When Bear-Fox Came to School

It was Tuesday, March 26, 2024—just an ordinary day. Tuesdays this semester, consisted of rising early enough to plan a music lesson, dress and feed myself, and pack the books and lunch I’d need for the day all in time to leave by seven-thirty. Then I’d drive to the voice student’s place, teach the lesson, drive to the private Christian school, teach Grade 7-12 music, drive to campus, and walk the ten minutes to class, arriving just in time for the ten-thirty start. You know, an ordinary Tuesday.

I burst into the classroom, breathing hard. A woman waited at the front, tucked in behind the grand piano with her back nearly against the wall. She stood barely five feet tall. Her dark hair hung across her black shirt, lapels edged with silver. Her skirt was patched and appliqued like a quilt. She wore a tentative expression, like one eager-to-please, eager-to-love.

“We have a surprise guest today class. Her name is Bear-Fox,” my Anishinaabe composition teacher began. (Yes, she’s a unique and delightful individual herself, but that’s for another time.)

When Bear-Fox began to speak, her voice was soft like a grandmother’s. She introduced her shakers and water drum with their beautiful Mohawk names. She sang for us the song she was writing for the celebration of the eclipse. “I need a male yet, to do the echo part. For the call and response. So if you know anyone–” She sang us the call, we echoed the response, and she recorded us singing. “It will be easier to teach it to the others this way.”

She told tales of receiving her Mohawk name in a longhouse at fourteen (instead of at birth) and learning more Mohawk words from her son, because her parents thought she would be better off knowing English and leaving her heritage behind. Bear-Fox sent her own children to a school in the Mohawk language. Her face beamed with the pride of any mother, as she sang the song she’d written for her son’s eighteenth birthday about how he’s a loyal son who’s learning and loving their traditions. Her eyes were closed, her voice clear, throaty, and unaffected.

She taught us the song of the alligator that she’d learned from another tribe in Florida, with it’s swooping “ai-yee” to show the alligator swinging its tail around. Two of my classmates played the shakers while she tapped the drum. We all sang the echo. The vocal tone felt easy to me, like the clear, nearly nasal sound of a Gospel singer with gently bending slurs.

She told us of going to the mountains for solitude and of the melody that came to her. She told us that when melodies come to her, she records them on her phone and adds words later and rhythms. “I don’t know how to notate music like you. What you are learning I can’t do.” It’s somewhere in these melodies, in these words, in her gentle grandmotherly tone, that I feel understood.

I’ve been in discussion with multiple teachers at Laurier about my struggle with dictation, my near inability to take the notes I hear and translate them into the notational language that I also know. I can match pitch, but something literally gets lost in translation. They’ve begun to throw around words like “neuro-divergent” (which is likely a little excessive). I am not used to being the one with the learning disability. I am glad that as a teacher I learned things. Born into Chinese or Egyptian culture, where language is pictorial and not phonetic, none of my students would have heard the word dyslexia. Learning disabilities are often more about cultural expectations than serious intellectual defects. In another culture, one like the Mohawk culture, my inability would not be a disability.

Will I keep struggling to learn dictation? Yes. Will I own my innate ability to improvise and imitate? Definitely. Like Bear-Fox, melodies sing to me, seeping into my consciousness in both silent moments and hectic ones. Will I take delight in and share with others the melodies that sing to me? I want to be that brave.

We all hold abilities and disabilities. We all hold self-doubt.

What kind of mother would I be if I need to make art to feel alive? I see Bear-Fox, writing coming-of-age songs for each of her children, and I see that I could be that kind and it’s a good kind. I see her making music within her community, and I know that there is a community for my music and that somewhere along the way, by the grace of God, I will find it.

I asked Bear-Fox about her skirt, and she explained that the bands of blue and green along the bottom represent the sky and earth. Each of the larger blocks above it represent a direction of the compass. The grandmother is appliqued on white for the north. The adult woman is appliqued on red, representing the full richness of the setting sun in the west. The teen girl is appliqued on black for the south. The small girl is appliqued on the yellow, because yellow shows the sun rising in the east, a new day dawning.

Later that day, I see Bear-Fox at a dress rehearsal, and I thank her for her talk. “You have given me courage,” I tell her. “I see so many parallels between your culture and mine. It’s sad that our ancestors didn’t take the time to understand each other.”

She nods and smiles, “I think the younger generation is doing much better.” It’s then that I know what makes Bear-Fox different than many in minority groups. She’s not holding onto the bitterness of loss in the past. She’s stepped into the joy of possibility. She may be a grandmother now, but I would applique her figure on yellow—the new day dawning.