Who You See Here, What You Hear Here, Let It Stay Here

I was doing a night shift at an Adult Treatment Centre (for Alcoholics) when I was 20 years old. I didn't have much to do, just walk around the building as everyone slept. It was an old building with two floors and a basement. It was about 6 in the morning and I was looking out the window of the second floor. The south view was of a big field and the Reserve Townsite across the highway. I saw two people walking towards the Centre from the Townsite and they were holding hands. As they got closer I knew it was the cook, a very nice lady who was always nice to me. The man she was walking with was a friend of my Dad's. He was a married man with a family. So it was interesting and funny to me. I was young and didn't really see "older people" as being sexually active, never mind fooling around. Both of the people are now deceased and I may have not followed the slogan of, who you see here, let it stay here. I may have told a few people about what I saw. In my defense, I am a gossip bag and relatively stupid. 

I was thinking about the whole Sinead O'Connor dying at 56 years old thing. The reason it resonated with me is for a couple of reasons: one was her song Nothing Compares to You was released at a time when my wife and I were young and were only a few years into our relationship. The other reason is, Sinead didn't adhere to the whole "what you hear, let it stay here" law. She went public with the Pope and how his Christian Soldiers were raping kids at their pleasure. It was a "State Secret" and no one was to speak publicly about all that "fucking, sucking and let the good times roll" done by the Jesus's team. Of course for the Indian population it was an open secret. We weren't really suppose to acknowledge it. We were to keep it like how you keep your sins to yourself. Except only to be stated in a dark closed closet, where a small window is open and you tell it to another person sitting in the dark with a cloak on. Only then can you say it. With Sinead, her little letting it spill out about all the kids being used as a smorgasbord of sexual desserts by the Pope's boys, caused a roar, an uproar actually. People vomited at the sight of their Pope being ripped in half on live television. Sinead was quickly burnt at the stake. Not literally but pretty close to it. Her professional career, her personal life was actively ruined by Jesus and the good folk of the Cross. All because she did not adhere to what you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here. 

The amount of secrets people are expected to keep is staggering. We live in a world where we are demanded to keep secrets: signing non-disclosure agreements, following privacy laws, and societal norms of denouncing the whistle-blower, the snitch and the rat. We quickly adopt the negative terms for people who expose information, for people who dare to share what they see and hear. We've seen it with people who have exposed the crimes of government, the bad things the military does. Secrets are normal and some are needed, there is no doubt. When to say what you see or hear can be clear as a sunny mid-day in the Prairies or as dark as when you are sitting in the outdoor-shitter at midnight. We just have to trust our own decision, I guess, like when Father Arthur Masse was buggering the young girls in our Reserve. We just put our collective hands over our eyes, our mouths and Masse continued with his desires of the flesh, as he would have known from Galatians, 5:17-21. 

Indigenous communities have been taught to keep secrets. It went against their whole societal ways of living. The little dark closet with the man in a cloak was forced upon them. Confessional Booth, Boxes were the tool of the Church, a tool to keep secrets (and provide verbal porn reading for the Priests).  We Indians now live with keeping secrets as the default. Secrets have allowed all sorts of mold, corruption, abuse, violence, and predators to evolve. The Church was ripe with jackals, hounds and whores with crosses around their necks, and nice gold rings with red gems in the middle: "Enter the confessional booth, a.k.a. the dark box, a piece of furniture designed by Cardinal Charles Borromeo, with a grille and curtain to separate the priest from the penitent. “The box was meant to bring an end to the scandal of sexual solicitation,” writes Cornwell, but tragically it only increased the incidences. “The Borromeo box, for all its physical barriers, still allowed for whispered pillow talk in the dark: the penitent’s voice and breath up close to the confessor’s ear. Many married woman, suffering from domestic and marital frustrations, became addicted to the atmosphere of crepuscular intimacy.”  Can you hear the priest saying, "you dirty dirty whore, tell me more." 

We went from community openness to a closed circle, a dysfunctional society. Well, things are once again changing, the community Circles are becoming a source of openness and transparency. We go into Sharing Circles, speaking to the Creator in front of witnesses. We share without fear inside the Sweat Lodge Ceremony, the Sundance and other Ceremonial Gatherings. We don't rely on the sneaky cloaked man in a dark closet telling us we are forgiven as long as we go do a few silent prayers. Still we have a long way to go. Many of our Chiefs and Councils live with the secrets of what they do in their lofty chambers of decision making. As well the Indigenous lobby groups, like the Assembly of First Nations, Manitoba Metis Federation, et al., are making deals which affect the lowly Reserve dweller, Indigenous Joe and Sarah. Indian People in the political arena getting rich off the financial minnows they get from the Big Sharks, governments, resource companies and other predators. 

Privacy laws can protect the innocent for sure, but those same laws protect the Windigos, the sexual demons, poisonous flies, greedy skunks and wily coyotes. So our communities need to embrace the open voice. Even if it is hard to hear or to see. I would rather our own community draws open the curtains, rather than some government entity, law enforcement Stormtrooper banging on the community door (Financial Transparency Act). I expect to see more Indian leaders taking off their cloaks and exposing pure nakedness of information to the people. 

Norval Morrisseau: Windigo 

And I don't really believe the slogan, "Who you see here, what you hear here, Let it stay here" is as beneficial as Alcohol Anonymous (AA) promotes. Simply because of all the secrecy in AA, there is no way to measure or see the results of success with AA. It has become modern folklore as the only way to sobriety success.  But who in the hell knows.