The Berger Inquiry

Northern Journal, November 5, 2013

Whit Fraser said if I valued my family jewels, I better not testify at the Berger Inquiry into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.  We were sitting in my living room in Wha Ti, still called Lac La Martre in those days, in August 1977.  Whit told me the Government of the Northwest Territories would have my knackers for bookends if I spoke out.  He said the poop had hit the fan when he, a CBC employee, had testified at Norman Wells, one year earlier.
My house beside the lake was like an overrun refugee centre in the aftermath of a devastating typhoon, or the train station in Calcutta on Friday night.  It was the flop house for the media crew:  Whit Fraser, Abe Okpik, Joe Tobey, Jim Sittinchinli, Louis Blondin, Joachim Bonnetrouge and a bunch of other folks I’d never met before.  People lazing in all the rooms, draped over the furniture, sprawled out on any available stretch of floor.  Talking, scribbling notes, typing, eating, drinking, playing cards, reading.
The Berger Inquiry was a Big Deal.  I’d been listening to the CBC coverage from all down the valley, Yukon and points south across the country for well over a year.
Listening to Charlie Furlong, Tommy Ross, Freddy Greenland, Wilf Bean, Philip Blake, Frank T’Selie, Claire Barnaby, Earl Dean, Rene Lamonth, Gerry Cheezie, Sam Raddi, Roy Goose, Les Carpenter, Peter Green, Paul Andrew, Raymond Yakaleya, Steve Kakfwi, George Blondin, Phoebe Nahanni, Gina Blondin, and Richard McNeely.
Listening to Richard Nerysoo define what was a stake – “We are fighting for our survival as a free people,” he said.  Listening to James Wah-shee clarify history by saying – “The Treaty was signed when it was discovered that our land was more valuable than our friendship.”
Listening to Jim Antoine say that he was willing to lay down his life to stop the pipeline.  To Bill Lafferty who come out in favor of the pipeline.  He wasn’t much worried about the adverse spin-offs – “I don’t think an Indian drunk is any stupider that a White drunk,” he said.
Francois Paulette questioned the big rush to get the pipeline flowing.  “The earth is going to be here all the time.  It’s not going to be taken away.  Why are they rushing?”
And George Erasmus, president of the Dene Nation:  “Our struggle,” George said, “is for self-determination.  We want to be in charge of our lives and our future.  We want to be our own boss.  We want to decide what is going to happen on our land.  Our position is that there can be no pipeline until after our land claims are settled.”
For seventeen months I’d been listening to the Berger Inquiry on CBC radio.  It had finally arrived in Lac La Martre and Whit Fraser told me; (he didn’t tell me not to speak,) he told me I’d better think carefully about it.
I asked Whit if he remembered why he spoke in Norman Wells the year before.  Sure, he remembered, he said.  He spoke out because it was something he had to do.  Me too, I told him.  Well then, go for it, Whit said, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So I did.  And what I said to Judge Berger wasn’t anything subversive or even earth-shattering.  I simply asked him to listen well to the Dene people that spoke to him because they were speaking about our future too, the future of our country and the future of our children and our grandchildren.
The government didn’t fire me.  They probably didn’t even know about it.
But Canada knew about Tom Berger’s report when it came out.  And there was no pipeline.
Jim Green was at the opening of the Berger Inquiry Exhibit at the College last week. It triggered hundreds of memories for him because he addressed the Inquiry himself  at Wha Ti in August 1977.

High Drama on the High Plains

Safarik Saddles up and Rides the Range

Swede’s Ferry

by Allan Safarik
Coteau Books
$19.95/272 pp.

What we got here is a duster wherein the good guy is the bad guy, or mayhap t’other way around; the bad guy is a pretty good guy, who, that’s “Tall Bob” Simpson, whilst on leave from his day job as a North-West Mounted Policeman, holds up the First National Bank in Bismarck, North Dakota, in May 1894, accidentally leaving an angry bullet hole the Bank Manager’s forehead, gallops north to cross the Souris River on Swede’s Ferry, hightails her back across the line to Canada as fast as his fleet  chestnut horse with three white stockings and a bullet grazed rump will carry him, stops by to visit his ailing Mom in Brandon, and then dekes back to Regina to hunker down and lay low in Mountie headquarters.

I don’t reckon it makes no never mind that I know Allan Safarik but I thought I’d get “full disclosure” out of the way right off the bat. He’s a friend. He published my first book. I like him. There. And I’ve known him for forty some years and always savoured his poetry but I didn’t know he knew a diddley squat about which end of a horse the fodder goes in. Reckon he does.

James J. Hill, President of the newly empty First National Bank in Bismarck, also owned the Great Northern Railway, whose payroll turns up missing from said bare bank.  Hill was pissed off. He calls in head honcho of the Pinkerton (“We Never Sleep”) National Detective Agency, William Pinkerton, and charges him with getting his damn money back, in the near soon if not before. Pinkerton unleashes his sleazy henchman Jiggs Dubois to recover the money and bring in the head of the varmint what took it.

And another thing. I didn’t know Safarik knew beans about guns neither. Well he does. The gun that started it all was Tall Bob’s police issue Enfield Mark II .476 revolver.  The rifle that coulda’  ended it all the same day it started was an old nine pound Civil War muzzle-loading .58 caliber Springfield musket wielded by a kid who could barely lift the sucker. The gun that fired the last shot and ended it all for certain sure was Bud Quigley’s Remington Double Derringer, Model 95, .41 caliber rim fire.

James Hill, now, he didn’t pack a gun at all. He used a hired gun if he felt the need. William Pinkerton relied on his personal body-guard, Edgar Haines, who used a Volcanic leaver-action .41 caliber repeater. Dirty Dubois packed a brace of Merwin Hulbert .30s in shoulder rigs in each armpit. Pinkerton Detective Balfour Smith favoured a snub-nosed Webley Bulldog, a powerful  .455 caliber hand cannon.

But just because there were all those guns in this drama doesn’t mean it’s a shoot’m up bloodbath kinda book. Au contraire. Some folks do get plugged but there are far more horses ventilated than people. But back to the story.

The law dogs in this tale are sure nothing to write home about. Bismarck Sheriff John Humphrey was a nice enough old fart but he had the gout, a bad back and a case of the screaming hemorrhoids so severe he was loathe to lower his ravaged rear end onto the hurricane deck of even the gentlest old plug.

A little farther north, Gerry Whatshisname, head law enforcement officer of the generally peaceful burg of Bottineau, N.D., was a good old boy who didn`t even bother to carry a gun at all. He shuffled about town in his bedroom slippers with a cherub smile on his face; his occupation, or preoccupation, being to spend as much quality time as possible between the Widow Murphy’s comforting sheets.

And meanwhile, over to Regina, NWMP Commissioner Lawrence W. Herchmer wasn`t about to tell the American rent-a-cops nuthin.  Just damn “Yankee riffraff“ he allowed.

Dubois and his sidekick, Balfour Smith, were dispatched to Mountie headquarters in Regina to get their man. They have an ace in the hole in Regina in the form of two Pinkerton retained spies right in the heart of Mountie headquarters. Two working ladies, Lilly Flett and Bonnie Blondon, ply their ancient trade above a Chinese restaurant in Regina’s warehouse district where, as Bonnie opined – “There`s no place information flows like in bed.”

Caught in the middle of the cross-border cops and robber intrigue is humble horse-trader Bud Quigley, whose spread is only a few miles north of the boundary in Manitoba. Quigley favours a 12 gauge side-by-side, 18“ barrel, Parker shotgun; generally has a .44 caliber Model 3 Smith & Wesson pistol handy, and  a back-up over-and-under .41 caliber derringer in his shirt pocket.

This rollicking romp across the prairies is not just a cool chase book, it’s great historical fiction as well; chock full of detail about life in them days, the folks that lived it, the horses they rode, the guns they used or didn’t use as well as their usually closet confined skeletons.

Hot damn. I enjoyed this book. Thanks Allan. But don’t take my word for it folks. Get the book and find out for your own self. As for me, I can’t hardly wait for the movie.

Jim Green is a celebrated storyteller, poet, writer, broadcaster, and entertainer who’s been hiding out in the Northwest Territories for more than forty years.

2013 Ko K’e (Fire) Storytelling Festival

Northern Arts and Cultural Centre partnered with CKLB Radio

Being Jim Green’s blog of a recent storytelling adventure.

I shuffled aboard a Northwestern Air Lease plane and left Fort Smith at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, September 13th; a glorious morning in the summertime. Had a right peaceful nap as we droned north over the cotton. When we dropped below the clouds over the bay on the approach to Yellowknife, Great Slave Lake looked cold and dark, whitecaps slopping lazily along the surface.

I’m always amazed how small the big lake looks from the air. Much smaller than it was when my paddling partner Juneva and I took 22 days to paddle from Fort Smith to Yellowknife, navigating the lake through the Simpson Islands.

The gracious Northern Arts and Culture Centre (NACC) executive and artistic director Marie Coderre met me at the airport and whisked me off to Javaroma for coffee and cranberry muffins, my all-time favorite. Good beginnings.

A busy day, Friday. I was on CKLB radio live with the dynamic Director of Radio Deneze Nakehk’o in the morning pumping the Ko K’e Storytelling Festival.  Had breakfast with the “boys” at the old timers table in the Diner. It wasn’t the Miners Mess but it felt some good, especially the part where I held a $21,000.00 gold nugget in the palm of my hand.

Back at CKLB with Deneze at noon pushing my new spoken word album, MAGIC WORDS: travel tales from the ice coast.  The year 1972 seems like a long time ago when our daughter was born in Taloyoak, called Spence Bay in the old days, and I scribbled the notes for MAGIC WORDS on a steno pad. Had lunch with the folks at CKLB – warm fry bread and baked lake trout fresh from the Horn Plateau courtesy of Deneze Nakehk’o’s Dad Jim Antoine.

Made a good contact with Angela Sterritt at CBC and dropped off CD’s for her at the studio.

Met with Northern News Service Entertainment editor, Danielle Sachs, gave her CDs, angling for a review of MAGIC WORDS; she came through in spades:

“From the nostalgic to the hilarious, Green’s stories interweave Inuit legends with his own stories – keeping them separate but side-by-side. Green’s poignant voice effortlessly brings the listener back to a time they may never have seen, and a place they may never have visited…. From the humorous to the stark and realistic, Green brings you into his living room before opening the curtains and taking you out on the land with him…. His descriptions of butchering seals, with the sound of the slide whistle in the background, brings the listener to the camp. We can smell the warm blood in the air, and hear the dog teams begging for their piece of the action.

Listeners will be mesmerized and find themselves listening to Green’s tales again and again.”
Danielle Sachs, Entertainment editor/Northern News Service, Sept. 21, 2013.

William Greenland

William Greenland

William Greenland, long-time Gwichìn CKLB radio broadcaster (guitar and Native American flute) and CKLB radio Dehcho Yati host Lawrence Nayally (drummer) launched the eighth annual NACC storytelling festival by entertaining the crowd in the NACC foyer before Tanya Tagaq’s awesome sold out show on Friday night.

Storyteller Breathes Life into History – Northern News Sept 2013

Storyteller breathes life into history

Ice Coast travels inland

Danielle Sachs
Northern News Services
Published Saturday, September 21, 2013

THEBACHA/FORT SMITH
Jim Green’s third spoken word recording focuses on a period of time just over 40 years ago, when he moved from Yellowknife to Taloyoak – then a part of the NWT.

Green took notes. Years later, he has recorded them in the storytelling genre.

Yellowknife: Notes from the Gold Range was released in June 2012 and, just over a year later, Magic Words: Travel Tales from the Ice Coast joins his collection of recordings.

Magic Words is Green’s third album release, his first, Flint and Steel with Pat Buckna was originally out on cassette in 1983. It has since been re-released in CD format.

Green worked in Taloyoak for the GNWT in the early seventies. He observed and noted everything he could.

“I’ve been writing and taking notes for years,” said Green.

“I have a lot more stories where these came from.”

From the nostalgic to the hilarious, Green stories interweave his own stories with Inuit legends and stories with his own – keeping them separate but side-by-side.

Green’s poignant voice effortlessly brings the listener back to a time they may never have seen, and a place they may never have visited.

“Everybody has a flood story, one time there was a big giant and he was real hungry, so he waded into Pelly Bay, not very far south from where we were at Netsiksiuvik, to hunt seals,” said Green.

As a giant, he was quite well endowed and because of an unfortunate hunting accident the giant fell backwards and caused a tsunami that flooded the low lying areas, Green says on track two.

Green describes taking a boat with a friend, dodging rocks, through narrow inlets, and the story tells of why the rocks are no longer exposed as they were before.

From the humorous to the stark and realistic, Green brings you into his living room before opening the curtains and taking you out on the land with him.

“At low tide, or when the wind is honking in out of the north, the nets are a jumbled mess of grinding collisions of ice…” Green describes the seal hunting camp and talks about bobbing from ice pan to ice pan whenever a seal is spotted.

His descriptions of butchering seals, with the sound of the slide whistle in the background, brings the listener to the camp. We can smell the warm blood in the air, and hear the dog teams begging for their piece of the action.

Listeners will be mesmerized and find themselves listening to Green’s tales again and again.