on the shoulder. “We’re getting close.” The bus stopped with a hiss. “Ross-BURN,” the driver announced. Maureen watched a few passengers get off in a town that looked like little more than a main street. “Next stop, Way-way-see-CAPPO.” Just beyond the outskirts of Rossburn, the bus dipped into a valley, giving Maureen a momentary flutter in her belly. Soon, the bus dropped them off in front of a strip of low-slung buildings at the side of the highway. Linda headed to a payphone to call her father, Alvin, for a ride. Maureen was sitting on her camo bag when her grandfather pulled up in a yellow Oldsmobile. It was so low to the ground it reminded Maureen of a boat. Before long, they arrived at a three-bedroom house made of wood and painted brown and white. Alvin had vacated it to give Linda and the kids a place to stay. Inside, the house smelled older than it looked. A film of dust covered nearly everything except the rocking chair and its green cushion. The walls were bare. On the upside, Maureen and Samantha each got their own room, which was definitely a step up from their smaller apartment in Winnipeg. And Maureen liked that she couldn’t see any neighbours. She could go outside to sit on the front steps and just listen to the stillness. At night, far from city lights, Maureen could not believe how bright the moon looked. Sometimes it felt like the moon was parked directly above the house, shining a spotlight on them. Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation, by Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii), published by HarperCollins Publishers, is one of five finalists for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, the Writers' Trust award for the best political book of the year. Two questions for Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson Why did you write this book? "Valley of the Birdtail began as a story about the unfair and unequal education on Indian reserves. To tell that story, we found that we had to go back to the beginning, and the book became a story about Canada. In the end, we found a measure of hope." Why is your book important and who should read it? "Valley of the Birdtail explains how Indigenous Canadians have been left behind, what policy choices made that possible, and what it would mean for Indigenous and settler Canadians to live side by side under a condition of equality. We hope every Canadian hears this story, but we especially want younger Canadians to read it because our shared future is in their hands."

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