Returning home to the rez was the best decision I ever made

In the eleventh month of the pandemic, my 26-year-old marriage collapsed. 

I had been souring on Toronto for some time, having left home at the age of 17 to go to York University and never returning other than to visit. 

I was tired of living in the big city with the traffic and the noise and the sky-high prices. My marriage falling apart hastened the resolve that was growing in me – I just wanted to go home. 

Home is the historical and storied Haudenosaunee community of Six Nations of the Grand River, 100 km down the highway from Toronto, where my duties and responsibilities as a Mohawk Wolf Clan woman reside.

So in November 2020, my daughter and I packed up as much as we could carry in our car and drove to the home I grew up in. 

It turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. 

My grandfather built our house in 1920 with the help of his brothers and several of the neighbourhood families whose grandchildren still live close by and with whom I went to Indian day school. My dad and his twin brother were born in this house. 

My grandmother Edith Anderson Monture, who was the first Indigenous nurse in Canada and an American army corps nurse in the First World War, designed the house's layout and every room is perfectly square with lath plaster under 100 years of layered wallpaper. Over the years it's been modified and modernized. 

The house sits on 40 hectares of land, of which a quarter is untouched woodlot. This was originally a working farm and we still have an old barn that used to house 10 head of cattle, plus store a lot of hay. 

Coming home to the rez was strangely a bit of a culture shock and yet extremely comfortable — like putting my moccasins on after a long day in heels. 

I am forever grateful my employer is flexible such that I was able to continue working from home, dealing with the terrible rez Wi-Fi but I never missed a day during that transition. 

Like dealing with the rez Wi-Fi, being back on the territory required some pragmatic adaptation and flexibility for my urban-raised daughter and me. 

Both 'joy and sorrow'

For one thing, the majority of homes do not have drinkable running water at Six Nations. Yes, we did get a water treatment plant and yes, it's operational but hooking your house up if you're currently not on the system costs anywhere between $8,000-$10,000 depending on how far your house is from the water main.  

At the old farm house, we have a cistern that gets filled once a month as we do all the cleaning and bathing with trucked-in water. Rez connections are such that I text one of my cousins and he brings it on demand. Once a week, we fill two 22-litre water jugs for drinking water at a water supplier on Chiefswood Road (also another cousin).

I used to live a half a block from Maha's Egyptian Brunch and an excellent Vietnamese restaurant in Toronto, so moving back to the rez meant giving this easy access up. There's no sushi or pho or biryani or shawarma unless we drive to Hamilton and going to Starbucks is a 30-minute drive.

For me, the slower pace of life is calming and peaceful.- Terri Monture 

Coming home has meant joy and sorrow in equal measure. 

The pandemic has been brutal to our people and an outbreak in January claimed the lives of several Cayuga speakers — one of our critically endangered Haudenosaunee languages — and many other community members, two of whom were my childhood friends. 

Over the past year, there have been tragic car accidents, house fires, overdoses and many of the other relentless impacts of colonialism on our people play themselves out in our interpersonal relationships. 

But there is also joy.  For me, the slower pace of life is calming and peaceful. Being able to interact on an almost daily basis with my extended family has made coming home the best decision I've made in many years. 

My daughter is ecstatic to reconnect with her many cousins and the friends she has made since enrolling in McMaster University's Indigenous Studies Program. She recently told me it was her childhood dream to live on the rez.

Living fully in the present

Our community is now undergoing change and rebirth. 

We are on the cusp of our greatest challenge yet because the discovery of the hidden graves of the bodies of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School had an immediate horrified and traumatized response here on the territory. 

We are now awaiting the results of the ground-penetrating radar examination of the grounds of the Mohawk Institute with a kind of dread, hoping there are no graves but bracing ourselves that there may be. 

The 200-year-old Anglican church that my entire family had attended since we came to the territory was burned and there were arson attempts at several other churches. I personally don't consider myself a Christian any longer but my memories of all the elders in my family are tied up with my childhood spent every Sunday at this beautiful old church, whose fate remains to be seen. There is no clear consensus on whether it should be rebuilt or torn down.

Our relationship with our neighbours will be different because we have said no to further development along the Grand River and in the Haldimand Tract. It remains to be seen how this 'no' will be accepted by the province, especially in this time of "reconciliation." Going into Caledonia, Ont., can be sometimes strange, but the denizens of that town seem to have accepted the fact that Six Nations will exercise its rights when we need to and have learned how to live with us. 

I am cautiously optimistic to see what these changes will mean for my community. 

This November marks a year since I've returned home. It seems that hardly any time has passed and yet my entire life is different. 

I planted a garden last summer and am already making plans for an expanded one for 2022. I'm looking forward to the pandemic lessening its grip so I can go to community events and see a lacrosse game and go to a social dance at the longhouse when there's a traditional Sing.

I can't wait to hang out with my huge family again at picnics and parties, to see all the new babies and watch the kids grow and spend some time with the family elders. 

And while I loved living in Toronto and the life I had built there, somehow coming home to the rez has allowed me to reconcile my past with my future and live fully in the present in my home on my territory. 

I ran away from home at 17 to live in the city, without realizing that I could go home again. My growing dissatisfaction with Toronto was the realization that I just wanted to be back on the rez — that I was able to come full circle.

Perhaps that is what true reconciliation between Indigenous and Canadian populations will allow us to do – truly live at home.

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