'As good as any, better than most'

February is Black History Month; March is Women's History Month. Either one is an appropriate time to look back at the life of Dr. Carrie Best.

In the history of Nova Scotia — home of the largest indigenous Black community in Canada — Dr. Best was well-known and admired for her many years of work on behalf of her people. She died in 2001 but not before she had made her mark and helped to dispel some of the egregious racism that existed throughout her life.

She was born in New Glasgow in 1903. In 1946, she founded The Clarion, the first newspaper for Blacks in Nova Scotia. She wrote for newspapers and magazines and was a weekly columnist with The Pictou Advocate. She was the author of an autobiography, That Lonesome Road (which is also a social history of Nova Scotian Blacks.)

She was well-known across the country as an equal rights activist and was a founding member of the Kay Livingstone Visible Minority Women of Nova Scotia, an organization which works with women and young people to promote a sense of identity and pride of race, integrity and self-discipline “and to lift others, as we ourselves climb toward dignity and self-respect.”

Her last doctorate was awarded in 1992 by the University of King's College in Halifax. In 1970, she was awarded the Lloyd MacInnis Memorial Award for her work in social justice. In 1973, she received the first annual award of the National Black Coalition of Canada. In 1974, she was appointed to the Order of Canada. In 1975, she was granted the degree Doctor of Laws by St. Francis Xavier University.

In December of 1991, she received an award for outstanding contributions to human rights on the anniversary of the day the United Nations ratified the Declaration of Human Rights.

I interviewed her a few years before her death at her home in New Glasgow. She scoffed at my tape recorder and refused to let me turn it on, telling me she didn't want to talk into "that thing." I returned to the time-honoured tradition of taking notes. Her words are in italics. My occasional comments are not.

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The 'religious hobo'

Dr. Best is in perpetual motion, rummaging in her well-packed briefcase for a pertinent document, punctuating her remarks with a gentle jab to her interviewer's shoulder or a soothing pat to the knee. Her energy and vitality are infectious. She often speaks with tongue in cheek.

* * *

I was invited to give the convocation address to the Atlantic School of Theology. I nearly dropped dead when they asked me! They can't mean me, I said. Do they know I don't go to church? Well, I slept on it. I do live close to God — I'm a born-again Christian — but I consider Christianity and “churchianity” two different things.

In the end, I accepted. I described my religious background to them and told them I was a “religious hobo.” When I was born, my parents were Salvationists and that's how I was registered at birth. When I was a young child, they left the Army because the first “black church” had been established in Pictou County. That was Baptist.

When I grew up, I had the bad taste to marry an Anglican but he was good enough to go to the Baptist church with me. After a time though, he missed the Anglican way of worshipping so ... he had accommodated me and I thought it was my turn to accommodate him so I went to the Anglican Church with him. But I missed the Baptists. The Baptists clap and laugh and sing and really know how to praise the Lord. So I went back to the Baptists. You can see I'm a religious hobo.

As I got older, I met so many wonderful people of all religions. I began to accept people for what they are — colour and creed don't matter. I believe that all roads that lead to God are good.

The root of my faith is Mother Earth. I think of all the little creeds as just different ways of interpreting God.

So that's what I told the graduates of the Atlantic School of Theology!

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That Lonesome Road is dedicated to her mother. On the dedication page, she wrote, “Society Said: You are an inferior being,/born to be a hewer of wood/ and a drawer of water/ because you are Black.... My Mother Said: You are a person, separate/ and apart from all other/ persons on earth. The pathway/to your destiny is hidden.../ you alone must find it./ ...And then she said.../ Take the first turn right,/ and go straight ahead...”

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It's very painful to talk about some of the practices of the past. When I was growing up in New Glasgow, you couldn't eat in a restaurant. You couldn't get your hair cut. I went to jail. My son and I were at the movies; we sat downstairs, we went to the movies three times a week and we'd sat in the same seats for years. Then one day, the usher came to me and said, “You can't sit here. You have to go into the balcony.” I refused. They called the police; they had to drag me out of there. I was in jail for an hour. I was charged with causing a disturbance.

But at all times of my life, I've been a happy person. When I was young, I think we might have been broke but we were never poor. I was personally just as happy no matter what we had. My personal happiness had nothing to do with racial discrimination.

I confront bigotry face on. If I hear — and this has happened — that someone has called me “n****r,” I go right to that person. I look him right in the eye and I say, “did you call me 'n****r'? Now I've heard you did and all I want from you is to tell me if it's true. If you say it isn't, I'll believe you. We'll go together to the person who told me and you will tell him it isn't true.” You could always tell if it was true or not.

I'm not a n****r. I'm as good as anyone and better than most. I love everyone who's worthy of my love — but I won't sit back and take that kind of bigotry.

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Her memory seems unlimited. She quotes long stanzas of poetry, long passages from books, most of which were learned many years ago. She considers poetry to be part of her spiritual nature and part of her search for identity.

“The long hours spent in reading poetry,” she wrote in That Lonesome Road, “and the hundreds of poems memorized during my early childhood, my learning years, my yearning years and even now in later life, are fragrant memories of my journey in Search of an Identity. The irresistible habit of committing poems to memory still persists, and like deposits in a savings account, can be drawn out at will. The fund is never exhausted, for the interest grows both on deposit and withdrawal and is compounded daily.

“Black history was virtually non-existent in Nova Scotia during my learning years ... I remember when I received my cherished volume of the Poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I was ten years old ... I found to my utter astonishment and delight that I could read the Dunbar poems which were written in the Negro dialect as easily as those he had written in classic English. These gave me my first sense of Black Identity.”

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Things have changed — but not enough. The white race has got to start learning from those they feel superior to. The Blacks have to take pride in who they are. When Frederick Douglass was a young slave, the white mistress said, “He's a bright boy. I'd like to teach him to read.” The slave master said, “When you educate a Negro, you unsuit him for a slave.”

Education is very important — more important than ever. We have to start teaching our children ourselves — in “kitchen schools.” We have to get funding from Black churches, Black organizations, and take the time to teach the children where they come from, how far they can go.

Being old now is not a disadvantage to me in all my projects. It's a blessing. God gave me this extra time to accomplish whatever I can, to meet wonderful people of all races. I'm so thankful.

Rita Joe: Creating a beautiful image of her people

Rita Joe died in 2007. In 1994, I spent a day with her in her home and shop, chatting, snacking, crafting. She crafted – she made beautiful earrings and other jewellwey – and I watched. She gave me a pair of earrings to take with me when I left.

Rita Joe is the acclaimed Mi'kmaq poet. She was born in Whycocomagh and now lives in Eskasoni, the largest reserve in Nova Scotia. She is a mother, a grandmother, a weaver of baskets. She sells her crafts and those of her family and community in her Eskasoni shop. What follows are her own words. ...............................................................

I describe myself as Native – Mi'kmaq. I'm 62 years old now. When I started writing, I was in my 30s, and I saw a need: that was to create a beautiful image of my people. When I was a little girl, I was called a little savage, a cannibal. I didn't know what cannibal meant – all these derogatory things I heard when I was a little girl.

When my children used to bring their books home and see something bad like that, they'd point it out to me. “Look Mum, look what it says here,” and I would read it.

And I would hear myself say, we were not the writers of our own history. Then I would say to myself, why aren't any books written about the beautiful part of our culture? So it dawned on me that there has to be somebody to document the beautiful part. So I began to write.

I am the Indian

and the burden lies

just with me.

I have spoken across the nation and when I read that little three-line poem, there is heavy discussion. They're trying to find out, what is the burden, what is the burden that Rita Joe is talking about? I tell them: the burden I'm carrying came from you, the European. You have made me carry my burden because you're the ones who documented our lives and it was not the truth.

In any culture, any culture on this earth, when you look for the good, you'll find the good. That's what I look for so I can present it to the people who look down on us. I have been doing it so long that my own perception of my own culture – to me, it is beautiful. Everything about my life, since I was a little girl and what I have seen since is beautiful.

When I was a little girl – my mother died when I was five – I was put in a succession of foster homes, all over Nova Scotia. I can't tell you how many different foster homes I was in but I had a lot of mothers, I had a lot of dads. I came back to live with my own father just before he died. I was nine and I lived with him for a year. I used to see him open a book of hieroglyphics. That's why I say in one of my books, the written part of our life is for us to read which you did not recognize – same with Egyptian writing, that was not recognized. I saw my dad open a book a lot of times and read and I saw him explain these symbols and I know there was a written part of our life – that's why I said in a poem “that the world chooses to deny.”

I was mostly in native homes, not that many non-native homes, and they were as poor as I was. There were times when I didn't have enough to eat.

All these homes, Mi'kmaq was spoken. All my life, I've spoken Mi'kmaq. When my dad died I was 10. I was placed in a home with this woman and she told me, “Go home and pick up your clothes – don't bring them all because I'll make dresses for you.” I loved her, she was a good person. I went home and got my little box. Right at the time I was putting my clothes together, somebody came up the stairs. A woman took me by the hand and told me to come with her.

When you're 10 years old, you listen to older people – especially if your dad is dead and there's no one advising you. So this woman took me by the hand and led me away and put me on the train. They took me to a non-native community and I went to school there. I was 11 when I went to school there and of course, they made fun – they were all non-natives. They jeered and I made a vow at that time that I would get higher learning. I would teach these people that I'm just as good as they are.

I was 12 years old when I put myself into the Shubenacadie Residential School. It was that determination to learn – to learn to cook, to sew and all these things.

When I arrived there, I admired the place. It was so beautiful – the shining floors, the pictures on the walls, the beautiful building. The priest at the time when I was there, we became good friends because he was also from where I just came from – Cumberland County. He would never remember my name, Rita, but he would call me Cumberland County. He was a nice gentle old man, he was so kind.

I had some bad experiences in school but the way I look at life, I forget about the bad things that happened and I look for the good. I always look for the good. I consider it being Christian to be forgiving, not to carry injustices on your shoulder all your life.

I read a book written by an anthropologist about a writer who lived 300 years ago and he wrote this: they have no religion; they have no art. He was observing Native people, and I just threw this book down. The gall of this person to say that we had no religion. We had a beautiful spiritual part of our lives that they did not know.

Me, I never accepted it. When I was told by the nuns, “your religion is no good,” I always knew in my mind sure, it's good, it might even be better than yours.

There's an oral tradition with my people. We're always talking amongst ourselves. My husband's family was from Newfoundland. At the time when my husband-to-be and I met in Boston, he asked me to marry him the second week after we met. At the time when he proposed to me, he said we're not related, are we? Native people are always concerned about that.

The sweat lodge is a very religious experience. Part of the tradition is traditional food – deer meat, or meat of other animals we have killed – moose and deer and salmon, not something that we've bought from the supermarket. Or something that was donated from the people in the community – eels maybe.

The two sweats that I have taken part in, the first one was here in Eskasoni. Everything that I write about, I try to take part in it. I did not know when I went in there what one experiences. So it was very frightening at times what I experienced. The learning I got from the sweat lodge did not come from the live people who were in there with me – there were 13 of us – the teaching I gained from that sweat lodge came from the spirits that were there.

It's very hot, even hotter than a sauna. The medicine woman who was sitting next to me kept touching me and saying are you alright Rita, do you want to leave? I said no, I wanted to stay, and I stayed for two hours and 40 minutes. I stayed in one in Restigouche for five hours. They were all women there. The all-woman sweats are more powerful than the men's. Women have more spiritual power than men. Men have spiritual power too but women have more. Everybody knows that – even the men recognize that.

One time, when I was in Vancouver, I took the baskets that I make with me. Some of them are made from sweet grass. They scolded me for them. You're not supposed to use sweet grass in basket-making, they said. It's a sacred grass and it's supposed to be used only for sacred purposes. The way I explained it was when I make my baskets, I make them for people to enjoy the basket. Because whoever purchases the basket, they do it because they love the little basket and when they're sweet grass, people want them, right away. So I was explaining to the Natives up there, when I use sweet grass in my baskets, it makes people feel good and I don't think our Creator is going to get angry with us for making other people feel good.

Sometimes, I weave sweet grass into braids and I tie them on each end and when I'm doing it, I'm thinking about love.

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