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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – AA AND NATIVE PEOPLES – RS 06343.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-aa-and-native-peoples-rs-06343.mp3 Duration: 01:10:40
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If everyone will take their seat, we'll begin. My name is Hody Mitchell, and I'm from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and I'm… And I'm your chairman this morning. And let's open the meeting in the usual manner, with moments of silence, followed by the serenity prayer, please. Thank you. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. I'm very privileged to be here today. Very few people, our state delegate didn't even know I was Indian, you know. And I said when I started my drinking career, I was going to prove that Indians could drink. But I failed that too. The reason I'm here is because I drank too much. And I think that's all I'll say about my story.
If any of you all are ever in Oklahoma City, we would love to have you visit. We have a marvelous AA there. Lynn, how many meetings do we have? Ninety a week. So there are a lot of drunks there. I have an announcement. Marge Kay from California lost her 50 years with gratitude blue book, and it has her name and address in it. And if any of you have found it, would you please leave it in the delegate's hospitality room, I believe she said.
Thank you. Let's see, which one of you want to be first? You want to be first. I think he's the longest winded, so we'll let him go. These three gentlemen I've only met this morning, and Vance is from Oklahoma City, so I can say these things about him. So I'll give you Vance L. My name is Vance Little Walker, and I'm a real Indian alcoholic. I'm glad to be here this morning. Hell, I'm glad to be anywhere sober.
You know, I run down those Oklahoma hills like I got good sense. My sponsor tells me that I was a screwed up drunk, now I'm a screwed up sober person, and I kind of believe that. You know, I've got to tell you an Indian joke. I see quite a few Indians here, I don't know whether they'll understand it. Because I've found Indians to be very hard-headed. Johnny and Danny decided to take up the career of drinking.
And they woke up one morning with a bottle of rub-a-dub, rubbing alcohol to you people. And I might add, if you never drank it, and you decide you want to go out and do it again, you've got something to look forward to. Danny told Johnny, he said, you know, they told me this will help, he said, and we're sick. He said, you drink it and you tell me how it tastes. Johnny uncapped it and the aroma hit him and he took a deep breath and closed his eyes and he began to swallow.
The stuff didn't want to go down. So he swallowed three or four times and he gagged and tears came in his eyes and he couldn't talk. And Danny said, how does it taste? Not being able to talk, all Johnny could do was go like this. In the Indian sign language that means very good. In the Indian sign language that means very good.
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I do not believe, because I'm an Indian, is why I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Because you see, I have felt what you have felt. And I have thought what you have thought. And I probably did many of the things that you have done. Several years ago, I realized that I suffer from the same disease that you suffer, and we call it alcoholism. And before I go any further, I've got to say something. My sponsor and I had a little one-on-one before we left, as he always does. He said, you've got to remember your sobriety day.
I'm going to say it in a little different way this morning. Nine years and ten months ago, I found out I was an Indian. You see, there was a time in my life when I lived in a world of oddity. I lived in a world of fantasy and I lived in a world of insanity. In my oddity world, it was long before I became an alcoholic. I always wanted to be different. I felt I never fit. I was looking for a place that never existed, and I was looking for things that never existed.
In my world of fantasy, I grew up during the Depression, and I was from a very poor family. I lived on a reservation, and I used to dream about how it was going to be. I was going to have a good job and a big car and a fine home and a beautiful wife and beautiful children. In my insanity world, I was phony. I was phony as hell. I would lie. I would cheat. I would do anything to make me look better.
That was my world of insanity. I can look back and retrospect my life. When I went into the service at a young age, I also was good at that. I was good at anything I ever did. At 18 years old, I had baseball scouts looking at me. At 16 years old, I picked up a trombone and learned to play it, and I learned to play it very well. I laid the trombone down at 18, and I have never played one up until today.
I was always trying to prove that I was number one. When I went into the service, I became a good military man. You know, as I progressed as a teenager, I did not drink. I didn't have a reason to drink because I was busy being great. In 1950, they sent me overseas, and I had to fight the Korean War. On October 19, 1950, something happened to me that I couldn't talk about for many, many years. In a little place called Kaohsiung, I was involved in shooting some prisoners.
In an age of 20 years old, this was against all my morals, with all my spiritual principles that was taught to me by my mother and my father and my grandmother. This was murder, and I was involved in it. And this bothered me. They took me off, evacuated me out of Hungnam, and sent me to an R&R camp. Sent me to an R&R camp in Nagoya, Japan. I met a Marine here a while back. He told me he was in the Vietnam War, and he said that they jerked him off the line when he got squirrely and sent him to an I&I camp.
I couldn't understand. I said, what do you mean, I&I? He said, intoxication and intercourse. You too, huh? I could relate to this. But while I was at this R&R camp, I found something that fixed me. It made me feel like something that I always wanted to feel. It made me feel like people told me God would make me feel when I was a young child.
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I was hooked. I was hooked from the very first drink. And I believe that in my, where I come from, among the Native Americans, Native Americans, that we become alcoholic quicker, and we die from cirrhosis quicker than the other race of people, because I've seen it in the last nine years. I came back to these United States a very bitter young man. I began to strike out at people. And I lived more in my world of oddity and fantasy and insanity.
I became hostile and belligerent and violent. Every time I drank out, I struck out at people. I continued like this. And it got to a point where nobody wanted to be around me. My own family didn't want me around. Now I'm not going to go through my lucid details of drinking, because the book that I read tells me that alcohol was only one symptom. We talk about skid rows. We talk about hallucinations and convulsions and DTs.
And we talk about being locked up in prisons and mental institutions. And we talk about living on skid row in the sallies and the emissions. I know all about that. Because you see, after I married a beautiful woman, she left me, and I could not understand that, and that's where I went to live. Because those were my kind of people. They drank what I drank. They acted like I did. They talked like I did.
And they smelled like I did. I was at home. And then I began to go to halfway houses. God, I loved those halfway houses. You know, I could get to eat a few things and feel better and go back on the street and do my thing. You see, at this time, I lost all respect for what we call our higher power today, of God. I could not believe. I was an atheist. I lost most of my moral and spiritual principles that was taught to me as a child.
And I lived there, and I thought that was my destiny. And I can tell you right now, I believe, for me to be up here this morning, here in Montreal, that was my destiny. Because I believed that if I never became an alcoholic, I would never have got here. Because you see, I approve of my alcoholism. I not only admit and accept it, I approve of it. You see, I'm not here by some miraculous thing that happened.
I'm here because I needed to be here. Not here just to speak at a Saturday morning AA meeting. I needed to come to AA. I needed you people. And that's what I like to talk about in my remaining time. I like to talk about how I got sober. Hell, if I wasn't a drunk, I wouldn't be here. You know, I went to one halfway house. I went to a lot of halfway houses. A lot of them wouldn't take me back no more than once, you know.
And at that time, I like to say, somebody in AA told me a story once, and I remembered it. You know, if you put three people in this room, and you tell them if they go out that door, there's a man with a club, he's going to hit them. You know, a normal man wouldn't go out that door. He'd find another way out. But if you had a schizo here, he'd sit and think about it for a while, and he'd go out one time just to see if it's true.
And he wouldn't go out that door any more. But for Vance the alcoholic, I'd go out that door time after time after time. And I went out that door one time, and the guy wasn't there. Went out that door one time and the guy wasn't there and I sat down and waited on him.
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I went to a halfway house in June, in September the 12th of 1975 and I had no intention of ever sobering up. I could not believe a man could walk around on the face of this earth without taking a drink and I was very belligerent. They almost kicked me out of that halfway house because I was very hostile and violent. Until a man walked in, great bigger than I was, had been in AA for 12 years and he said, Vance, I'm going to tell you something.
You want to live here and you want to try to straighten your life out, you listen to me. And this man sent me to AA. And I walked in a group in Tonko, Oklahoma, there sat Tom, John, Marguerite, Jim and Jeannie and I hated those people because, you see, I come from a culture and I come from an ethnic of people who are stoic. I seen those people hug and I couldn't go for that. The only thing I heard at that meeting that night was when I left, Marguerite told me, she said, Vance, if you think you have a problem, come back.
We may have an answer. And that stuck in my mind and I'd go back and I pounded on the table. I was telling the young lady, I resigned from that group many, many times. I'm never coming back to hell with you. They were lying to me. There was a little old Pennsylvania Dutchman that sat in the middle of the room every Tuesday night and every time he talked he would turn around and look at me. And I hated that little dude.
And you know, these people start conning me and I claim to be a con man. Tom one day got up and said, you know, he's talking about sponsorship and I didn't know anything about it. He said, you know, they help you through all the rough spots. He said, why don't you find somebody you don't like? The conversation quit and I walked up to John and I said, will you sponsor me? He said, you're damn right, but we'll do it my way.
He said, we go to a lot of meetings. He said, I demand that you get honest and you change your damn attitude. I began to listen to John after about 18 months. Because you see, for 18 months I rode on the fringes of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not want this program. I did not want to get sober. I did not believe in what you talked about. You talked about things I did not know anything about. You talked about not drinking.
You talked about a higher power. You talked about working steps. You talked about going to committee meetings and you talked about going to state committee meetings. I didn't know nothing about that. I didn't want to know. And you tricked me into doing that. They took me aside one day and sat me down and told me that I had to start working this program. John said, if you don't, I ain't got time for you.
I took the book down and I began to read it. I took the 12 and 12 and I began to read it. The strangest damn thing, you know, I began to read the 24-hour-a-day book and I couldn't wait until the following year to see what they wrote again. See what I can do? You know why my Air Delegate set me up here, don't you? I began to work this program and beautiful things began to happen, things that I could
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not believe would happen to me. I remarried a beautiful woman. She's not here with me today, but in spirit. I have my children back. My oldest son has 20 months of sobriety. My youngest son is struggling to find the right girl, and he's 17. And I guess my wife and I are doing the best we can. And some good things have happened to me since I came in this program, because I began to work it. And I think back of the things that have happened to me.
I was talking with a friend of mine that I know very well, and I've been to different places with him, and not in the program. And he was telling me the other day, he said, you know, the Indians have a great problem among us, and the place I come from it's about 80 percent, and it's about 30 percent of those people have been in prison. And about 80 percent of that is due to alcoholism and drugs. I have to say that, because I come from an area where alcoholism is very great.
My son and I, my youngest son, Rick, went to a movie once, and I'm weird. I love strange movies. Star Wars. I've seen it three times. Return of the Jedi. Beautiful movies. We were coming back from Return of the Jedi, and my son said, hey, Daddy, how'd you like that little elephant, I mean that pig-looking thing down in that swamp? I said, Rick, I've seen things like that long before that movie was ever made.
And the good thing that's happened to me, I've never been fired from a job since I've been sober. I've resigned from two. When the phone rings, I no longer jump. When somebody knocks on the door, I'm there to greet them. When I go to a meeting, like my sponsor says, sit up in front, and when you see a newcomer get up and say, I'm glad to see you're here. I go by what my sponsor says, because he told me the other day, he said, Vance, you've gotten over nine years of sobriety, and I haven't turned you loose yet.
And I'm glad he hasn't. I still go to him, but I go to him now, and I share good things with him. I took him out to breakfast last Saturday morning, and we talked about coming to Montreal. You see, I've worked this program to a point where I've been around you people too long. I was at a point where I wanted to stop, and I couldn't. I wanted to quit and say, this is enough. I want to live with a little serene and a little sobriety.
I didn't want to go do a lot of the things I did, but I'm grateful that I did now. But I wanted to stop and say, I want to be an AA member. Since I've been sober, I've been on a school board, believe it or not, and in our part of the country they're closing a lot of schools. And I got a Senator from Washington, Mike Sina from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and we got appointed with him. We went to see him, and he said, I'll hold a meeting tomorrow morning, and we'll talk about your problem.
The President and I was the Vice President, and we went, and we sat down in a big room, 30 or 40 people in that room, and he got up and he said, I don't know most of you here. Will you go around the room and introduce yourself? You know what happened? I said, my name is Vance Little Walker, and I'm an alcoholic. There was people who stared at the ceiling. There was people who shuffled paper around.
There was people who bit pencils to keep them laughing.
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And I couldn't take it back. And they closed the school. That's why I say I've been around you people too long. I am very grateful to be here, I really am, and I do want to thank Day or State Delegate for asking me. I'm glad I'm here. I did all the drinking, did all the things that I did enough to get here. And chances are if I do what I did this morning and do what I'm doing today, I will probably stay sober the rest of my life.
I do not live my life one day at a time. I live my sobriety one day at a time. I have plans for me. I'm going to work my program today, and I'll probably stay sober. My life is back in Oklahoma. The plans are back in Oklahoma. And I learned through this program that I can do four things. I can feel, I can think, and I can act, and I can live like a human being. And I'm very grateful that I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most effective life-changing programs on the face of the earth.
And I'm grateful that I found a God of my understanding in this program, my own personal God, and I'm not going to explain him to you because I can't. I'm glad that I have spiritual principles. I learned it here. And I'm grateful for Bill W. and Dr. Bob in June 10, 1935. And I'm very grateful that there was a Southside group in Tonko, Oklahoma, in September of 1975, because I'll tell you something, if I had somewhere to go and something to do in September of 1975, I would not have come to Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm glad there was a group there. And I'm grateful that within that group was a little old Pennsylvania Dutchman named John M. As you see, with all of this, I've learned one thing, that I can live this way as long as I choose to. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Vance, we're so glad you were here, too. I want to tell you all a story I heard about a man driving down the street with a car full of penguins.
And a policeman stopped him and he said, you can't do that, you know, he said, you can't drive down the street with all those penguins, he said, why don't you take them over there to the zoo? And the man said, okay. The next day, the same man was driving down the street, the same load of penguins, and the penguins had on sunglasses. And the policeman stopped him and he said, mister, I told you yesterday to take them to the zoo.
And he said, I did, we had such a good time, I'm taking them to the beach today. I'd like to introduce James C., known as Chico. If you only know what the crowd looks like from up here, it's beautiful, you know. My name is James Chicago and I'm an alcoholic. In Toronto, my friends can call me Chico and you can call me Chico, too. Chico and you can call me Chico too. I'm kind of nervous. My service sponsor contacted me about a month and a half ago and said, Chico, how would you like to speak at the World Conference? And me and my eagle said yes.
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I didn't realize he was really speaking the truth. I waited impatiently for the letter to arrive and when it did, I kind of sunk underneath the chair at home and I started to get nervous like I am now. I've been like this now for almost a month and a half to two months. It got worse this morning because I got morning sickness. Talking about morning sickness, I've got to bring this up. You see, I am very privileged today and very honored to have a lady with me and she's part of my life. We are going to have a baby next November, so it's an AA baby.
I usually don't talk about my drunk a lot. I usually talk about my emotions because before I came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't know a damn thing about emotions. I would say that before I came into the program, my biggest emotion was hate. I hated everybody. I used to say that I never had any prejudice because I hated everybody equally. My lady said before the meeting, I feel a native school because I ain't wearing the native stuff on today. I come from Toronto, the biggest reserve in Toronto because there's something in the neighborhood of 25,000 natives in Toronto.
I'm from there, but I'm getting away ahead of myself. I like to talk about emotions because I really didn't know too much about my emotions before I came here. I guess the first emotion I can really identify with and really relate to is rejection because my mother placed me in an orphanage when I was just a little guy and that was rejection. The first time I experienced it and I was to be rejected many times during my life, especially when I was drinking.
When I was in the orphanage, I grew to dislike and hate the authority because, as you see, the orphanage was run by nuns and I'm trying to find a nice word for them. They were strict. That's all I can say is they were strict. This was back when I was only 10 years old until I was about 14. What I received and what I was able to pick up in that orphanage, I was carrying through my life, like physical and mental abuse.
When I was a young fellow, when I was about 11 or 12 years old, I was also sexually abused, so I grew to hate men too. I grew to hate everybody in general. It was awful. That's the only thing I can say. I saw my mother again when I was approximately 17 years old and it wasn't your usual mother-son type of confrontation. It was like she was just another woman to me. There was no emotions towards her or anything like that.
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I have to talk about my mother because she's a very important part of my sobriety today. I moved around quite a bit. If you're wondering if I ever drank, I did. I had my first drink when I was 9 years old. Then I didn't have another drink until I was about 17. What I started off with was vanilla extract. That's what I started off with. Then I moved up to home brew. Then from home brew, I started drinking the stuff you were talking about there, rubbing alcohol. From rubbing alcohol, I switched over to beer.
Then from beer, I switched over to wine. From wine, I switched over to rum, vodka, and everything else up to martinis. Then approximately around 1969, no not 1969, 1971, I started going the other way around. I ended up drinking Lysol. That was the last drink I had. I've got to tell you this thing about Lysol now because it's a part of my life. Everybody's life, I think. You see, at home, downtown Toronto, we have this apartment. My lady's pregnant, if you don't know.
I've got to talk about this. Three months ago, she had these strange and weird smells. She used to smell things from outside the apartment, in the apartment, all over the apartment. She used to have this can of Lysol. She's spraying it all over. I said, dear, would you mind quit doing that because I might have a slip. But, you know, if you're new here or relatively new, and if you're a person that likes to go in and out of the program, I'm grateful I wasn't one of those because I stayed and I hung around.
I'm going to right now sort of relate to you some of the experiences I had down in Skid Row in Toronto. From approximately 1969 to 1979, I was in Skid Row in Toronto. They're not nice, but it happened to me. And if somebody here likes to go out and try, I promise you it'll probably happen to you too. You see, when you're down Skid Row, you do anything to survive. You rob, you steal, you mug your own people, even the people that you drink with you mug.
You drink anything, anytime, anywhere. What went… I lost my train of thought. Skid Row is not a very nice place to be when you're down there. When you're down there, there are things that you do. And when you're down there long enough and you don't tend to bathe, you don't tend to shave, you don't tend to change your clothing long periods of time. I was at this flop house, and I hadn't done these things for long periods of time.
And I started what they call, you get winage. And if you scratch hard enough, you develop wine sores. I had it over a good percentage of my body. And my social worker sent me to St. Michael's Hospital. And I was to remain there for about a month. And I came out. And I think I look rather cute today.
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I think I look rather cute today. Sometimes when I was down there, I tried various methods of trying to stay sober. I tried the regular method. Just don't drink for a couple of days and go back on the way. And then I tried the religious method. I tried Sally Ann in Toronto, and that didn't work. I also tried, at this point, I'd like for you to keep an open mind. If you're on medication like Temposol or anti-abuse, please do stay on it because it didn't work for me.
Because it gave me that time period to plan my next drunk. It didn't work for me. I like to refer to my last drunk because I heard an old-timer once, a tape, mentioned that if you haven't remembered your last drunk, then you probably haven't had it yet. And I'd certainly like to remember mine. You see, the last couple of years of my drinking, I don't remember too much. Because I was in a continuous haze, like in and out.
I wouldn't know what day was what. Christmas Day, I was standing in front of Lombard Street liquor store, so you know that's pretty bad. But I robbed this guy of his pension check, his disability pension check. And I really don't know where that money went to. Because I was continuously buying. But I do remember buying three bottles of wine. I was a high-class drinker then. I bought three bottles and I drank one and I blackmailed.
But I do remember waking up in a doorway on Richmond Street in Toronto. And it was the middle of January. And I said, it's time to change your socks, Chico. And that's the exact words I said. And I went down to the detox on Adelaide Street. And the same detox I'd been to many times before. And I knocked on the door and I said, help. And who opened the door? A nun. That was January 17th, 1979. I take January 19th, 1979 as my dry date and I haven't had a drink since.
From that date to now, life has been an adventure. I say that. Life has been an adventure. I say that. It has its ups and downs. Mostly downs, but it's okay. I remember going… When I was at the detox, they gave me my first choice I ever had. Usually people told me where to go. But this time, they asked me if I wanted to go back out in the streets again. Or if I wanted to go to St. Michael's Halfway House or go to the Halfway House for Native People in Toronto.
I took the Halfway House for Native People. And one of the requirements there was that I attend AA meetings four times a week. And I stayed for three months. I was required an additional nine months. The reason why I stayed a year at the Halfway House is because I was not capable of looking after myself. I remember the first… One of almost the first nine months of going to AA meetings. I had this uniform on.
I was dressed in black. I looked really mean at people and dared them to come up to me and say I'd shake my hand. Sometimes I'd look so mean that I'd make Clint Eastwood look like a baby. Sometimes I'd look so mean that I'd make Clint Eastwood look like a baby. It took me approximately 18 months in this program before I was able to get active, before
[00:45:15]
I wanted to get active I should say. The other legacy is service. I'd like to speak a little bit about service. You see at my group, the group I attend in Toronto, if any of you are in Toronto it's the Foundation 33 group, we meet on Thursday evening. We had a business meeting and I used to do the same thing I've always done, just sit down and be quiet, don't say anything. Naturally they wanted an intergroup rep in Toronto so they appointed me. I said okay I'll be an intergroup rep. I didn't know what was going on at Toronto Intergroup.
I got active. At Toronto Intergroup they have what they call the Operating Committee of Metro Toronto. Naturally I'm sitting there, they have elections every six months and naturally I'm sitting there and minding my own business like I usually do. This friend of mine, he asked me, Chico, would you mind standing on the Operating Committee? I said yeah, well okay. There was about maybe 80, 90 people there and I figured I wouldn't have a chance.
I got appointed to the Operating Committee of Metro Toronto. 18 months down the line. They have elections again for chairmanship of Metro Toronto. I was automatically there because you have to work your way up. There were three other people, two other people with me. I didn't think I'd get nominated, I mean elected again, but I got elected Chairman of Metro Toronto for six months. That's from somebody that didn't want to do anything.
And to top it all off, at the Committee, Intergroup Committee in Metro Toronto like the Operating Committee, I'm still not finished yet, I was nominated and elected as Chairman of Information AA in Metro Toronto in 1986. I'd like to talk a little bit about that halfway house. You see I went through that halfway house for 11 months and a couple weeks I believe. Today I'm on the Board of Directors there. I'm also first Vice President of the Board of Directors. I have to talk about my mother because she's part of my sobriety. You see when I talked to my sponsor when I was about two years sober, I wanted to make amends to my mother and I did on Mother's Day. I went up and I talked to her and everything else and I got her phone number and we talked for about a week. I was on a week's holidays and I got her phone number, I gave her mine, came back to Toronto and I made it a point to phone her on Sundays, every Sunday. It's cheaper on Sunday. We do tighten up. I made it a point to see her on Mother's Day every year after that. Two years ago my mother died of cancer. I knew my mother for a month and a half out of my whole life. That I cherish. I lost a good friend.
[00:50:12]
An AA a couple months back. I also lost a brother just last week. He was not an AA. Couldn't reach this. You see my higher power does good things for me. He takes people away, takes places away, but he replaces them in my life. With that strength I'm able to cope with life on a daily basis. I don't run no more. Like I said, Kim and I are going to have a little baby in November and that's something we're looking forward to. Other than that, I've got nothing to complain.
I love her. I'd better say it. She's sitting in the front row here. I'm going to close my usual way I do in Toronto. I'm going to read it because my memory is not that good at reading this, saying it. I have a copy which I got about six years ago and I wrote it out. It means a lot to me. You see, if you listen to the words, it basically runs along the lines of the AA Fellowship and its principles. I didn't give you a drunkologue. I gave you something about emotions. The one thing I ask you to do is don't listen to it. Feel the words. You get a lot more out of it. What I'm going to read to you is a native prayer. Oh great spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, whose breath gives life to the world, hear me. I come to you as one of your many children. I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Oh great spirit, grant that I may not judge my fellow man until I've walked two moons in his mausoleum. May I walk in beauty. May my eyes ever behold a red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things that you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may know the things that you have taught your children, the lessons you have hidden under every leaf and rock. Make me strong, not to be superior to my brothers and sisters, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with straight eyes, so that when my life fades as the fading sunset, my spirit will come to you without shame. I have spoken and miigwech. And miigwech in Ojibwe means thank you very much.
Now the last person on our panel is Bobcat G from Indian Island, Maine. Hi everybody, my name is Bobcat and I'm an alcoholic, a very grateful alcoholic. I know when I got that letter to speak up here in Montreal, I was just as confused as Chico was, and I had to go to my sponsor too. And he said, well you've been doing so good, all right, stay right in there. And that's about all he says to me, just stay right in there. And he don't give me too much encouragement and he just more or less just sits back and watch and listen. And
[00:55:00]
that's where I get my wisdom, the wisdom to know the difference by watching other people in the fellowship and how they work the program. Well I come from a small reservation in Maine, it's about three and a half miles round and a mile and a half through, but we own a lot of islands. We own 199 islands and we just got recognized in 1980 and we had the Indian land claim and we was going for three quarters of the state of Maine, we got about 350,000 acres. And then I had a chance to talk to the President of the United States and that made me feel real good, old President Jimmy Carter, of course some people here from Georgia, and you know I feel real good here this morning because I'm only a stranger but once in this fellowship they tell me. So I know everybody and here and that I got a lot of support and that makes me feel good right up here this morning. So I'll just give you a little history of the island. We're run by a governor and a 12-member council.
The governor, we have to go by the white man's rules now on the Indian reservation because we're federally recognized and they have a governor, lieutenant, and a 12-member council. Before it used to be chiefs and before that used to be the Martians. And then way back before the Jesuits came onto the reservations, I heard a lot here about the nuns and that's why they came on our reservations way, way back. And I was born in 1935, December 3rd, and it makes me feel good to be born in 35 because that's when this fellowship started. And I came in when I came into the fellowship January 3rd, 1976 because I had to have my last drink, my last New Years and all that thing, you know. So I had plenty of booze left over. I remember my last drunk and back to when I was growing up on the reservation, I started out with choke cherry wine and rum cherry wine. Of course, we had the vanillas, you know, and it kind of gets me excited now when my wife makes a cake, you know, that vanilla. And I always think about that, you know. I says, I don't want to get drunk on vanilla again eating all them cakes. He said, well, you'll have to eat a lot of them because it cooks out. But I still, it's still a reminder for me. And, you know, I got my my grandson with me and his father's here today with me. And, you know, that makes me feel kind of comfortable up here. And, you know, it's a lot of people here that, you know, it just makes me feel really grateful. That's why I can't, you know, I'm overwhelmed by the what this program has done for me. You know, it's given me a lot of things, you know, being here, being here in Toronto. I keep saying Toronto, but it's Montreal. And, you know, I've been, I've been in quite a few places in Canada, but those are all drunks. Being here is the first time sober in Montreal and coming up on the train and, you know, the wonderful people and how everybody's rushing around, you know, kind of reminds me when I first came into the fellowship. You know, I came through them doors. This is back on the reservation when I seen the slogans for the, but for the grace of God. And I said, oh, no, I'm going back to church. And I didn't want no part of that. So that stuck me, you know, and then when my sponsor gave me my chip, he said, you're going to make a commitment that you're going to stay sober for 30 days. After I get that white shirt and that white chip, then I thought it was more or less a threat. You know, I'm staying sober for 30 days. Next thing I know, he said, four months, you're staying sober for four months, Bobcat. You know, kept going up like that.
But I never did run a chip clump for three years into the fellowship. I was more or less really sincere that I want to stay sober and have what you people have. You know, I want that. And when I came into Montreal, a lot of the people just mentioned about speaking English. We speak that much. You know, I'm going on 10 years and I know about that much of AA. I'll never know it all, but I practice all my principles and all my affairs today. That's all. Just being responsible for today. To me, this is what it's all about.
And I learned all this wisdom on the Indian reservation where I grew up. We've had AA on our reservation for 20 years. Well, we've had A.A. on our reservation for 27 years, and I'm proud. Applause I'm really proud to be a member of that group.
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I started out just like anybody else, you know, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for years to be a G.S.I. and D.C.M., you know, and I remember when the old-timers, I know a lot of people hate to be called old-timers, I get criticized for that in the program. Well, you're an old-timer, too. I says, no, I ain't. I figure around 20, 30, 40 years, and I'm an old-timer. But how they used to shovel, shovel into the hall, and some of the people would have to split the wood and make a fire for the furnace, and when they didn't have any wood, they'd sit in a circle, keep warm, but they always had that meeting, Friday night.
And that meant something to me. Applause Back to the government now, the reservation, how we go towards our form. We've got the oldest government in the country, in the United States, and we've got a representative to legislature, and she doesn't even have a vote. They give her a seat, but she don't vote. I couldn't figure that one out. Laughter Well, anyway, they have meetings once a month, and, you know, like I say, we're federally recognized now, and we're involved with Indian Health Service out of Nashville, and that's where a lot of the funding comes for the tribe, and most of the people on the reservation work for the federal government.
About 80% of the people, the rest work over Old Town in canoe shops and shoe shops. A lot of people heard of Old Town Canoe, and that was named after Penobscot, the same thing as the river in Maine, Penobscot. I guess the only thing that wasn't named after Penobscot was a potato. Then Iowa got our corn, so there's a lot of things that's going on, you know. I can see today, you know. Laughter But back to the island, the reservation, there's about 450 people that live on the reservation, and I've seen some tombstones over there, people that's buried from the Netherlands and Howland and different places, you know, and I couldn't understand that, you know.
Maybe they were there before Columbus or something, or what happened. But anyway, they was buried on an Indian reservation, and we're really fortunate to have a real athletic reservation like running and baseball. I'm married to Edwina Neptune. She was a cousin of the great Sarkalexis, Louis Sarkalexis. He was the greatest baseball player that ever lived in the United States in my book, and he went to Holy Cross College, and he went to play for the Cleveland Spiders, and he did such good there, he was overwhelming in his feats, and when he started to play for the Cleveland Indians, they named a team after him.
Laughter It's quite a thing to be from a reservation like that, and so many great people, you know, and who am I? You know, I just talked to the president. You know, I get elected to district chairman, and GESR, DCM, you know, and that to me is one of the greatest honors I've ever been. It's belonging to my home group, and I get out of politics now, and I used to be on the tribal council, and, you know, I just do my thing and just live for today, and, you know, I go to a little horse race in there in Maine.
We got a lot of things going, but the council, 12-member council there on the council, it's a staggering two years, and you know what that is, staggering. Anyway, first two years and the next two years like that, and it's the same thing with our representative and the lieutenant governor and the governor, but when I was growing up, the biggest election was for ferryman. That was because we live on the island.
We have to have a ferry. In 1950, we didn't have a bridge to lend, so we had some people calling it a bateau, but it was a ferry, and it cost them 4 cents to go across, 2 cents over and 2 cents back. I don't know what happened if they didn't have the 2 cents, but growing up on that reservation, I depended on a lot of white people to get me to the movies and get my popcorn a lot of times. We didn't go to the movies because we didn't have the money.
I used to Indian dance for pennies, and sometimes I'd have to share my popcorn with my friends and things like that. I'd carry up groceries to the other people in the tribe's home, and they'd probably give me a penny or a couple pennies, and some of them didn't even give me nothing, but that was all right. They'd give me a sandwich or something to eat because I was really poor, and then when I got into grammar school, I'd already been drinking a lot of chokecherry wine
[01:05:07]
because they made it right there on the reservation, and getting to grammar school, I continued drinking. Then when I got into high school, there was a lot of Sundays. You couldn't drink Sundays. I had to go to a grocery store and get cooking wine, so that's how I started to drink cooking wine on Sundays and Bay Rum. In the drugstores, they used to see me come on Sundays and get so many bottles of Bay Rum that they got used to me.
They'd say, hey, you're only getting two bottles today, and that's it. They'd set a limit on me. Then that progressed. I did manage to get through high school. It was tough. It was really tough because I didn't have any decent clothes and no decent facilities to live in, nothing like that. When I got into high school, I didn't want to stay around the reservation because there wasn't any work then, so I went to Florida.
It was never a disaster. I had a good-paying job, and I stayed there. This was back in 1956, and I really don't know how long I stayed in Florida. Then I went to Missouri afterwards and back to the reservation until 1970. When I came back to the reservation in 1970, they had the first federal program, Operation Mainstream. I don't know if anybody knows about that, but that was another two-year drunk.
All I had to do was just sign my name. It reminds me of the old days when people just put an X on their line for their name. All I did was sign. I don't even know if I signed my name for my check or not. It wasn't much, $48, $46, something like that. Then I started working for the tribe. When I got to 1974, after two years, 1972, I got my own business. I had F.C. Sapphire Construction Company, and that was another disaster.
I got one of the biggest loans in the tribe's history, and I just drank that business up until I came into the fellowship. That's all I did. In my drinking days, traveling around, I always managed to find a boss that drank, so I never got fired from a job. I don't know. That was the story of my life, I think, just managing to be around people that drank. I grew up in a family with a way of life. The closest I can see was that it was a way of life.
I never had a father, and depending on my mother-in-law, and my brothers and sisters, they drank. But I found out later, coming into the fellowship, that it was Bobcat. Bobcat was the alcoholic. He's the one that drank. He's the one that tipped this elbow. I didn't know all this until I came here to this fellowship. I want to kind of keep it short this morning. I know I could go right into a lot of details.
They told me if we didn't have to speak too long, it could be a question and answer afterwards, after we got through talking. That's why I like to kind of leave it. But I'm really glad to be here today. It was for my sponsor that really helped me out. I've never gone back out and experienced that nightmare again. I'm working the fellowship one day at a time. Last night out there at the Montreal Stadium, tears came to my eyes.
I know you're supposed to be really happy in this fellowship, and I am. How can you be happy if you're crying? We'll figure that one out. That's how happy I was last night. It's just a beautiful feeling in this fellowship. I'm still growing. I've got a long ways to go. I have to go back to my old, think about my past. It's just a reminder. So many things that you people have given me in this fellowship.
I'm really glad to have been asked to speak here today. I hope we meet again in my travels, and the Great Spirit tells me that we will, whether here or yonder. Thank you. Applause
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Bobcat's right. We do have a few minutes left. If you would like to use it for questions and answers to these three fellows, we'd welcome your question. Not really. Speak for yourself. I guess they know all about it. Okay. If there are no questions, then all of you who would care to join us in the Lord's Prayer, if you will stand now, please.