Pearl Achneepineskum has spent much of her life trying to tell her little brother’s story. Until the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie got involved, no one paid much attention.
Her brother was Chanie Wenjack, the 12-year-old indigenous boy who died 50 years ago this month when he ran away from a residential school in Kenora. He was trying to go home to his family in Ogoki Post, almost 1,000 kilometres away. His body was found by the railroad tracks.
Wenjack is the subject of Secret Path, a multimedia project built on Downie’s haunting, fifth solo album, along with a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire and an animated film, co-executive produced by Mike Downie, who is Gord’s brother.
Achneepineskum met with Gord, who is battling terminal brain cancer, when he travelled to Northern Ontario to unveil the album’s first single, The Stranger, for Wenjack’s family. She felt a connection with the poet-singer. “He’s a very down-to-earth person, and I felt that when he’s so sick like that but he wants to do something meaningful, that gives him the joy to keep on going,” said the 68-year-old, who was in Ottawa on Tuesday for Downie’s first Secret Path concert at the National Arts Centre, and to announce the creation of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, which is dedicated to improving the lives of Canada’s indigenous people. Money raised will come from Secret Path album, book and concert-ticket sales, and donations.
For Achneepineskum, getting a call from one of the biggest rock stars in the country was no surprise. “If you understand the Creator, the Creator somehow brings all your wants, your wishes, and it’s on his own time,” she said in an interview. “Maybe this could have happened a long time ago, but it didn’t. It happened in the 50th year. I wasn’t surprised because I was already on a mission to get this out on a national basis so everybody would hear.”
Her determination stemmed from frustration over the fact no one paid attention to the recommendations of the jury after a 1967 inquest into Wenjack’s death. According to a Macleans article written at the time, the jury wrote that “the Indian education system causes tremendous emotional and adjustment problems,” and questioned if it was the “right” approach.
“I asked about it afterwards,” recalled Achneepineskum, “’Why did you people not pay attention to the recommendations?’ and what I got from a coroner in Thunder Bay was (that) nobody has to. There’s nobody designated to make sure those recommendations are being followed.”
Had the recommendations been followed, she feels lives would have been saved, including those of the seven First Nations students whose deaths were investigated during an inquest in Thunder Bay last year. The students came from remote Northern Ontario reserves to attend high school in Thunder Bay.
In her mind, the solution is to make sure there’s a high school in every reserve. “We need these kids to be safe at home,” she said.
Wenjack was one of many indigenous children who didn’t make it home from residential school. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gathered close to 7,000 statements from residential school survivors and their families, said Ry Moran, director of the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. He was also in Ottawa on Tuesday.
“The TRC’s missing children’s report documents thousands who died in the residential schools,” Moran said. “Some died running away, some died of illness, some died of fires. Kids running away was a common part of the entire history. At the school Chanie was at, there were kids running away in epidemic proportions, in the eyes of administrators.”
The newly created Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund aims to support initiatives that not only identify the missing children and where they were buried, but also enable communities to commemorate them. It also supports projects that initiate dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous communities, and bring stories like Wenjack’s into the mainstream education system. The goal is to raise $100 million.
“We’re dreaming big,” said Mike Downie. “It’s two Downie brothers and two of Chanie’s sisters creating the fund. It allows us to take all of the interest in Gord and his situation, and all of the interest in his interests, which are issues that affect indigenous people in Northern communities, and First Peoples across the country, and trying to put something in place that is going to build a pathway between these two solitudes.”
