One day Maddy asks Nan to tell her about the two girls in a sepia-coloured photograph tucked away in Nan's desk. In the photograph there is a taller girl who has her dark hair tied back, and a younger girl with braids. Nan begins her story about the two girls:
They lived in a community called Daylu, in the far north on the British Columbia-Yukon border and were of the Kaska Dena people. The older girl was Mac-kinnay and her younger sister was Beep. When a black robed man came to their community, he told the Kaska Dena people they must be baptized into the Catholic church and in doing so, must take a new name. The priests and nuns wanted to turn the Kaska people away from their beliefs and have them take on the Catholic Christian beliefs. So when Mac-kinnay and Beep's family were baptized at Holy Family Mission, the two girls took on the names of Agnes and Martha. However they didn't like the names very much, so they changed them to Aggie and Mudgy. Their parents, Long and Yanima still called them by their old names.
When Long died in a hunting accident, Yanima had to raise the girls on her own. She did have help from her son, Sylvestor and also from their community. Soon another priest, by the name of Father Allard, came to the village. As there was no school in their community, he told Yanima that the girls must go away to school to learn to read and write and worship God. Instead of sending the girls to a closer school in Whitehorse, they were to travel with Father Allard to the new school in Fraser Lake, British Columbia.
When the day came for the girls to leave, Yanima couldn't bear to see her daughters off. Instead, Sylvester and their grandmother Gyuss, as well as many of the community, came. Aggie and Mudgy left with Father Allard and the two Dick brothers whom he hired to take them across Dease Lake. The two Kaska Dena girls did not know it, but they were about to embark on a journey that would take them far, far from their homes and their families.
Discussion
Aggie & Mudgy is the story of the author, Wendy Proverbs' birth mother Mudgy and her Aunt Aggie's journey to Lejac Residential School. The story is based on Aggie's memoir about their journey from Daylu to Fraser Lake. Wendy was one of Mudgy's twelve children, eight of whom were placed into the care of social services at birth. Wendy was adopted at birth into a non-Indigenous family who loved and cared for her. She has been able to meet two brothers and four sisters and is grateful for the loving family she was raised in. While Mudgy was able to return home once during her time at Lejac and see their mother, Yanima, neither girls ever returned to live at Daylu. their ties with their community and their culture, broken. Mudgy died in 1976 while Aggie passed away in 2001. Father Elphege Allard died in a canoe accident in 1935. The Lejac Residential School finally closed in 1976.
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| LeJac Residential School |
Unlike many books on the experiences of Canada's residential school survivors, Aggie & Mudgy is about their journey to the school. It was a journey of almost "...1,600 kilometers by riverboat, truck, paddlewheeler, steamships and train" undertaken by two very young girls in the company of a total stranger from a very different culture. The sisters had no understanding of where they were going. It also demonstrates the degree that the government and churches were willing to go, to gather in as many Indigenous children as possible.
The author employs the story within a story method to tell her young readers about her birth mother and aunt's journey. Their story is told by "Nan", grandmother to eight-year-old Maddy. The telling is rich in Indigenous bush craft and cultural practices. For example, when Nan tells Maddy about eating fish, she also explains that "They were used to a diet of fish, as well as moose, caribou, and mountain sheep. Gathering seasonal bounty such as plants, roots, and wild berries was a nutritional and tasty addition to their diet."
In another example Nan explains to her granddaughter about Aggie and Mudgy's grandmother Gyuss's beading and how the girls were just learning to master this skill. "Their grandmother beaded many items. She used seed bead that are made of very small pieces of European-made glass. her patterns were cut from birch bark and often incorporated floral designs. Her moccasins, gloves, and pouches were well made, and when she could, she traded these items at the Hudson's Bay Company trading store. Gyuss was just beginning to teach Aggie the more difficult moccasin designs when the priest took the girls away."
Nan also explains how the Europeans came to change many things, not just their names. "They changed the names of communities and mountains and rivers too. The Kaska Dena always knew Daylu as a gathering place where Aggie and Mudgy's ancestors and family lived. It only became known as Lower Post in the late 1800's, after Europeans established a trading post there."
Through Nan, young readers also learn a bit of history of some of the places Aggie and Mudgy travel to on their way to the residential school. For example, Nan tells Maddy about Wrangell, Alaska. "A long time ago, in the late 1890's, Wrangell was a very busy port of call. The reason for this was because of gold. Gold fever gripped North America as gold was discovered in the Yukon. due to gold fever, Wrangell thrived as thousands of men travelled up to the Yukon, seeking their fortune."
Nan also provides information on the different First Nations tribes that occupied the areas they were traveling through. For example, in Prince Rupert, Nan explains that "...Prince Rupert is a huge, deep ocean port community situated on an island - Kaien Island - that is connected to the mainland by a bridge. Many Tsimshian First Nation tribes have lived in that rugged area for millennia, and totem monuments stand tall like sentinels in their territory. The Tsimshian actively traded with other First Nations and Europeans." When Maddy asks what they traded, Nan tells her, "Before the Europeans arrived, northwestern interior and coastal First Nations traded food items such as eulachon, which is a small fish that is prized for its oil, known as eulachon grease....They also traded carved horns spoons, obsidian rock, and thin little white dentalium shells. When the Europeans arrived, beaver pelts were highly sought after, as well as sea otter, mink, fox, marten, and muskrat. This became known as the fur trade, and it turned into a huge industry throughout Canada."
While at times Nan's narrative can seem almost encyclopedic, with the many bits of information she provides Maddy, it makes this short novel a wealth of information and serves to help young readers understand how things were before European contact and some of the changes that occurred afterwards. For example, by detailing the trading that the Tsimshian First Nation participated in, we see a vibrant, thriving culture that interacted with other peoples in North American and even Russia.
The profound effect the residential school had on Aggie and Mudgy is implied by Nan's inability to continue her story once the girls arrived at Lejac. She tells her daughter Cherrie that she is a coward for not being able to tell her granddaughter what happened to Auggie and Mudgy at Lejac. But Nan does reveal that she is Mudgy's daughter and the reader does learn some of what the two sisters experienced at Lejac. Author Wendy Proverbs ends the telling in a positive uplifting way, a tribute to herself, and her ancestors who are survivors because of their resiliency, courage and determination. She honours these qualities in her mother and aunt in her retelling, while acknowledging the intergeneration effects of the residential schools.
There is a Bibliography and a Suggested Reading List at the back of this short novel. The author has also included an excellent map that shows just how far Aggie and Mudgy travelled from their home in Daylu to Lejac. This novel offers an excellent opportunity to learn about the residential school system for younger readers.
image credit: https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/local-news/sacred-healing-ceremony-to-take-place-at-site-of-lejac-residential-school-3859738
Book Details:
Aggie & Mudgy: The Journey of Two Kaska Dena Children by Wendy Proverbs
Wandering Fox Books 2021
134 pp.
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