Our Warrior Spirit is writer Les Couchi\u2019s way of paying tribute to the Elders of Nipissing First Nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The book came about when discussions were occurring in 2024 on how a $10 billion settlement of the Robinson Huron Treaty annuities litigation would be distributed among 21 First Nations in northeastern Ontario.<\/p>\n
A portion of the money received by Nipissing would go into a fund for the community to use and another portion was to be paid directly to individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the younger people were asking for an equal share and I thought, they really don’t know what it was really like,\u201d said Couchi, who suggested that the individual portion be calculated on a yearly basis and be distributed according to age.<\/p>\n
That is what happened, but Couchi says his suggestion could have been \u201csomething that was already on the table.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part, I don’t think many of (the young people) were too upset. There were a couple of radicals in every community that wanted that share. But I think most of them did come to realize that that would be a fair way to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With his portion of the settlement money, Couchi wrote and published\u00a0Our Warrior Spirit. His wife Mary Lou McKeen and sister-in-law Pearl McKeen helped with research, editing and formatting the book.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to pay tribute to all the Elders in our community\u2026(and)\u00a0I decided that a book might be a way to do it in a permanent way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But there is another aspect to the book. As he writes in the introduction of Our Warrior Spirit, \u201cCould the book inspire younger generations and potentially be a \u201cplaybook\u201d for other First Nations?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaybook\u201d is an appropriate term as integral to the story Couchi tells about Nipissing First Nation as it is to the impact of the Nipissing Warriors hockey team.<\/p>\n
The team, brought together in the 1960s, was comprised of players from\u00a0the eight communities of the sprawling 23-mile-long reserve. With few people owning vehicles, many didn\u2019t know they had relations on the other side of the reserve, Couchi says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when the team was put together, the communities began to work together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Nipissing Warriors played from 1965 to 1975. Not only were the players, which included Couchi who joined for the 1968-69 season, committed to the team, but the First Nation supported them, turning out to pack the arena and helping to raise funds for jerseys and sticks.<\/p>\n
Tragedy struck on New Year\u2019s Day 1967 when Chief Ted Commanda, a driving force in starting the Warriors team, as well as a \u201crough and tough\u201d player, was shot to death.<\/p>\n
Writes Couchi, \u201cTed Commanda\u2014the man whose vision of community unity-through hockey sportsmanship\u2014was felled by his own people\u2026Changes in our community would be necessary. We would need to deal with addictions, promote language, education and culture, and address the atrocities of the past. Progress would start in earnest with healing and recovery as a major objective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our Warrior Spirit details the challenges presented by \u201coppressive colonialism,\u201d including \u201cdomination by the government, church and police and their unrelenting, pervasive controls over our lives,\u201d poverty, racism, poor education, housing conditions, and intergenerational trauma.<\/p>\n
Along with the painful stories of Elders from Nipissing, Couchi also recounts his own story of intergenerational trauma. It wasn\u2019t a story he intended to share, he admits, but reading a book by NHL player and Buffalo Sabres coach Ted Nolan, a member of the Garden River First Nation and someone Couchi had come to know, changed his mind.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Nolan) admitted to some things in his book that I thought were very courageous. For someone of his stature to admit that he had these frailties, I said to myself, \u2018Why am I so special? Why can’t I do the same thing?\u2019 And so I did. I felt that it would\u2026add to the story (and) to young people or other people who may have experienced what I had, and know that there’s no shame in that. And it’s not your fault. But you have to work your way out of it to be a good citizen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Couchi\u2019s father was one of many in Nipissing to attend the Catholic-run Indian residential school in nearby Spanish and returned home \u201cpsychologically, physically and emotionally broken.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI became an alcoholic when I was 15 because of the abuse I received from my father,\u201d he said. Writing about it was difficult, he added, but \u201conce you get a handle on some of this stuff, then you can understand it. Then you can live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Couchi entered rehab when he was 21 years old and has been sober since. He is 74.<\/p>\n
Our Warrior Spirit also looks at the accomplishments of Nipissing, including the Warrior players who have become leaders in the community.<\/p>\n
Couchi is one of those leaders. He worked with youth through Nipissing\u2019s National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program and, at the direction of the youth, started teaching them about their culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that Nipissing has revived their culture and we all believe strongly in education, we now have the wherewithal to make a great future for our children. And you can see it. You can envision it,\u201d said Couchi. \u201cWe were playing cards with the government, losing all the time. But that’s not happening anymore. I think that there’s a bright future for First Nations to feel good about themselves and to want to get even better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much to Couchi\u2019s surprise and pleasure, Our Warrior Spirit will be used as a textbook for history at the Nbisiing high school on Nipissing First Nation.<\/p>\n
Our Warrior Spirit can be purchased online at amazon.ca. It\u2019s also available as an e-book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our Warrior Spirit is writer Les Couchi\u2019s way of paying tribute to the Elders of Nipissing First Nation.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-48534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}