Clarence Fisher's Story, Beyond Addiction: The Power of Culture and Community in Healing with Ancestral Wisdom

#017 - The critical role of Indigenous spirituality and cultural traditions in healing from addiction and trauma. It highlights Clarence Fisher's personal recovery journey and his work with others facing similar challenges. The conversation delves into the impacts of historical traumas, such as colonialism and residential schools, on Indigenous communities' current struggles, particularly with addiction in Thunder Bay. Emphasizing the importance of reconnecting with Indigenous culture, language, land, and explores how these elements, along with community support and self-determination efforts, are pivotal in addressing the root causes of addiction and trauma. The discussion underscores the need for a holistic approach to healing that incorporates both individual and collective histories and spiritual practices.

Transcript

 So I began to talk about those things, and I began to understand them, and I had all these tools, right? And I was living on some level of sobriety. But there's another aspect of addiction that nobody recognizes, 

yeah, it's on Spotify. And it's on Apple as well. And we're doing a We're up there. I think when you search like addiction or the buzzwords like alcohol, like we show up.  Yeah. We show up.

 And we've been running for about three months. Yeah. 16 episodes in. Yeah. But it's just 

been easy. And I talking about different topics with regards to addiction and recovery so far. So you're the very first first guests that we're bringing on which is exciting. Yeah.

Clarence. 

Cool. Yeah. Clarence, can you maybe explain what that process is just for our listeners? 

So we I lit a smudge here and traditional people, we we light smudges. We have four medicines. We have the tobacco that we use for prayer. We have our sweet grass and our cedar and our sage.

And those things primarily we burn as smudge. And smudging is to waft the smoke and to ground you, bring you, Personally, it grounds me. It brings me to the space I'm in, a cleansing ceremony, if you will. And people will explain it as a ceremony in itself, right? 

And yeah, it, primarily it's the it's a cleansing ceremony. Okay. So I use it to bring me here and, and leave Other things there. Okay. Yeah, mentally, 

Spiritually. Okay. Yeah, and because that's one of the things I've seen across the country is that process of smudging from various indigenous groups?

 In the Arctic, all the way to British Columbia, where I grew up. And so  it makes sense the way you explain it. It's a form of  cleansing.  And, I think every culture, every ethnic group out there has some sort of method of doing that, just slightly different.

Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned that because  I was online and I commented on a on a video. I think it was a tick tock video and And it was these Japanese people, and they were going into the temple, and they were, before they went into the temple, they stopped at this big ol smudge, and they were doing it, and I'm like, I comment, and I was like, Hey man, that looks similar, and the lady reached out, and it was cool, and she's Yeah, we do that because we need to cleanse before we go into the temple, right?

And then we even have even Roman Catholics, they have their they'll burn their incense, or their frankincense and  it's very Universal, I know personally, that's what it does for me, though. It brings me, even particular medicines that we do burn. Cedar reminds me of ceremony, right?

Okay. It really puts me in that space, that ceremony space, right? Okay. Sweetgrass reminds me of the land. Wow. And going back to Mother Nature, and sage. Reminds me of home being at home, and that, I love shades, because it does, how much more comfortable can you be than at home, 

definitely. I like that and how different types of wood. Can be used in different environments. Yeah. So I'm here with Jody as well  and today we have a very special guest. In fact, it's our first guest. 

Yeah. I'm really excited about this, Izzy.

We've been talking about this for a few weeks now about bringing on guests and using this space. Podcast is a platform for people to share their stories. And Clarence has been a friend of mine for several years now. And I'm really excited to have him share a little bit about his story on this podcast.

And yeah, we've been really looking forward to to bringing him in.  So welcome Clarence and good to see you AZ. I'm glad to be here with you guys tonight.  

Clarence, why don't you start off by telling I know Jody's familiar with you but I don't, I, this is the first time I met you.

And so maybe tell me and our listeners as well a bit about yourself and what do you do here in Thunder Bay day to day? What's your main focus? 

My name is Clarence Fisher. My spirit name is Nimakage Ganu. Dancing Golden Eagle, right? And the way it's translated is you dance, somebody dancing with purpose, or dancing with purpose, right?

And Gnu is that the Golden Eagle. Live in Thunder Bay. I'm a father, I I'm a son. Most of my family lives here. A lot of my immediate family lives here. And I've been here for quite some time off and on, but Thunder Bay is now my home. It's been my home for a while.

I know I've been to different places throughout my journey. But I've always come back to Thunder Bay. I I also recognize Peck Mulbert, Netutu, Zachemek as my home along Lake 58. It's also part of my heritage my ancestors come from. Thank you. And I work with a group of men in a healing capacity, I promote healing and for a group of particular men who, who've been through some very hard things.

Thank you for that Clarence. Before we get into, what led you up to doing the work that you do today, I want to dissect your story 

so tell me about the ages of five or less, from what you can remember. Interesting, that's a 

Very  tough time in my life.  

Yeah,  so my parents from different communities I met and they, I had three older siblings of two brothers, a sister  and while I was still in the womb, we were in Winnipeg.  My parents were Trying to find a better life for themselves. I remember my father talking about, he was going to school out there, and and it was difficult.

This was a difficult time for Indigenous people, and particularly in urban centers and Winnipeg. And and my grandfather was always a big part of our lives, right? And especially my older brothers. And my older brothers wanted to move home. We, We moved home I think we caught a train and we went back to our community.

And it wasn't long after, I think I was born in Winnipeg and then we moved home. And not long after, I might have been six months old. And I think I was in the hospital. I was a severe lactose intolerance. And I've heard stories that my mother also was in the hospital.  And she had she had broken her collarbone.

And my, my grandparents and my father were with my brothers and sister  in our homeland community and I've heard the story from multiple people and different, even people that that I've just run in through to around the community that have shared the story with me and it was it was a very nice day, father was working on a log cabin  and behind my grandfather's house for us. And

My brothers left the house and decided to go swimming and this was in a particular spot that wasn't very wasn't a beach although we had a beach, but there was a spot where a logging company had left some some iron chutes that were, they would send logs down into the water.

And  my brothers ended up sliding down there, four and five years old, and drowned. The younger one I don't know, I can't say for certain, but I think the younger one had a pulse And I imagine that the the older one tried to save the younger one and they, they both drowned. 

You lost both of your brothers that day? Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's a lot of trauma.  

There was this all happened to you under the age of five? You're witnessing this? I was six months old. Six months old, eh? So that's like that's horrible. It was quite catastrophic for someone to just be six months into their life and have that,  when was it that you figured it out  because six months you may have not have recalled,  how long after the incident did you actually figure out that, hey, this is what actually happened?

Interesting you mentioned that because that particular day. And I'll I'll reference your question here just after I mention this. I was in the hospital and I remember my mom telling me that I was crying. And then that I stopped crying.  And she got worried and she heard some commotion.

And in the nurses, it was a small hospital. And she thought that something was wrong with me and then My grandfather came in and told her  the boys are gone, right? So that's so that there's a thing called vicarious trauma that you learn about when you're when you're, you're beginning to heal and I spoke to my counselor, my therapist about this part of my life and she's children, infant children, experience things through their surroundings and grief is something else you can experience vicariously, right?

So I imagine that those experiences hit me immediately, I'm sure that, the inability to

To love or to nurture a child to your full extent, and a child needs that early in life particularly from their mother. And mom was consumed with grief, guilt, and shame.  It was just some pretty, pretty hard feelings.  Both my parents were, just, Consumed by these things I couldn't imagine I've dealt with some grief in my life and it was heavy for a long time, but, to lose two, two sons, in the same day.

Can't even imagine.  Can't even imagine.

You had mentioned that your dad was living in Winnipeg, and he would talk about difficult times in Winnipeg. Do you recall what some of those difficult times might be? 

I know that alcoholism was always a big struggle for my parents. Early on and for particularly my people at that time, in the mid eighties was a very alcoholism was a very prevalent in, in, in my people.

And stereotypes and, it's hard to find a job when you're, when you have these stereotypes and these labels that you gotta battle with and be coming from the lower middle class, or trying to scrape your way up to the middle class and it's it's not easy. 

And 

now moving on to like ages 5 and 15 what do you remember from those times? What stories stand out?  5 to 15? 

Yes, please.  Interesting. So  my mom in her own way of dealing with the grief she had left. No longer say that she had abandoned us, but, that's that.

If you'd asked me that years ago, that's, those are the words I'd chosen, but I come to understand that she she had a heavy amount of grief and so she left to Vancouver downtown Eastside. Okay. And I remember as a young boy getting phone calls from this strange woman, right?

But my father he he let go all of, all All chemicals, mind altering substances and he started to work in the mine and he he'd work, 12 hour shifts and really, to provide for us. But then that, also took him away from us.

But, I was blessed. I know that was just a very heavy thing that can happen to a young person and but I was blessed with people in my life at a young age. And I think divinity might might have something to do with this because where I came from and where I started, and where I was eventually going to go.

I needed those people. I grew up with my grandparents, my dad and my sister and my aunt, and I had first cousins next door, and my godmother, and then I had cousins down the street, and and it was it was a safe space. It was a very safe space for me to grow up, and I and Eventually, I remember being a young boy and my grandfather having a heart attack.

And I've seen the unravelling of the safety. I  anticipated  this happening. My grandfather didn't die just yet, but it gave me the idea , that was eventual, was Before he went, my, my grandmother went I remember racing to the hospital with my aunt to stop my grandfather because she was going to get out of the hospital that day.

That was her day to get out and come home. And my grandfather was excited to go and get his wife, and so he left ahead of us.  We got the call as he jumped in a cab. I remember looking out the hotel window and trying to yell at him, but he got in the cab and it zoomed off. So we raced, we raced across town to the hospital and my aunt screeched in front of the door and  told me to run.

So I ran and I ran up the stairs and I opened the hospital, hallway doors to the nurse's station there and my grandfather stood there, solemn and very quiet, and I knew, I knew, he knew. I didn't have time to grieve yet or no, and he very similar words to what he told my told my mom when he said the boys were gone, he said, Granny's gone, so I sat with him in the waiting room, and so that began.  And then there was then it was my aunt, she had to go and pursue a life of her own, but she was always in and out of our our lives and bring, always being a big part of our lives. And she played a big part in my my ability to communicate, and being open to things and, having good ethics and good morals.

But then my grandfather passed away. And between that time, my sister was, my dad had a very hard time raising us as my sister had begun to start to experiment with drugs and alcohol herself, and that really impacted him. And you could imagine that my father blames alcoholism.

At some level for the loss of his sons, and his partner abandoning him to, so he struggled with that, as he would always, he'd worry, he was a worrier, right? My mom had shown back up into Northern Ontario and my sister moved to moved with her.

And I felt like overnight that I had this nice warm house, fire made in the morning, and breakfast and then overnight,  and I anticipated it that, I'd wake up to a cold house, and I remember my dad getting his, his his lunch ready, and I'd hear his lunchbox clanking,  and I'd lay there, and I'd worry, and say, he, maybe he'll crash, and maybe he'll Not make it to work or not make it home. 

So I would call out to him and I would say, Dad, I'll see you later. Because we didn't say goodbye, we'd say see you later a lot in my family, particularly my father. See you after, we'd say, and even, and he'd get out and I'd hear him pull out of the driveway and I'd peek out the blinds in the window and I'd I see his truck going and I, in my mind, I thought this could be the last time I see my father.

Cold January night, and then I would open the window and I'd jump up and I'd lean as far out as I could just to see the taillights  go as far as I could.  Because I, I'm afraid that's the last time I've seen him. Yeah, and it was That's in and around the age that started to struggle with drugs and alcohol, most of particularly drugs, smoking pot and, hanging around with other young people that were probably struggling just like me. 

Yeah.  



Thank you for sharing all of that.  There's obviously a lot of love in the community I I'm hearing.

It seems like a collective environment, whether you're related or whether you know of everyone  there's obviously loss in your family throughout. And so what were some of the ways that you coped with it? I know that you did start into let's say smoking weed but were there other ways you tried coping with first before you got into that? 

 Jody and I were talking about survival and instinctively, where I was in that survival mode and even as adults, but more so when you're young, remember before my grandfather and here, this is a

this is a story we can rewind a little bit. And, I was raised Roman Catholic and more so Christian. My grandmother was strong believer in Jesus. And was there was a period when indigenous spirituality was being reintroduced into my community. And I was very drawn to this.

I I felt that, that this is what my ancestors  have done and it felt like I had belonged and I felt like  I was longing for  something to fill that part of me. And my grandfather would drive around the community when I was young and pick me up.

When the street lights came on, or when it got dark, and whatever it was, and he'd pick me up. And and it was around this time he started to find me at these places where we were in ceremony, right? And I remember initially feeling very hesitant that, because he was a Roman Catholic man and practicing, and but I recall him not saying much, and then I continued and he continued to pick me up until until one day he said, you don't have to go. He you don't have to go back to church. And he taught me that there's only one God, and the way we build our relationship with him belongs to us. And whoever's, Building their relationship with him through another means belongs to them, and I should not condemn, because

 What I practice is for me to become more aware of him, God, our creator, right?  Not for our creator to become more aware of me, because he knows me. He knows what's in all of our hearts Yeah, and those were a lot of the things that I began to cope with, right? And I started to be introduced into my ceremony and rediscovering an identity that was stolen from our people, and then yeah, it was a big part of the way I had coped early on, 

take me to the time now when you were I want to hear a bit about the story when you had your first let's say, experimentation with weed, you had mentioned, or it could be alcohol. Did that happen between the ages of 5 and 15?  

Yeah.  And it's happened so much that I couldn't give you a particular but, or one memory that stands out. I'll give you a general overview that, and it started very young for me, smoking pot was a so you mentioned my community and I mentioned my community having this system of supports, right? And I was blessed in that way, right? And there's some very strong things within my community and, but there are also some very Very dark things and very I mentioned that alcoholism, back in the 90s, it was a very prevalent thing and I experienced alcoholism my grandmother was an alcoholic and I'd hide her wine bottle from my grandfather because my grandfather, couldn't drink.

But outside of the home, it wasn't very prevalent in the home. But outside of the home it was very prevalent. I'd witnessed some very violent things as a young man. I'd siblings, older adult siblings fighting, in a very violent ways, and, if you recognize the blood on a brown man's skin that shade of blood, and that stays with me, and I've witnessed it on plenty occasions very violent things, so that this stuff was very very impactful on my life, I so I began using about the age of 11 or 12, I began to smoke pot and pot was a

was a alternative reality to what, how I was feeling inside, some of these things, like it is a very collective thing that that, that has happened to me, and in, in bad ways, I was sexually abused as a young boy, the shame that, that lives with me. Somebody that experiences those things is needs a way to cope. And they go into survival mode,  was the initial beginning, and it was a, a lot of people would, say it was fun, and everybody was doing it, and sure, it was that for me, too, but, on a very primal level, it was a survival, it was a way to cope.

But, for sure.

 So we had coping in terms of like you had your own ways of doing it and then now there's this like substance availability that we can use to cope with things that are happening in life. When was the next time  where something happened that you decided  to experiment with other ways of coping as well or other things

used to cope.  

I

After, just around that time when I used to lean out the window and see my dad off, I had nobody, I didn't have anybody watching me. I was a young boy, a young adolescence, young teen, and I'd surround myself with people. I had a lot of abandonment in my life, right?

A lot of abandonment in my life, a lot of people had left,  who are the easiest people that you could surround yourself with? The people that are suffering too, a hundred percent. And so  crime became part of my life at a young age, vandalism, things like that. It was all a way of acting out, it was I see now that, when young people act out, there's a cry for attention there somewhere. Very deep, and it's very hard to recognize from some people. But when I got into some crime, and the people, were helping me with my, abandonment issues.

They were filling those spaces those voids that were in me. But I I got into some trouble. A group of me and my friends got into some trouble. We broke into a school and we caused a lot of damage at the school.  And we although we weren't, come down heavy in the court systems.

We were given, long periods of probation and community service hours. And  you live in a community. There's not a lot of places. You have to be very creative on thinking on how to do community service, right? So I did probably none. I don't remember an instance where I did any.

My probation officer  Came to me with my father and they said, We found this place for you. And it was a group home for troubled teens. And they said and she My probation officer mentioned that If I spent, every hour I spent in this place,  She would take it off of my community service hours, right? 

It was a three month program, so I started doing the math. I'm like I'm only going to stay there for 11 days, 3 hours, 22 minutes. And, I, , I developed a a very how to put it, a very manipulative mindset in how to. be a step ahead, right?

And this is where you gotta develop when you become, in survival mode or when you're into drugs and alcoholism and, you're trying to stay ahead of the curve.  But so I spent some time there, three months. But I got into further legal trouble there. And I ended up being sentenced to seven months.

This was actual incarceration, one, one a month was real jail, and the next six months were an open custody setting and yeah I 

And when you were in incarcerated. , what was that experience like? What what was the community like inside?

So  you got other  troubled kids, right? Troubled people, and they they begin to refor, reinforce that, that person who you're trying to become to protect yourself, like we're all in survival mode, right? We're all tough guys, and we're all, and we're all criminals, and we're all, this, that, and whatever, but, so the community was very reinforcing of that criminal attitude and the criminal mindset, right?

So there was no rehabilitation. It was a very, it was a place where it reinforced that for young people, okay. 

This was all under the age of 15

that was just rated right up until about 15, 16. 

Okay, so you're trialed as a minor?

Yeah, 

young offender, yeah. 

Okay, so going forward into ages  16 to 25, when was the next time whether it was substance abuse or alcohol  what was the next time that  you got in trouble in society or something catastrophic 

happened? Yeah. Interesting. I so I left I left open custody. 

I think I was 16  then, or turning 16. I was a young guy and I was I discovered the street, it wasn't a dirt road anymore, it was a street. And it was a, and I had a group of people that I could rely on to fill those voids, but I also discovered another group of people that were older than me, that, that kind of took after me and look after, they took care of me in a sense that, they knew that I wasn't from the street, and they were much older, and, they also weren't very good for me in a sense either, they were probably both, they were probably all in survival mode too. So I I began alcoholism became a major part of my life at this time, right?

I was born in 84. So I had a health card when I got outta jail and I looked at the health card and I seen the number four and I took a little pin and scratched it out, and then all of a sudden there was a one there, , got some clear narrow polish and of course, yeah.

And you could buy liquor . I do go in the bars. We had a strip down here, Simpson Street, and it was the, the yeah, it was the. And I'd make my way, a 17 year old kid going down from, I'd go from one bar to the next. Yeah. I didn't need money, I just somehow managed and by the time, where Native or Indigenous people would patron at 11 o'clock, by that time I was Pretty inebriated or on my way there and it became a big part of my life that, you know, and then, but, so that instances that you're talking about are just a series of events that, that sort of turned me and it really turned me to I was drinking one night and I the cops came and broke up the party and I rushed out the back door with all the booze and I ran across the street and  then I came back across the street and I got hit by a car. 

I had a compound fracture to my leg and, I was You can imagine, you got a 50, 50 kilometer, none of us go 50, I'm going 55, 60. So you get, and I'm lucky it was just a little Suzuki Swift, right?  Saved your life. Yeah and then, but I was, and that's where, Oh man, I was a, I was about six, eight months in the hospital.

I'd take off on weekends. I had a, they were going to cut my leg off. Wow. And this is how strong addiction is, right? Yeah. This is how strong addiction is very powerful. So on weekends, I would, I'd run off, and then have a, I had a bone infection, wow. And when you had a bone infection, you don't have a blood flow.

To get antibiotics or whatever drug it is you're taking to your bone. What the infection is, right? For sure. And they're talking like, man, Clarence, you gotta really, you gotta, you gotta take it serious, but I'd only take it serious Monday to Friday, of course. And then the prescription opiates came and alcoholism went to the wayside and prescription opiates really took a big part of my life after that.

So now you're in your 20s. What were your 20s like? What are some events or memories that stand out?  Did you continue with this path of let's say bar hopping? But what did that lead you to?  

So while the bar hopping, puttered out because Ironically I think it was North America wide, where we were struggling with prescription opiate. 

Epidemic, if you want to call it that, right? And here's me, getting hit by a car and getting prescribed. And, at first it was Percocets, and then I would sell all my Percocets because I discovered Oxy's and was why take ten, ten of these when I can take this little tiny thing, right?

For sure. And then I started abusing them, snorting them. And then there was a I met a woman Who was the same crowd and she had two, two sons. They were four and five when I met her. We were friends at the, Before we were ever an item, but We developed a relationship and, I developed a relationship with these boys and though, we were,

We lived in the projects, in our local projects and I  began to really I don't know if you can recall me talking about that mindset or that manipulative person, when you become an addict or a drug addict, or you gotta be a step ahead. I developed and honed that skill, so well because I needed to, right?

I couldn't, I was, I'd be dope sick if I didn't, right? 

Yeah.  

So I really and I became somebody I didn't I wasn't proud of, yeah. Cheat, lie, steal, whatever you needed to do to get that fix. Yeah. 100%? Yeah. And I was very, I was known around this neck of the woods for being somebody that could, really hustle, gotcha. Sell ice cubes to a snowman, 

yeah but, it was all self serving until, it doesn't, though I rode that train for a long time. It's, bridges start to burn.

Now you're on an island and you have no boat, no paddle, but I around that time I started to be, I became an intravenous drug user, 

right?  

And then I talked about this woman and then her two young boys who I I developed a good relationship with it this time.

Though I was that type of person outside, I grew to love and care for these boys, and dad wasn't part of their life, and I really needed to. They actually, and it's the first time I've shared this, but, as you can recall, I I had a lot of abandonment issues.

I had a lot of voids in my life. And I used to fill them with people, bad people, or, people not so good for me.  But this was my first opportunity, and then I had to fill those spaces with, people. People that were good, little people. And they were a big part of, we had a lot of healing to do, and I wasn't  in any mindset to begin that journey.

Though, there was some so it all came  unraveling when I became an intravenous drug user. This is a very big part of the story,  but By this time, I was being prescribed a hundred Oxy80s a month, right? And I was, around this neck of the woods, people were paying 60, or 80 a milligram, or, a buck a milligram, so 80 a pill, and, I'd never, my, my prescription would run out, and I'd go see my guy, and my guy would say if I gave you this, you gotta pay me back too, right?

So I, I did that for a few months until I was I had no pills, right? And then he had to, he basically had to became my pharmacist and had to distribute to me daily, right? So that,  but I I ended up getting cut off my prescription, and then I had some big heavies, and a lot of sick people sick, sicker people than I was, right?

That were, coming for me, right? I remember ducking, hiding, being dope sick, and being at the, I remember I went to the Greyhound Terminal and I called somebody else that I knew that, that was a drug pusher, and this was a little old lady, this little old lady, she comes and she says, she's here, and this never happens.

She's here, take this. She said, get on that bus and go, don't come back. Yeah. Like they're coming. Wow. I tried to pay her. She said no. Wow. Just take them. I hope these last, so I jumped on and that was my first sort of real stint at recovery. 

  It's that moment, like something happened. You got onto that bus or you're sitting there  like even though we might be in the wrong tunnel because in the wrong tunnel, everyone else around us is a number like, I know what I want.

I want it. I want it right now, and you get on that bus and, even though you might not be in the right tunnel, but you see a light, someone throws you a light and be like, Hey,  there's avenues we can take to get out of it. So tell me, I'm curious to know what happened after this bus ride.

Like, where'd you go from there?

So I'm on the bus, and the pills don't last. Of course. So I get off in a little town that is very familiar with me. I haven't been back there in a while, and it's just a community close to my community. It's a town. I get in the hospital, and I know what to say to the doctor.

I'm going to, I'm going to this place, and I need, the bus driver kicked me off because I'm dope sick and I'm really trying to go and get some help, right? For sure. And, I end up and he's here, take it and go. So that's another, lifeline kind of thing. So I'm back on the bus  and I get off in Sault Ste.

Marie and I'm I check into detox. And then so I'm in detox and I man, it's a tough ride, eh? I I I was pretty sick, but I began to pray and I began to go back to, putting my tobacco and smudging again what I've learned when I was young for those coping mechanisms, and so they can only keep you there 7 10 days at this detox center, right?

And So I had to scramble, and I was like I can't go home, and I filled out some treatment papers to get the treatment, and then my treatment's, two months out, and, So then day eight, I put in put in a call to this I was quite a recovery home or a halfway house in Sault Ste.

Marie, and They said, oh we don't have any room, but we'll put you on the list if if you really want to come. And I said, you know what, I need this, I really want So I went to bed that night and I prayed and, the next morning,  I got up and there was news and the treatment center called and said I'll have you in three weeks, I said, okay, I said, okay, now I got to go and survive for three weeks, and and they said we'll give you till tomorrow, later that afternoon, and the halfway house calls and says, you still got that guy there, we got space for him. So I went out to this, this space, and I got a bed for  a couple weeks, and I jumped on a bus to treatment.

This is the first time, eh, Clarence? 

Ish, I never really made any real effort before. Although it's a through this journey thus far I tend to detox, but it was never brave enough to get, really, I'd get sick and begin to get sick and I was out, I was in a treatment center for a very short time because I had told them that, detoxed and I didn't need to go to detox, but I was only there for a night or so and yeah.

But this was the very first time that I, that I was clean, I had some sobriety and some my my thoughts were probably a little clearer now that, so 

you're lucky that you were able to get into that halfway house this time around, because actually Izzy and I were just talking about that on a, on an episode recently about those gaps between getting into detox and getting into treatment because we we have those gaps here in Thunder Bay too.

Like people will call. And if they're lucky enough to get into detox, a lot of times they're told to call back. But if they are lucky enough to get into detox, they do exactly what you said. They get six or seven days in that detox centre, but then they're told that treatment is three, four, or five months out.

And that ends up being a recipe for relapse for a lot of people. We've seen that over and over again. This particular time, you were pretty lucky and those prayers were answered because you were able to get into that halfway house. 

  Just for clarification for myself and maybe some of our listeners, did you, did it work for you the first time you went through detox, there was some sort of treatment what happened? You get this training and you take some, hopefully the idea, cause I went to rehab as well.

And and so the 48 days I was there,  I came friends with two people out of the 80 people that were there. They match my personality. We exchanged info. We shared stories and I realized, Hey, you know what? My character defects aren't too far off than theirs. And I still keep in touch with them today. Nine years later, what was what were some of the things that you were able to take away and use after your first experience?

To answer your first question, No, it didn't work. It worked on some level, don't get me wrong, right? It was a very you probably heard the phrase, a very cunning and baffling, powerful thing, addiction, right? For sure. But, and you'll be surprised with the rest of the story that it didn't stick, right?

Okay. Some of the things that did work, that you know I began to start to practice this again. The, my, my ceremonies. 

Smudging. 

Yeah, smudging and praying, having that, building that relationship with the Creator again. Yes. And I'll give you an example, and this is a pretty heavy one.

So I'm suffering from all these abandonment issues, right? I've coped and I've had this band aid covering me for years, right? Years, right? I'm good at it, I know how to, but now it's gone. Now I don't have any coping mechanisms. I'm just raw, right? I'm a leaf in the wind.

I'm a, and that's, and I often use that terminology, I'm just a leaf in the wind. But and that was me back then, right? And something was looking after me, I had, that journey was but I showed up at treatment and my best friend that I grew up with, one of my best friends I grew up with was there, and I was like, Ah, this is good for me, because I'm doing my abandonment things, but it's not good for treatment, and, two weeks out, he into treatment he leaves, right?

And that triggers like, man, that triggered this whole abandonment thing, man. It was just like, I just started coming heavy duty, right? And I just really started rediscovering  what was wrong with me, right? That's what this sort of part of my journey was, purpose was, right?

So I clip pleated treatment and and it was an indigenous treatment center. We really used the culture. We did a lot of some  very basic 12 step and and the treatment center tells me we can only pay you  Your bus fare back to where you got on the bus, right? And I'm like Sault Ste.

Perrine ha.  So I'm on a mad dash, trying to like, what am I going to do here? I can't go back to the city, I don't want to go back to the reserve because it might be not a very good place. I have some very rudimentary understanding of sobriety and how to stay sober, right?  So I call my dad. My dad, he's always been a big part of my life.

And I left a message for him and say, when I'm leaving here, going here, going to get off at this time. Cross my fingers,  jump on the bus and I get off the bus and guess who's there. My dad traveled from Thunder Bay to St. Marie to come and meet me. And he says, I'm going to work in the bush.

He's a, he's a prospector and he does a lot of bush work and does some geology work. And and he says, you can come in the bush with me, and I was still very uncertain, I was still very Scattered, I said, okay, we'll go back to the, we'll go back to the reserve because that's where our sort of a jumping off point was going to be.

I haven't been home in a long time, back to my community. Five, six, seven years, I don't know. When I get there, we pull into my house. And I could see down near where my brothers drowned, actually exactly where my brothers drowned, right?  I could see the light of a sacred fire down there. 

And then I started to really understand that, that some things aren't necessarily by accident,  there's a lot of that in my life. But so I told my dad, I gotta go down there. I gotta go down there and I gotta, I gotta go put my tobacco down. So I walk up on this fire and  the chief, the chief and One of our spiritual advisors in the reserve, and another one of my best friends sitting around this fire, right?

So I walk up and they're like, Wow, and I'm like, I haven't seen you in a long time. And they were like, but we heard you weren't doing so well, but you look good. And I'm like, so I told them the story, and I told them, Recovery and I got off the pills and then so my community now is ravaged by these prescription opiates, right?

Yeah, just ravaged. Unreal. Yeah, so and they're you know, and they said Clarence, we're starting this journey tomorrow day after tomorrow And it's good it's getting really bad here and  We're really  Proud that you were able to overcome it, Yeah  And but we're going to,  our, my chief said we're going to walk, we're going to walk to Selkirk, Manitoba.

And we were walking for healing, but we were walking,  To the Sundance Ceremony, right? The Sundance Ceremony is a very sacred ceremony, one of the most sacred ceremonies that we can, Indigenous people or Anishinaabe people practice. And then I wasn't 100 percent committed at this point, and they were telling me about this, and I'm like, okay yeah, but I'm feeling really inspired, but I let my dad know, he's very, cautious, and early recovery.

Yeah.  But I think, it's a better place for me to be with a bunch of people who are getting sober and are going to experience the same things that I experience in that detox bedroom, sweating and, all that just a massive withdrawals and then these people are going to be walking, they're going to need someone to help them, right? 

So I go to bed that night and recognizing that, that things don't happen for reasons. Yeah. And for no reason, some things. The next morning, I get up and my dad's gone. Gone to Marathon to go get supplies. Come down to the wire, I've got to decide. I've got to let my dad know what I'm going to decide.

And there's a knock on the door. And I go down and I answer the door and there's these two men, non Native men, standing there and they said, Clarence? Clarence Fisher? I said, yeah.  And I said we're my name is so and this is so and and we're from a documentary TV series called The Sharing Circle. 

And we understand what you guys are doing tomorrow.  And somebody had told us that we should come and talk to you about your journey.  



So I said sure, I went and I I,  They asked me if there was a particular place, and I said, Yeah, we should go down there where my brother's, where my brother's drowned, and I'll give you, I'll let you go, I'll interview you down there, or I'll give you an interview down there.

And I sat down there with those two guys and we went through two hour long tapes, and I just blew these guys away and just my, and a similar story to what I'm telling you guys In the story that's to come and my understanding of it, and my understanding of our way of life, and, spirituality, and that connection to the land we have, and the connection to  our ancestors, the spirits, and a creator, most importantly, a creator. 

And So that was it. I was on this walk, the next day, we took off. We all started walking  1300 kilometers. Wow. 

Wow. So like I find that fascinating. So  You're on this healing journey, Did you have a relapse after that? 

Many. And I'll tell you why when I get to the end of this we walked in a, we walked to the Sundance, and we did some interviews in between, and then  we get to the Sundance, and the Sundance is I don't know if you've been to a powwow, where we're at, this arbor where we dance here, right?

But it's a little different. 

Okay. 

So when you're a dancer and you enter that arbor you're now cut off from the outside world. There's no communication to the people that aren't dancing. Okay. You're committed to this space. Okay. And this ceremony.  So there was seven of us, including myself, that decided they were well enough to dance, and when you dance you dance from sunup to sundown for four days. In the hottest part of summer with no food or water. Wow. So yeah, 

yeah, so I'll give 

you a description. I'll give you a reason why we practice this and the teaching I've been given. So when you're dancing and you're, you're, there's beings, of me, of Clarence, there's my physical being and my mental being and my emotional being and my spiritual being, right?  So when you're dancing, you become depleted, that mental part of you starts to become depleted and weakened, right? Yeah.

The physical and the emotional part of you, becomes the energy is gone, but the one thing that's. left inside you.  The one predominant being left in you is your spiritual being and that's what pulls you through, right? So now you've become this closer to spirit being and you and then you're on this plane, spiritual plane, with all those things that I mentioned, my ancestors, and And there's this thing we do we pierce, and I don't know, a lot of people don't understand, but we give them of ourselves. We we wear our sort of pectorals, skin is pinched and we're pierced with two two sticks, and then we're tied to a tree, right?  So there's there's a lot of people that were doing this and I got news that the woman that I was with when all this drug started,  was pregnant with my child, right?

And I was afraid that the drugs and that that Or that he might not make it, or, and I, when I looked at all these people that I walked with, and all my community, and all the people that I've known and I knew and I understood that people did this for something. They give them themselves.

They pierce for something bigger than themselves, something, somebody's sick and my people were sick, right? My, my friends were sick. My community members were sick. My unborn son was going to be sick, right? And I but when you normally when you do practice this, you're given a dream or a vision that you should do this.

Okay.  

But I went to this elder and I asked this elder, Okay. These are the reasons, and I explain it to him just the way I did to you, that, my people, and my community, and my unborn son, are are sick, and I want to, this is what I want to do this for. And then he he took my tobacco, and then he and then two days passed, and then on the very last day, on the second last day this little old man in a cane comes around the arbor and he's, watching him and he's a long way around and he stops in front of me and he gives me these pegs and he says, this is, I asked and I prayed for this and then I prayed on this and he said, do people do this?

When we do this is why we do this. And he explained to me that when you're up on that tree, when that line is tied from your chest to that tree. It's a direct line to the Creator. Wow. You can imagine, that our God, the Creator, has  billions of voices at once, but at that moment, my voice was a little bit clearer.

Wow. I was on a spiritual plane,  and I, so I took my pegs and when we go up to,  Pierce, I was the last person to go. There was a few people ahead of me on this day. But there was, groups of people before, the day before. And when you go to Pierce, you usually have some support, some family members from the crowd that will come and stand behind you in case you fall. 

So I looked and I seen some, my cousin who was on the walk with us

they I waved them over and I turned around and then, and I laid down on the buffalo hide and they cut, and they put these pierces these sticks in, they tied them together and then they tied that string to a longer string which was tied to the tree and I had no pain, and I put my head in.

And against that tree, and I danced, and I prayed and I thought about my name, Nimacage G'nu, and I danced for a purpose. And I started to sob. I started to weep. It was a good weep, I'll explain more about the good weep later. And and I felt it, and I feel Him, I feel there are creators. I'll take this for you.

And I went, I walked backwards  until the line went taut. And then I, and I felt this,  my skin begin to tear. And then my skin tore and those sticks came out and they flew, they bounced out. And I could, and I've done some things in my life that were euphoric, or what I thought were euphoric. 

But this was an experience like any, like nothing else, and I felt all those things, that weight that I carried. And I felt that somebody had heard me and somebody was listening. And that I might be okay now. And I was still, still sobbing, tears rolling down my face. And I  turned around and there was 15 walkers all lined up behind me, to support me.

Wow. 

Yeah.  And then, because at the beginning of the Sundance, there was only seven of us who went in. I'm sorry, I gotta rewind a little bit, but yeah, it was an awesome experience, but by the second day, I was the only one left. Because the other guys were, they just couldn't do it, it's not there, it's not, and they, when you leave the Arbor, you can't come back, right? 

And I'm here, and I'm like, man, these abandonment things, they're coming back, right? So everybody's feeling heavy, and I'm like, oh man, somebody's got to finish this, cross that finish line. So this experience this is the day before we're done. And and that's the finish line for me, and when those things came out, it was like me breaking that that, that ribbon when you go through the, right? But, in between then, I met some other directors, right? I met some other directors that took me under their wing, who were working for the same company and yeah. I had, we went back to our community and it was an awesome experience and,  but I still, remember that abandonment I told you about?

Yes. Remember that, those voids inside? Yes.  And, That experience could move somebody to put them on a different path, but I still had a lot of wounds inside me, right? Gotcha. I still had a lot of things I needed to take care of. This was in my, this wasn't the end of my journey with drugs and alcohol,  right? 

When was the next time after this that drugs and alcohol became an issue or a problem? 

So it wasn't, too long afterward and I started to dabble, and I started to, but I I was able to hang on to some sort of manageability for a year.

My son was born and  that was an experience because he was born healthy and, I when I met these directors and I was part of this documentary, right? I I wasn't on any level that I was using before, it was more, back to smoking pot and drinking and, but the opiates were very minimal. 

Okay.  

But I I was invited down. A year later to partake in a, some training and an internship and a this indigenous intensive media training program where you'd get a, you'd get a, an internship with a production company or APTN  or something, so I went out, I went out I remember that day I jumped on the highway and I didn't have any money. The bus, the buses went on Greyhound went on strike.  So I had to hitchhike the day before. I can't remember, but it was in the summer. And or spring. So I'm on the highway and I'm hitchhiking.

This car pulls from the other side of the road, going the other direction. And he says, Hey, where are you going? I was like, Not that way.  He's you got any money for gas? I'm like, no, I got no money for gas, man. And he pulls around, and he comes around, and he's hey man, he's I'm just checking if you're crazy.

I'm like, okay, how do I know if you're crazy? So we jump in, I get on, and we go, and it's funny enough, we're getting like down, we're getting out there, right? We're getting past our, hours out. We're in the summer, and it's getting hot. This guy reaches down and he starts to put on his gloves and I'm like geez what do you need gloves for?

It's hot. And then he giggles and he's they're driving gloves, don't worry my hands sweat, he says.  This guy turned out to be awesome and I did, I'm just like you, I'm sharing this story I'm sharing with you now, and I'm sharing this story with this guy. 

Okay.  

And he's blown away, but he, this guy tells me when we, I can't get you right into Winnipeg.

He's I'm gonna get you a perimeter highway ish somewhere, Whiteshell maybe, I need to go, so I'm like, yeah, just let's go. And by the time we got to where, and I'm sharing my story, he's you know what, I'm gonna take you. He's come on, I'll take you all the way. I'll drop you right off to where you gotta go.

So he drops me off at my cousin's house, and he gives me his name and address. David Carr. And if David Carr is listening to this, I lost your name and address. I'd love to hear from you, man. So I started this internship and, training, and I met some really good people, but Yeah, I still had all those wounds, and alcoholism became a, redeveloped, or really consumed me again, right?

I was able to make through the training, and I was able to, get into, do the internship, and then I worked on my first short film there.  Because I know I had some training and some understanding of film and, screenwriting and technical side of, learning. So I and I based my first short film on its name was The Path of the Sundancer.

And it was a very, it was a sort of description of that journey, not a a documentary, so more of a a, philosophical sort of idea of what, of what the Sundance was, and I had to get permission from elders to do this, and they said, you know what, you do it.

So it was the documentary was part two from the walk.  Which was the Walk for Life, was the documentary, the first documentary. Now this was sort of Clarence's journey from that, right? And I had people like, rooting for me, man. I had a  big shot head  producers in, in,  Winnipeg, and that's a pretty big Indigenous filmmaking community. We have APTN there, and I really had had it made for me there if I put some more effort and and primarily more effort into staying sober,  right?  

It seems like  the voids are still there from your upbringing and your life up until, the stories that you just shared. It's almost like you have a toolbox now as well of ways that you can cope and you're getting to a point where you know what works for you. When was the moment when you realized that, Hey, enough is enough that, this is the last drop. This is the last mood altering thing I'm going to do.

That's going to check me out of society and I'm going to just deal with it. What was that moment like? 

 I was drinking and I was traveling back to Thunder Bay here and I was during the weekends I'd come back to Thunder Bay and I'd go back to work in Winnipeg and, and just drinking heavily. Okay. And then my time spent in Thunder Bay, I was very vulnerable, right?

Very vulnerable to the person who I used to be. Okay. That intravenous drug user. Yes.  And I became him again. 

Okay. 

God bless you. Good.  So I became hitting him again, but on a so much higher level or deeper pit, whatever you want to call it. And it was, and I had all these, these voids and these things inside me, and now I had this.

guilt and shame that should've, could've, would've, I had it, in this industry that I, and I tried and I really, I went to different film schools and I was, I had some moderate success with them and I met some great people along the way.  Alcoholism was always, the determining factor in becoming successful in those places.

But I collected all this, all these skills and but it wasn't, and then man, it was alcoholism, drug addiction, it just, it all combined until I was I was homeless, living in the street, back to an intravenous drug user, six foot, 150 pounds, just the whole thing, and then, but then I got tired, in a little sense, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, but I grew tired and I met another another girl who was in the same position as me, but we were, it was a beautiful person, her name was Ocean and she had this being about her that, that made you feel good and made you, made you feel at peace. She was safe, right? Her smile, her laugh, her voice, and all those.

She was just infectious in that way, and I was drawn to her. But we were both struggling people, right? For sure. And she ended up pregnant, right? But when we decided, you know what, we can't got to give this a try, I, through this whole journey, and I think you mentioned it, and I collected these tools way back.

You go way back to grade 2, 3, when I started to act out in school and I'd go to school counselors, and the principals, teachers, group homes incarcerated, all these people, and counselors, therapists, detox, treatment, AA meetings, right? All this time.  I've been collecting those tools you're talking about, right?

For sure. And, subconsciously. And and when I was in that space, just before me and her decided to, it would  baffle me, man. I'm like, God, people do it, I can't do it, I had this great thing made for me, and I had this great experience at the Sundance, and I just couldn't, but it was the wounds inside me, right?

I even had, I had all these tools now, I had these experiences, I had these people, and sick and tired and I began to recognize those wounds, those voids. And my son was born and we had some level of sobriety, me and Ocean. But she wasn't ready, she wasn't ready and I knew that in recovery that I couldn't  be part of that, I couldn't and I left the little town which was close to Thunder Bay here. To, my dad gave me an apartment and working regularly and so there's  very complex, addiction is very complex and I like, I wish, you could, people, we all try to figure it out and we can't, there's no one thing that could, right?

And I still talk about those wounds and  those voids in my life, right?  So I began to talk about those things, but,  and I began to understand them, and I had all these tools, right? And I was living on some level of sobriety. But there's another aspect of addiction that nobody recognizes, right? So you can have all those things, right?

And you can still, you can recognize those wounds, but the obsession, right? If you don't. If you don't acknowledge the obsession, if you don't respect how powerful that is, right? A little monkey on your shoulder, or that monster. Yeah, I like that. I like the way you put it. And and I was lucky. So I had all these experiences with film.

Screenwriting, technical side, cameras and all these, right? Yeah. So I said, you know what?  I'm gonna buy myself a little camera. I'll buy myself a little DSLR that can do some video, right? What's the other with the thought that, I'll just record some videos and do whatever, right? 

But photography really got me Really did it for me, man. I, man, I'd get up, before the sun and, coldest night of the winter. March out, no license, no car, catch a bus, marched up to Sleeping Giant or the Mount McKay to take a picture of Sleeping Giant, go out to Centennial.

I went anywhere and everywhere to take pictures for two years straight, amazing. Yeah, and that, so then that little monkey? Yeah. Or that monster. Yeah. And then I'd like to read you guys something sometime, but it has to do with that monster, but 

we'll have you back for that. Yeah, so we got this, 

we got this monster or this monkey and then now the obsession, right now, something and replaced it until that little monkey has  is so small  that he's just, I can brush him off.

No, don't forget. He's cunning, baffling and powerful. Yeah, 

he's lingering. Yeah, he's lingering around. Yeah, 

And I got a job, I got a job working in media for a fishing company, one of the biggest fishing companies are outfitting in Northern Ontario, outfitting companies in Northern Ontario.

And I did their media stuff, I took pictures for them, I did their social media work. I did that for a couple years two years. And then I I started working, going to work for my dad. I didn't want to work at this place anymore. I just needed to do something else. I started working in the bush for my dad.

Making some good money. Bought a vehicle. I started living better. All this whole time, I'm doing the meetings and I'm talking to people and trying to live better. And ceremonies. I

And then I met my partner, met my partner, and this is a little bit of divinity if you want to call it that, or so I got this son, two sons, right? Amazing. And I got this one younger son, who's just young at the moment, he's two years old maybe,  with this woman that wasn't ready. 

Okay.

And I get a call from a Northern community from her other kids.

So my son's sibling's father  saying, Oshun, Oshun's not doing too well. She left the kids here and we're going to send Reese down to She, you got, I said, send him, man. I didn't know. I wish I would've known. So she really went, crystal meth and Fentanyl had now taken a big toll on our community.

I'm lucky 'cause I'm out of just by now, and if I'd have been part of this community now, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be part of anything . But, so  my son Reese comes and he stays with me and a couple months in we get a call. Me and him were in my car and I got the.  I got the the car phone on, Bluetooth.

And I get a call from  somebody and her words are, Did you hear what happened to Ocean? And right then my heart stopped. Wow. And I hung up the phone. And I sat up to my son and I could see the worry in his eyes. And he's just this young kid by now, I've had him, Yeah. He's six, going on seven by this time. 

So I step out of the car and I call the person back and it's actually my other son's mom that's calling and telling me. But tells me that Ocean was, died of a drug overdose and  she she's gone.  So that's one of the hardest thing I had to do was, let my son know that his mom was not here anymore.

Wow. No father should have to do that, deliver that sort of information to a child. I'm in awe of your story. How long now has it been that you've been sober. I'm thinking it's been several years now, which I want to congratulate you for.   I get into a few follow up questions, I want to ask you, you work with men. What inspires you to do that? What's your main inspiration for doing that?  

As old as Reese is, that's us, so I'm, he'll be 12, so I'll be getting I'll be 12 years drug free. And I'm about 3 or 4 years alcohol free.

I'm just number one to count, you know the old saying, you're sober today, so I have these little milestones that I could you know, Reese's age, he's will be 12 soon. Yeah. I just want to be sober today. And I just never really put, I always found that was a difficult to me whenever I said I was like, it baffled me and how could these people be get all these years, 25 years, 11 years, even 10 months or whatever.

Like it just that really daunting was sounded daunting, so I never put a lot of weight and counting days and, and that just did it for me. Eleven years, three, four years, and it's been a while,  the work I do, particularly, it's men who who there was a minister, I can't share too much.

But there was a minister, and people could deduce on what it is I'm talking about, but, it was an Anglican minister and and a scout leader who did some damage to a lot of people.  In a lot of indigenous communities. Okay. And if I can generally paint that picture in the worst ways, right?  Worst ways you can hurt somebody.

And they left a massive impact on  these men in their communities. Okay.  To preface how I began to start working with these men to give you an understanding. So we all remember when when Kamloops, had the 215 unmarked graves, right? Yes.  So me and my now partner We decided that we wanted to take, be part of this movement.

They were doing a shoe, a memorial at a local legal clinic here. And we took our little shoes and we put our prayers into them and we put them on the, just like they would do at churches across Canada, right?  So we did we did that, and then the next morning I noticed, and we noticed that they were starting to squabble.

People started to, about what they should do with the shoes. Should they be donated to kids in need, which is a good thing, or should they be used in ceremony? Both great things, but let's not lose sight of what, what's happening, right? So I called the organization that had this shoe drive or memorial, and I asked if I could help, and she was non Indigenous, and she was just so relieved we called.

And me and my partner reached out to some elders, some community members, and we decided that, or we, I visited a sacred fire to, to seek guidance from an elder, and before I got there, I witnessed a an elder walk up to our local residential school, which is now a Grade 7, 8, or junior high, and this little old cookum, this little old grandma ties these little moccasins to the fence.  I said, that's what I gotta do. Because I remember my grandmother saying, sending me to go get somebody's moccasins when they passed on. Because when you give somebody their moccasins, they walk into the spirit world.

So we used those moccasins in ceremony, and we gave the shoes to kids in need, and we lit a sacred fire That went all summer long. We took the sacred fire. We kept it lit for 120 some days and residential school survivors from all over would come and, it was a massive sort of uprising of people to come and heal and come and so I became a member of the community, became inspired to make change, inspired to be part of change.

And also I've come to recognize all the, because I've come some level of healing and understanding. But I've also come to understand that my people are still suffering. So that's what drives me to continue this. And from that work and getting really enveloped in the community, I was offered a job at this place to work with these men.

And now I now I fight that battle on this side.  

 And you can, we can truly understand like the healing journey that you've been on and how, it's almost like it looks like you're helping them, but that you're, they're helping you too at the same time, because it's, they're enhancing your toolbox that we talked about.

What type of change would you like to see at a national level,  or it can be even at a local, like First Nations community level? If there's a change that comes to mind, what would that be?  

So it's a very, like addiction. It's a very complex very complex history, very complex issues, very complex trauma that my people struggle with, right?

Very, on so many levels. If you go let's talk about it. We'll just take what first comes to mind, right? You get on a national level, on a colonial level if you have a, most communities, some communities, we've got schools that are elementary schools that are burning down and kids not going to school, right? 

And and if there is a school they're so underfunded that these young people are three years behind, right? So they're disadvantaged, right? They come into a society where they're expected to prevail or expected to succeed. And they're disadvantaged. And that's just on an educational level, right?

Health is underfunded, right? So the mental health, there's no such thing as mental health in communities, right? To deal with those things we're struggling with, to understand the impacts of trauma, so these kids are a leaf in the wind, just like I was, right? If you, We'll go back in history just a little bit here.

We won't go too much, too far, right? You've got a capitalistic society that comes into this nation we call America, right? The American Dream, right?  The American Dream is built on capitalism, right? Think of it as a triangle, right? So you've got your people on top, you've got all the middle class, lower class, right? 

Indigenous people never lived, ever lived in a triangle. They lived in a circle. We never left anybody behind. We never we served, we, we made sure that everybody was provided for, we would provide for each other, we, it was a system that, that worked, right?  We had no no concept of land ownership, some guy came to some guy, some native guy and said, Hey, I'm going to give you this, you can sign this paper and we're going to own that land.

And it was so foreign to us, what do you mean on the land? Because we belong indigenous people belong to mother earth because that's who cares for us. So this whole concept, it just flipped us like, so capitalism, the American dream. It goes against everything it is to be  Anishinaabe, First Nations,  Indigenous, it's foreign to us. And the whole scheme of things, 150, 1850s, we got 170 years, and people might think that, Ah they should have gotten it by now, but we got, underfunded, we live in a, I like to use this analogy, We live in a shopping mall, this huge shopping mall.

And people could, understand this, if we got to use an analogy. We got this huge shopping mall of anything you could ever use, resources, whatever, and it's not there to serve the people, gold, lumber, water, whatever, consumerism, whatever social services, health education you name, it's in that mall. But that mall  is not to serve indigenous people. We got to eat out the green bin in the back. If you and that's indigenous people, and it's on so many levels I'm afraid that  to this song, one, it's one, and it's very reminiscent of what happened to indigenous, or what's happened to indigenous people. I don't know if you're familiar with U2, and I urge you to listen to this song and put that idea to indigenous people's struggle in the church and the colonial system, part of those lyrics are, they gave us nothing and that's all we got, what else is  it's just, there's a lot of those lyrics that I wish I could name more, but it just really hits home when I listen to the song and it makes me think of my people. On a local level or community level, continue to heal, really recognize those deep historic traumas that, we got to begin to heal those things that happened to our ancestors, begin to heal the things that happened to our elders in residential school, right?

Begin to heal those things that happened to our parents, that happened to us, that happened or are happening to our children, and it's

When we become to heal, Jody and I were talking about people who  come to heal. They become better to themselves. But after they become better to themselves, they become better people to people, and it's and I recognize it in indigenous community and non indigenous community, people in recovery, you go into, rooms, AA, you get old timers, NA, they're good people generally you have people that are in recovery and had done some work and they're now good to themselves.

And they're good to other people and they become better and better people. And if we continue to heal or, we'll become better people, we'll become a better nation. And I think that although I'm very cautious and  it's just it's the system, and the system is built that way. There's a the John A. Macdonald and Duncan Campbell Scott and all those guys, they were deliberate in their policies, right? They're just deliberate. They 

were, yeah. 

They residential school and, they kill the Indian and the Indian and until they absorb them into the body politic, right?

All by design. Absolutely. And a lot of times, and that was something I wanted to talk to you a little bit about too. Clarence was the. the residential schools and essentially the genocide that's taken place here on Turtle Island and how it really wraps into and plays into what we're seeing here today in real time, especially in Thunder Bay.

And that's something that I talk about when I speak to is that, we're obviously dealing with with a huge crisis here in Thunder Bay when it comes to addictions. And when we're talking about our Anishinabek brothers and sisters, to me, it's so clear that, that, that what we're seeing play out now in real time is the residual effects of a genocide.

And we're seeing it play out in the form of addictions and broken families and broken people. And yeah, all by design. And I think it's important to recognize that connection because when we look at it from that perspective, we can see why the people are struggling. There's so much pain and unresolved trauma in this community and it can all be tied right back to those residential schools.

Absolutely. Residential schools, reserve systems, policies, underfunding if you look at the treaty, ha. People don't understand how powerful the treaty is, right? You might have heard,  some might have heard this phrase that Canada's built on the backs of Indigenous people.

And that is, that exists, that that's real. This is real today as it was back in Duncan Campbell Scotts and Johnny McDonnell. Treaty, Canada would not exist without this treaty, and that's a and that's a contract, right? Treaty, a treaty is a contract, right?

So all through history modern history and recent history and history's history throughout treaty that contract's been breached. 

Over and over again. Over and over again, right? And we're still seeing it today. 

Okay, there's a very, we talk about design, right? And if I talk about Canada's, for Canada, right?

So you get all these, these payouts recently, right?  You get all these recent, Residential school money and 60 Scoop. And don't get me wrong, I think people should be compensated, right? I'm not trying to push anybody down for accepting that money, but there's a design behind that money, so if you had a contract you two personally, and myself had a contract with whomever, and we breached that contract, we get sued. We get sued, right?  So if you go back, if Indigenous people Had the ability who are now coming to have the ability, we got young people who are smart, they're leaders, right?

People who are educated, people who understand the system are now coming up and understanding, right? So if you had those people and you took them back to the 60s whatever, right? And they took them to court and they said, you know what, we're going to sue you for breach of contract, right? Now, so Canada recognizes that, right?

We gotta wash our hands of all these things so they begin to do that. You wash your hands of residential schools, 60 scoops, whatever it's the children's aid, and there's the water, there's all these things that are breach of contract  that are now paying out in increments. 

And a little bit of money, man. Money goes. I buy a new car, man. Ten years down the road, it dies and goes away. Gone. Land, people, sovereignty, nationhood, lasts forever. That's something, right? You give somebody their own self determination and their ability to be prosperous,  Now that's something that could, that'll last, right?

Yeah, you're right. But if you give a few people some dollars, they're going to buy a few things, they're going to dry up and blow away. That's right, yeah. I'm afraid that policies and systems are not going to change, and we'll still be second class citizens. We, if you look at the treaty and it's even today in the Indian Act, particularly where I'm sitting you, in front of you, and I'm a crown warden.

I'm actually a child of the Queen. I'm treated, I'm not even a person, when it comes to the Indian Act. The Indian Act, we so it's a very those policies are and I believe that are designed to impact us, and they're still impacting us, and they're perpetual, and they're designed to be perpetual and they may have slipped up and, or they may have recognized that Indigenous people are, becoming the wiser becoming smarter and motivated and I believe that strongly believe that this is by design, 

I agree with you, Clarence, and I'm really glad that you touched on some of those things.

Something that I'd add to that that I've seen which is really a tragic result of some of the payouts too, is that when you have people who are struggling and suffering in a lot of pain when, and they're addicted.

A lot of times these payouts end up being a death sentence.  I'm sure you've seen that. I've certainly seen that where, all of a sudden somebody who's addicted in this community maybe had to hustle for their addiction now has payout of tens or 20s, 30, 000 all of a sudden Money is no longer a limiting factor in their addiction and and we're seeing overdoses happen in Thunder Bay and across the north all the time.

And that's one of the tragic consequences of some of these payouts, 

too. Yep, absolutely. And it's it's tragic, and these people haven't begun to heal. And and they're not a level to understand. And What they're accepting when they on so many levels, and on that level, you're talking about that is dangerous to them.

You bet it is. You accept that. Yeah. 

 Okay, so something that I've noticed when it comes to my Anishinabek friends that are addicted, and from an observer standpoint, Clarence, like what I've seen is that, in my mind, clearly there was a genocide that took place here on Turtle Island.

And I feel like I said earlier, that we're you. Seeing the residual effects of that genocide play out in the form of intergenerational trauma, in addictions, in broken families, in people who are just spiritually lost and spiritually drained, not by their own fault at all, but as a result of the genocide in the residential schools we're talking about people who had their culture and their language and their way of life taken away from them, obviously there's going to be trauma and pain involved with that's straight up genocide.

But what I have noticed is that my friends who, who, my Anishinabek friends who have bounced back and healed from their addictions one common thread that I notice almost every single time is That they've reconnected with their culture, they've reconnected with the language, and they've reconnected with the land.

And I'm always encouraging my Anishinabek friends to do those things, because I see really amazing things happen in their lives when they do that, when when they return to to their culture. To a power when they're around the drum, for example, or when they go to a sweat lodge or when they speak the language, I see really powerful healing happened in their lives. 

And, I know I've known you for several years now and I know that reconnect with the culture and the language and land has been really profound in your own recovery to and I just wanted to get your thoughts and hear what you had to say about some of that.

So when you, a lot of us we face an identity crisis, right? Most people including myself when I was young, and then that identity was taken from us through residential schools and policies from that were designed to to erase the Indian or kill the Indian and the Indian, right? And if you take take that identity from them and you're forced to, Live in that triangle or like the American dream in a capitalistic society that, it doesn't belong to us.

And we're forced to be something we're not on so many levels. And I'll give you an example that an elder taught me. And the elder said you know that much like alcohol, we don't metabolize it the same. As Europeans, we haven't had it that long.  Sugar, diabetes flour, things like this.

And there's another, there's other aspects that don't belong to us to this world. Selfishness and greed is one of those, two of those things that, that we never had on the level as we did, right? So those are examples on how we were forced to be something we're not, right? But in, in the first sort of initial steps that I promote somebody to know or somebody to become aware of on their journey towards healing is to know who you are, right?

Because how do you become to heal?  How do you even begin to heal when you don't know who it is you are, right? So if you become, if you come to recognize who you are as an Anishinaabe person, as a First Nation Indigenous person, you become to unravel those things that happened throughout history, our people's history, and then your own history, right?

And now you have this identity, and you, and this identity comes with things, it comes with pride, and it comes with a very healthy sense of pride, and it comes with, it also comes with community. Community is a big part of Indigenous people and that identity, right?

So we were pulled apart, in history. We're put in these little plots of land. And again, by design, right? Ceremonies were banned, and those ceremonies were, had a purpose, was to keep the community, and to be together, right? And when, and a good example of how community works, right?

And I know I'm lucky because when I went into those rooms like AA and NA I was able to overcome the feelings of not belonging, right? Because I was this little brown kid, with a backwards cap, baggy jeans, blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't belong, many times I walked out feeling that way, right?

And And but that's why it does work for some people, when it does work for people who go into those rooms, it's because they have a sense of community, they have like minded people that are on this on a similar path or that have, that are going in the same direction and give them a feeling of unity.

So Indigenous people, and that's the same thing when it comes to ceremony, it comes to identity, and it comes to medicines, and it comes to the land, and it comes to, to ceremony, yeah, and being being together. It gives us that sense of unity, and when together we're strong, we're not alone. Just like they say in those rooms, you're not alone, and you go, you listen to people's stories when they're struggling, they're giving their testimony or sharing in an AA meeting, you recognize, Oh, I'm not the only one who lives with that kind of shame. Oh, I'm not the only one that has that kind of guilt.

Oh, I'm not the only one who made an ass of myself, and that and then you're not alone, right?  So there's very important things to come in knowing. And being part of a community, and it's my strong belief that we we come together in those places like ceremony, powwow, and as families.

We have to focus on on, on being together, primarily, first and foremost, it's in families, that family circle, that family unity. If you ever think of a tipi, right? A tipi is built on a tripod. And a tripod consists of three poles. And one of those poles represents the mothers.

And one of those poles represents the youth, the children. And one of those poles, the other pole, represents the men, the fathers, the grandfathers, the uncles, right? And then all the poles that go around represent the community. And if one of those poles is compromised, of the family, the initial tripod, then it becomes compromised, the whole community becomes compromised, right? 

So we have to I Indigenous identity is, lives within that unity as a family and being together as a community.

 You certainly gave me, in that messaging just at the end, several things to take away and that's the beauty of it. I have a similar perspective of looking at things, but then I hear something that alters my perspective, and it actually enhances it.  But that whole piece about like selfish and greed, how we're not really designed for that.

And then we live in this Western society where. Growing up, I had three channels, we're fed all this materialistic stuff. And this is what society now is supposed to look like. But the way you said it, it's actually all really new to us. Like you go back to India, we don't really have all of that.

And now you throw that in with liquor, because I got to look this up. But I'm pretty sure liquor is new to India, too. But don't quote me on that. I'm sure. I'm sure it hasn't been there for 1000 years, but or you just look at a lot of the cultures where they're expected to  stay absent from mood altering substances like alcohol.

And all of a sudden you introduce that and then you throw that into a Western society with a bunch of things we're striving for, but we didn't live like that a hundred years ago. It's a recipe for disaster, and so you made me look at that in a different way. And then that whole thing about going to AA meetings.

And being the fish out of the water there and you learn to overcome that because you're like this town, at least there's this, at least I can stay sober here for an hour. And then there's healthy spaces like how about the moon cafe where you know, you can come and it's available longer hours throughout the day.

So you gave me some newer ways to look at that. And if we can get in and form a community and sometimes you, and you said it like. It works for some people because they see that community in there. It might be stronger, but a guy like me, it's okay, what does my community look like?

It might just be one person. Sometimes it's just that one person we need to that, to have that kind of community and to sustain staying sober, like outside of that hour. I have three more questions for you. And then we're going to get you out of here because it is a late night. It's almost midnight here.

   So you're obviously on a journey of healing and self awareness. And in my opinion, it's a lifelong process. If you can send a text message  under 10 words or less to everyone that's on a journey of healing and self awareness like yourself, it's  What would that message be if you could send them all a text message today?

Ooh. Wish I had some time to, to reflect on this because it's powerful, right?  

 

Let me narrow it down here. So we got this community, right? We need to have that community. We have to have that connection with ourselves. And we are part of that community, right?

. The wounds inside, you got to look at those wounds and I think that's most important, right? Because that's where it's, that's where it lives. That's where sickness lives, right? So I think I'm going to reference something to that to be okay.  

I like that. It's okay not to be okay. There's people out there that are struggling. We call it the rat race. They're stuck in that cycle of using. It's never ending. If you can send a text message under 10 words or less to those people that are still struggling today,  what would that message be?



Know, it  comes to mind, it's humility, humbleness,  right? We all want to fix  ourselves and we all think we might know how, or we're going to try every way without asking for help, but it's, give up, surrender, and ask for help.

 I have to comment on that because I just feel like so many people who are still caught up, they they're afraid to reach out and surrender and ask for that help. And I think sometimes that's just a really important message that needs to be heard, yeah, 

people need to get ahold of you.

Where can they find you? 

I'm always around, the Thunder Bay indigenous community, how at the moon, anybody that's connected to some to ceremony, anybody that's connected to, how at the moon sobriety social services here in Thunder Bay.

You ask anybody that's Sober living good. And then they'll send you to me, man, . Okay. 

 But I I'm more of a one-on-one person, eh I like to be with people.  

Respect that. And is there anything else that you'd like to add before we close it down for the night?  

I touched on those two things in that, in those text messages.

And,  it's okay not to be okay. So we have to, as men,  particularly,  and generally, for all people, if we if we fight. And we try to continue to numb what that pain is inside. It never goes well for us. We but, and it also is anxiety inducing when we're trying to run away from that, when we're trying to avoid it.

Be there. The Creator gave us those feelings for a reason. And they may hurt inside here when you keep them there. I don't know if you remember when I talked about that. When I welled up and I teared when I went to that tree, but it was a good, it was a good sob, right?  And that's a beautiful feeling, man.

That's a bittersweet, you think about, the Creator gave us that ability to express those hard things in our hearts, deep in our souls that we don't want anybody to see or we don't want to feel, right? We don't have to feel it anymore. All you have to do is let it out, give it its space, use those tears. Cry, and it'll be okay. It'll now have its own space and it won't live inside anymore. 

That is so true. And again, so important. And I've had so many of my friends who are struggling with that pain and trauma say that they can feel it in their chest. They can feel it in their throat.

And, when I've heard that described, I say to people, you Something similar to what you said there, Clarence let it out, because I know that they need to cry, I know that they need to weep, that's what they're, that's what they're describing to me, and I've wept many times in my life, and on my healing journey myself, and I understand that release that you're talking about, and how powerful that is, there's so many people all who have been taught that it's not okay to cry.

And instead of letting that out when it's right there in the chest and in the throat, like it's literally right there ready to come out. They just they push it right back down, and then they wonder why they get stuck in that cycle, because it's so important to release. And I just needed to say that because I agree with exactly what you said there.

I think that's so important. And when people do release that and they work through that trauma and through that pain instead of Pushing it back down. That's when real legitimate healing happens, and that's where we can move forward   Absolutely  

It's a beautiful thing, you know Our emotions the ones and God gave us those hard ones  They're beautiful, you know  Even grief, you know when you experience grief when you love somebody so much it hurts their absence hurts You  It's beautiful.

Feel it. Honor it. You be there with it because God gave you that person, gave you that love that you feel it. And because of it, because of its absence or its sense of absence,  it hurts inside. And that's beautiful. It's a gift.  Let her out.  

Clarence, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

It's been an absolute pleasure.  

Absolutely. Anytime.  



And I'd also encourage our listeners to, to reach out because like A Z and I have been saying all along, we want to provide this platform for others to come out and share their stories as well.

And I feel like when people share you So many things just come out in the open, and we're able to really get some different perspectives. And yeah, I'm really grateful for you guys. So thank you both for coming out tonight.  

Miigwetch. Good night, everyone. 

Good night. Thank you. Miigwetch.