You've got to be an optimist

Audrey has worked as a horse groom, truck-driver, plumber's and electrician's assistant, waitress, substance abuse counsellor, and dental assistant. For the last few years, she has not participated in the paid workforce due to severe multiple disabilities resulting from reaction to a genetically modified vaccine. Audrey lives with her teenaged daughter in Winnipeg where she grows heritage seeds and survives each day through optimism.

Audrey says:

My work experience goes right back to being in a foster home. From the age of five my foster mother used us for cleaning house continually. She would rent us out to her friends out on the farms to do their farm work. So I was picking stones out of fields at a very young age, for other people. Not for my family or my community. For someone else's.

Foster care gave a lot of people jobs in a weird, abstract way. It gave a boost to the economy by giving people jobs to take care of these children. Whether or not they got taken care of properly seemed to have become a non-concern to the people who took them away from their parents. There were also lots of medical expenses that had to be taken care too. This woman put me in the hospital seven times because of her beatings. A doctor got paid, a nurse got paid but on who's suffering? And I'm not the only one who went through that. Of all the children in our family who were abducted by the government, only one got a decent home. And there were nine children.

The assimilation process did a lot of damage not just to the native community but to people as a whole. A lot of people came up with the idea that these people were all bad people and that's why we have to take their children away. They didn't understand that the parents were not at fault. Both my parents were working parents making good money. They built their own home, on land they bought with their own money. And some government official comes in, chases us three younger ones down the alley to a neighbour's home, drags us out from under the bed screaming and crying.

Then they wonder why these people have problems. There's quite a few times I almost ended up there too. It was my own determination that prevented that and not everyone has that.

Basically, I wasn't white enough to be white, wasn't dark enough to be Indian. When I go apply for a job that's predominantly white, they tell me, "Well you're just a touch too brown." I've had them say that to me. Not even bothering to look at my credentials.

They changed my name to Lisa Marie Sawchuk when I was in foster care so my birth family would not be able to find me. I had less problems when I was Lisa Marie Sawchuk but even so, over the phone they'd say, "No problem Miss Sawchuk, come on in for an interview." Then I'd walk in and, "Oh sorry…the position's taken." One lady even told me, "But you can articulate so well - for an Indian." I'm thinking "I can't believe my ears. I can't believe I just heard another human being say that. And this is a so-called professional human being. What all Indians are slurring and can't pronounce their words?" It's offensive.

The inequality subjugates people to thinking that they can't advance. For years I didn't think that I could. I didn't believe I could have a dental assistant job, a bank teller job. I wasn't the right skin colour, I was told I didn't have the brains, I wasn't given the opportunity mentally to even go there, let alone physically. That's why I didn't get into dental til I was 30 because by then I realized that I could.

I had a great career in dental. I was looking forward to doing the economy thing, being part of the system, doing the good thing, making my money, making my contributions, my taxes. Then I got sick.

Because of my disability I started getting into basic roots of food. I found that my curiosity got to me. Like what was corn, was it always yellow? And I found that no it came in all different colours. I found that these nice little red ones were used in the winter time by the natives for their flour. You dry it up, make tortillas, breads. There was such a diversity. People plant a hybridized corn plant now, you're not going to get that diversity. You're going to get one type, one type only. And one flavour.

These seeds are one way I'm creating alternatives. Not only as a learning tool. But also as a possible future benefit. We don't know what kind of medicines can be derived from these seeds. Think of how they found aspirin. By trying to debunk native belief of the sweat lodge. They figured out there was a chemical in the willow. Maybe there's a chemical in these seeds that can cure cancer or maybe my own disease. You've got to be an optimist if you're sick. You've got to be open-minded that something will help someday.