FNUC is the only accredited Canadian Aboriginal University that administers undergraduate and graduate degrees – to predominately Native American Indians.

I am feeling this sense of loss because I am an alumnus. I graduated from the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in 1988, FNUC’s predecessor. SIFC was still a very young college when I arrived there in the winter of 1984. It was established in 1976 through a federated partnership with the University of Regina.

A part of me was aware of the baby steps that we students were making attending SIFC. We didn’t have the million dollar facility that currently houses FNUC. In our day, we had to make do. We held our classes in small rooms, in old basements, any space left over by the University of Regina and parts of its older campus.

I believe all the students at SIFC did it with pride and class…because we had no choice.

I won’t get into the blame game currently going on about what caused FNUC’s demise, about who did what or who didn’t do this or that. I’m sure this dialogue will continue ad infinitum over the next few years. I’ll leave that to the pundits.

However, I will speak about my memories when I attended SIFC that are a huge part of my make up, my being. My time there is a huge part of who I am today. It’s the friends I made there. It was the environment we created. It was the professors who taught me to see the bigger picture. And it was in those small class rooms that I was taught about who I was, where I came from. I remember how it used to send chills down my back….All that history, music, art, the stories.

We were being taught entire peoples’ histories, of cultures not only our own, but others across Canada, the United States, Central America, and around the world. We were being told truths, from our own people. Most of the professors were Native American.

I knew the uniqueness of it, the newness of everything. I remember in high school we did a few measly classes on Native American history, usually around Thanksgiving. I almost felt like I should be ashamed. But at SIFC, it was like learning about something almost foreign and I was inspired.

I took SIFC Cree language classes – as an elective. I knew our grandmothers and grandfathers were punished for speaking their native languages when they were forced into boarding schools. I knew the SIFC instructor of our Cree linguistics classes. He was a family friend. And I also knew he attended the residential school near my hometown.

The peace chief wasn’t protesting treaties; he just wanted the best treaty. It was about equal rights for his people, against discrimination and about human rights.

It was in those treaties that education was included as a provision for all Native Americans that were negotiated by our chiefs and leaders. They were making the ultimate sacrifice under extreme conditions. They were facing genocide, yet they still negotiated this for their children and their children’s children.

Then there were our gatherings…every Thursday night, sometimes Fridays, we would gather. We met at the student union building, the heart of the campus. We felt like we belonged to something bigger. And we were eager to make it fun.

I was a kid off the reservation when I arrived. This was my first experience in an urban environment. Many of us were in the same canoe. A lot of us came from remote isolated reservations from across Canada. This was all new to us. But that’s what made it great. We were all in this together.

It was one for all and all for one. We carried this college spirit to the extreme. One night a few of us from SIFC took on a city street gang. I remember as we were leaving an off campus space after a student mixer,  finding myself with a hockey stick in my hands, in a dark, back alley, armed and standing my ground. We were empowered by our college experience; we looked out for one another.

My fondest college drinking memory involved a dirt baseball field on a hot Sunday afternoon, a lot of gopher holes, and a softball. Everyone on the field was pretty much inebriated. There was our friend, playing way in left field, who was willing himself not to spill his drink while running for a long fly ball. I remember how he looked so serene lying there on the ground, the ball in his glove and a huge silly grin on his face.

I passed the same friend the following week in the hallways as we made our way to class. He had a big welt on his forehead. We had fun but I felt most of us were serious about why we were there. It was all about learning.

When I moved off campus I remember the daily transit bus rides along Wescana Parkway as it wound its way to campus. I remember the geese who always took their time crossing the road while we waited. I remember the times I spent waiting for that darned bus… it was always late. It was either too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. I remember how in the winter, standing at a bus stop, the Saskatchewan prairie wind would freeze my face off.

And I’ll forever remember the Greyhound bus rides during my breaks, back and forth between my northern hometown and Regina. Blistering thunderstorms, white-out blizzard conditions, were the common. I never thought about it at the time. It was just something I did.

But I remember how I looked forward to our mother’s home cooking. I would picture the bannock, smothered in butter or jam, the moose meat, duck soup; and at holidays, the huge turkey, with all the fixings and especially, the deserts.

The day I wore my baby blue graduation commencement gown and cap I saw my University of Regina biology professor with her family, she was receiving her Master’s degree. She saw me and I saw her. We were people from two different nations. She used to encourage me and my studies and made small comments on my papers for me. We saw one another; we nodded our heads at one another, waved and smiled.

Now I feel pain. 

I will forever be indebted to my professors, for teaching me everything they knew. To the students that were there, I still remember your faces. I probably won’t remember all your names but I will remember the times we had together. I will remember the talks I had with the elders on campus who served as our surrogate mothers and fathers. They understood that we were so far from our homes. Thank you to each and every one of you. I know many are now in the spirit world and I continue to thank you.

Today, I said a prayer, burned my medicines and thanked the Creator for my education. I have come so far. I prayed for the Seventh Generation. May each and every one of you find your own truths. And may our grandmothers and grandfathers forgive us this day.

                                                     
                                                         

By Steve Cowley

Hoboken, NJ (February 24, 2009) – For a second consecutive year the St. Matthew Trinity Lutheran Church played host to the Annual Concert of Spirituals, Sweet Chariot this past Saturday to celebrate Black History Month. The concert starring Soprano LaTanya Hutchins, who was also the Executive Producer and Creative Director, featured the Stevens Choir conducted by Bethany Reeves, and other guest performers.

As the audience entered, pianist Alvin McCray, percussionist Lorenzo Holloway and organist Richard Brode played an overture of spiritual selections. Mr. McCray, who’s been a music director at several churches over the past twenty years, enhanced many of the melodies he played during the show and complemented Ms. Hutchins’ singing beautifully as well as the rest of the guest artists he played with.

Pastor Mary Forell warmly welcomed the 100 or so people who braved frigid waterfront winter temperatures to attend the show and opened it with a prayer.

Keeping with the theme for the evening, the audience sang the patriotic hymn, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. Written by brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, it was adapted as the official song of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and has since become the Black National Anthem.

Of particular interest was the concert’s 12-page program. In addition to the usual “About the Artists” section it described the history of Spirituals, the difference between spirituals and Gospel, a short piece on Slavery in New Jersey and the history of the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Returning from last year’s inaugural Sweet Chariot event was narrator and host, Jim Cyrus. He introduced the first selection of the evening, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, sung with panache by Ms. Hutchins accompanied by the Sweet Chariot Community Choir.

On the next two spirituals Ms. Hutchins was once again accompanied by the Sweet Chariot Community Choir. On “You Better Min”, various members from the choir took turns on the chorus. Ms. Hutchins was then joined by her long-time friend, Mrs. Jerona Babb, soprano, on “Scandalize My Name.” The exchange between them on the song was charmingly performed and lent an air of frivolity to the concert. They soon had the entire congregation laughing at the scandal of it all.
 

Ms. Hutchins then introduced the always magnificent Stevens Choir. The choir sang three selections: “Duond Akuru”, “Going Over Home”, based on the combination of an Appalachian spiritual, ”Poor Wayfaring Stranger” and the African-American spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, and finally, “Dide ta Deo”, a Nigerian Folksong.

Conductor Bethany Reeves said of the song “Duond Akuru”, “Those are Kenyan words, specifically the Luo language, or the Duoluo language. The Luo people of Kenya. Which is the same group that President (Barack) Obama’s father is from. So in a certain sense it’s a tribute.” Percussionist Peter McCauley played a genuine African drum called the Djembe. Stephanie Safko played the piano.

With the last selection, “Dide ta Deo”, arranged by Uzee Brown, Jr., Stevens Choir brought the song to an inspirational crescendo, blending their voices beautifully in rhythm with McCauley’s tribal drumming. It brought the audience to their feet for a standing ovation.

For the closing of the program were songs from Sisters of Freedom, a Cantata based on the lives of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. It is Ms. Hutchins’ goal to present the Cantata in its entirety at next year’s Black History Celebration. This year’s selection, “Changed My Name”, “The Old Ship of Zion”, and “I’m Going Through”, was written by Linda Twine.

Ms. Hutchins shined on “Changed My Name”. She was in full tonal control on the melodies easily reaching the higher scales and turning the song into a haunting hymn at times. Throughout the singing, host ersonName w:st="on">Jim CyrusersonName> would interject narrations from Twine’s cantata. With a twinkle in her eye, Ms. Hutchins skillfully took the lead and hit her notes on “The Old Ship of Zion”, as the community choir behind her welled up and burst out energetically with the song’s chorus. Everyone in the audience seemed to inhale as one when her soprano filled the church at the end of the song.

Ms. Hutchins sent everyone home with the infectious “I’m Going Through”, the program’s finale.

                                                  

About the author:

Steve Cowley, Cree, from Manitoba, began his career as a journalist in early 90’s in Canada. As a New Yorker since 1993, Steve is currently the CEO of Tâpwê Production Projects.

This is one of those 'you have to be here' types of things. The weather here has been hot, hot - tropical. The humidity is the worst. When the temperature hits the 90's, even without the sun, it makes even breathing tough.

It’s been like this for the past few weeks. It’s rained a little but it just makes everything damp and muggy. Talk about a bad hair day. Then the clouds clear, the sun comes out and the cooling Hudson River/East River currents come in.

It’s hard to tell people who haven't been here what happens. We call it a New York moment. A wind funnel is created along Broadway from north to south and blows outward to the streets east and west. It’s a wind that makes you stop and just stand there. You'll see a lot of balcony or terrace barbeques. People on their stoops - people- watching.

I used to spend a lot of time in the Robert Wagner Park along the Hudson River beside the World Trade Center - the park is in Battery Park City, a city built on landfill created from the excavation to build the towers. The park is still there. Sun worshippers. Along the Hudson River is a walking path, hundreds of people jogging, rollerblading, just hanging.

On the path along the park you get the full affect of the river breezes. You can stand there and photograph, film the Statue of Liberty - it’s in full view. The walking path goes all the way around the southern tip of the island. If you walk south along the path you'll eventually get to the South Seaport - Manhattan's lowest southern point. This is where I would sit and sketch the Brooklyn Bridge for hours or just watch the ships and boats on the river…just appreciating the currents blowing in. You hear people on the island, talking about these currents say "here they come".

This is also the best time to hang in Central Park. The breezes float through the park from east to west. This is the best time to jog or bike in the park or take on Suicide Hill (at 110th St.) or even rent a boat and explore the lake in the park; then wait until the evening when the park has their Central Park Summer Stage concert series or Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater, a great performance space in the middle of the park.

These are my favorite times in the city. Until we hit another patch of bad hair day weather. But those currents always come back.