Koolaid

By Lois Beardslee
Sun contributor
Part of an ongoing series by this renowned local Indian author on Native American issues
While she dipped and swished at the white five gallon bucket, Ima Pipiig fantasized about addressing the audience: “I’d like to answer that one question about Indians that has been on everybody’s lips…
“Why is Koolaid the official beverage of pow wows, spiritual gatherings, and other Indian events?”

The water bug she chased was dark and shiny, smaller than a ladybug, and faster than a speeding bullet. It cruised around in the top centimeter of the water bucket adjacent to the kitchen cupboard taunting her, until she approached with the small aluminum saucepan that served as the water dipper. Then it dove down the depth of the full four gallons or so that had been heaved up the steps to the cabin that sat tilted precariously on the glacier-smoothed boulders that provided the only high and dry ground on her scant acreage. The keenness of the bug dumfounded her, and she felt as helpless against the small creature as she did against society in general. Eventually, getting the bug out of the bucket became a moot point, one that would require more calories than a bugless bucket was worth; so Ima Pipiig made a false dip, chasing the bug downward, then passed again, filling her dipper several times.
The water was to be boiled on the small propane stove, for at least a minute, five would be better, she supposed. This was to eliminate the Giardia, the intestinal virus that inhabited the lake water. It was carried by sport fishermen and beavers, in their feces. Neither was particularly careful about whether or not they despoiled her family’s drinking water. It was just as easy to blame it on the beavers as on the fishermen. After all, they had lodges all around the lake. They were, in fact, Ima Pipiig’s only neighbors. The village on the railroad where her distant Cree cousins rented out cabins to the sportsmen was at least an hour and a half away by boat and by car.
The road to the remote inland lake, now the domain of multinational logging corporations, had been part of a small network of roads that serviced Indians and white miners. Now it was heavily washboarded from the logging trucks, its courduroy base of cedar logs exposed to the air and rotting. The five miles to “civilization” could be traveled only at a snail’s pace. Sometimes the wild-eyed moose that ran along the open roadway ahead of the truck, thinking, mistakenly, that they were being chased, would travel faster than the family’s vehicle. That was fine by Ima Pipiig and Lester. If the truck crept up on a bull moose too quickly, it would sometimes stop, turn, lower its head, and threaten with its antlers. Lester wasn’t so sure he could outrun a moose in reverse, and he didn’t relish the thought of backing into an oncoming logging truck, blazing along at breakneck, shock-absorbed speed, knowing that it had the right of way over mere civilians and their tiny cars.
Here, in the confines of the Chapleau Game Preserve, the largest game preserve in the world, timber harvesting had become king, and the Crown had given forth the northern Ontario resources that time and distance had preserved for the creatures of the woods, the moose, the bear, the ravens, the eagles and the hawks–and, well, the Indians. Because Indians were, to the consumers and profiteers of ancient resource mismanagement, no larger than the small black beetle that Ima Pipiig confronted in her water bucket in today’s challenge for potable water.
After the water was cool, after it had become room temperature in the warm, poorly insulated wooden structure, Ima Pipiig would make koolaid for the kids. It would be a weak koolaid, barely sweet and somewhat pink… just dark enough to cover up the boiled water fleas and the odd organic materials that existed in the water of a shallow lake. She did this as her mother had done. And she did not explain to her children that the family had once had access to the clearest, coolest, cleanest water on the face of the earth… that they no longer owned those precious shorelines… that they had been taken away and sold to the highest bidders—the developers, the railroads, the loggers, the shippers, the government officials, and eventually, anybody with a good enough job to afford a summer cottage. But not the Indians
So her children developed a taste for koolaid. Weak koolaid, warm koolaid. It didn’t matter. Strong koolaid over ice became for them a delicacy, as it had become for Ima Pipiig. And in a changing culture in which the traditional Indian teas were looked upon as boorish and trashy, but juices and milk were either too expensive or hard on an aboriginal digestive tract, koolaid became a beverage of choice, a symbol of Indianness. Ima Pipiig giggled at this odd symbol of snobbishness as she mixed the koolaid and sugar into the big glass jar. She screwed on the lid that kept out mosquitoes, dust, and mice, and she shook the big jar. Then she dished up big slabs of wild blueberry pie, three inches thick, solid and perfect, with a golden crumbled crusting of rolled oats and brown sugar on top. She kicked open the green wood of the wobbly screen door at its base and stepped outside, old ceramic plate and glass of koolaid in hand. Then she skittered between the jack pines and the blueberry bushes that pushed forth from the immense boulder that was her summer home, stepped gingerly down the steep, smooth rock face where it touched the water, and settled in to watch her children swim with the beavers. One young beaver swam close to Ima Pipiig, blew water from its nostrils with an insistent sneeze-like puff that sprayed her toes, blinked several times, then dived, flapping its tail loudly at the conclusion of its dive. Ima Pipiig was startled and rocked backward. The kids guffawed and pointed, and while she had their attention, Ima Pipiig held up the plateful of big pie, nodded toward the house, and called out, “Koolaid’s ready.”