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Life In the Wind, a Musician, and a Tradesman (and an Artist)

Randy dabbles with paint as well

By the time Randy Dakota was well into his fifties, he had experienced the highs and the lows of life and come a long way to find the balance between. The highs came two ways, as a highly paid builder of infrastructure and professional pipefitter, as well as his skill as a musician playing in front of thousands of devoted fans. The lows found Randy living in streets (through two winters!) in Edmonton, Alberta, where his idea of home was found under a bridge or beneath a parking garage, where a feast became snared rabbit obtained in the river valley.

(“It is delicious!”) He made snares from broken guitar strings. He cooked rabbit over fire and on a barbeque. He used McDonald’s Restaurant condiments to spice up the meal.

Until landing in this peculiar estate, Randy was living a pure Canadian’s dream in Yellowknife, NWT, during the 1990s, earning large wages pipefitting for mining operations. On a given two-week break from the working life Randy would depart the north to join top-flight blues and country musicians to play lead or bass guitar and sing many of his own songs (for he is an accomplished songwriter). He played in Guam, Finland, and elsewhere in the world.

The life he made for himself in the north was percolating, and in it he was able to do most of what he wanted, including drugs and alcohol,. If life couldn’t get any better, well, a few turns of the screw would soon make it worse, then worse, then much, much worse progressively forming habits two or three. The slide onto an urban trap line began after his common-law wife in Yellowknife announced she was pregnant and hit him hard by announcing the child belonged to somebody else. This announcement caused him to depart job, city, and territory to live on the road.

He went south to find a band and live in a suitcase in hotels where he played across Canada. As time went by addiction grew into a ticking time bomb that threatened to blow away everything. And blow it did on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 when a crisis occurred. They played in the band for the promise of a large New Year’s Eve paycheque and after the event members of the band awoke to find cheques that were worthless, while the leader of the band stole the entire hotelier’s payment. This loss was doubled by the tragic reaction of a close friend and band member when friend and fellow musician met desperation and betrayal by committing suicide.

Randy looks back and sees the picture clearly today, but at the time it was incomprehensible. Randy’s mental outlook sank into depression, which he vividly recalls was triggered by, “doubting if my dream of a life in music was anything but a nightmare.” His own crushing depression ensued and Randy decided to ‘step off’ stage. He abandoned the musical profession by selling an expensive set of Stratocaster guitars and amplifiers and all of his equipment and divesting of other worldly possessions. He checked out of society, not in stages, but like it was some kind of hotel; he left all at once. He leapt full-time into a life of triple addiction and burned through his will chasing cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.

He played a battered guitar on the mean street corners, and in the underground stations of Edmonton’s Light Rail Transit system, and arranged himself a cost-efficient accommodation under a bridge (says he became a troll), and later, a parking garage under the high-priced real estate of the valley, and got wrecked on everything he could lay his hands on while enduring all-Canadian seasons in the bare comfort of whatever hovel he managed to scrape together.

Perhaps the lonely years spent in hotels as a musician had equipped him for such a crash. At first he depended on friends by sleeping on their couches and supplying them with a share of the drugs, and as the clock turned backwards and backwards the need for drugs grew more selfish, and, as the rapidity of progression into addiction increased to terminal velocity he was mainly left alone to face his demons or escape them by getting smashed.

The 1990s became a faded memory of moments of glory on stage and a terrible sadness found in between. Life became an uphill struggle, trudging every step to the next, spending it all if possible within an inescapable ‘maze’ of addiction. Music has been a driving force in Randy’s life, “It is genetic,” ascribing this inheritance to Métis heritage, as he later learned, “My mother’s brother was a gifted player,” who became well known in Winnipeg as a singer songwriter and guitar player.

He learned about this lineage later in life, where he came from, including that his great grandfather had been Canadian voyageur, a courier de bois (runner of the woods). “I saw a picture of him and asked my grandmother why he had crease marks on his forehead and sides of his face. She told me the markings came from pulling York Boats upstream,” from the leather strapping to pull heavy watercraft upstream and portage over land. This true Manitoban Canadian had earned these distinctive facial markings by the work he did for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He carried mercantile trading goods from Winnipeg to Norway House and back, one long arduous voyage every year.

It turned out Randy has the purest form of Western Canadian heritage there is. Important details like family history were missing from his youth, by the fact he was adopted out by his biological mother, whom he did not meet until he was 37 old. And the close relationship with an adoptive family was interrupted by the period spent snaring rabbits in Edmonton’s river valley, and, before that, addictive behaviour.

Randy was raised by adoption into a family, and this wasn’t half bad. “My father gave me a trade as a pipefitter. He taught me a lot,” and was always generous to his adoptive son. His mother could not have children so they adopted Randy and his sister. It had been a normal childhood spent in a family environment and he felt nurtured far more than deprived, it was a good family environment and he feels he was blessed by it.

Later the nurturing away from addiction came from detox facilities and treatment centres and creating art as therapy, and the 12 step program that helped him to fill his medicine pouch used to form a powerful spiritual foundation, including later a faith in the Living God, his Higher Power.  SEE Angelique Merasty Levac

Grace Dove, Canadian Actor

Kukwtsetsemc to the #Navajo nation for having me as a guest to your community! 🙌🏽🌵#dreamersjunction pic.twitter.com/oH7hgr6yXP

— Grace Dove (@_gracedove) March 4, 2016

Grace Dove - IMDb 

In Australia as elsewhere

@Matt_Cooke86 NACCHO Health News : Sugary soft drinks 'killing the Aboriginal population' https://t.co/I3vpRl7QAk pic.twitter.com/HhEr260iO6

— Aboriginal Health (@NACCHOAustralia) February 14, 2016

Veterinary Services, Another Missing System in First Nations Communities

Official statistics on the number of dog attacks within Canada are non-existent. There is little argument however that most of these attacks seem to afflict First Nation communities. Municipalities and provinces have the legal capacity to deal with animal control issues. Winnipeg City Council introduced a ban on pit bull terriers in 1990. Ontario have had a province wide ban on the breed since 2005. The city of Calgary have a dangerous dog bylaw which is not breed specific. Edmonton require all dogs considered to be dangerous to wear a muzzle. It is just common sense. Why then did Lance Ribbonleg from the North Tallcree First Nations reserve, Alberta get mauled by a pack of dogs  November 16, 2006?

He was just five years old when his flesh was torn from his body in a vicious attack by man's best friend. He died before paramedics could get him to hospital. RCMP Sgt Ryan Becker interviewed at the time of the attack said it wasn't unusual to get a number of complaints about stray dogs, "Usually it's because they are starving." Whilst some evidence exists that dogs have been kept by First Nation people for centuries, there is also little argument most of the breeds less favored by European settlers died out. Officially the Canadian kennel club accepts 143 different breeds of dog as Canadian pure breds, we can find four from the First Nations, which makes this is a European problem. It is as Veterinarian Dr. Richard G. Herbert said as he discussed at a Treaty 3 meeting in Ontario, "a man-made problem."

Throughout Canada people are still living poverty stricken and brutal lives and they are being denied basic fundamental rights. Children and animals are suffering but rarely will you see reference to the fact. Roaming dogs are a common sight on First Nation reserves and people are regularly in danger from feral or stray vicious dog attacks. Its just common sense that there needs to be a veterinary infrastructure within reserves. Veterinary infrastructures are scant in third world countries, but this is Canada. The modern Canadian veterinary infrastructure provides animal care and disease prevention strategies. It creates a good structure for population control via access to spay and neutering programs as well as the foundations by which humane societies and dog wardens/animal control officers can control animal populations. It also enables the country to maintain its place in the global market selling livestock and animal goods, and therein lies the problem.

The true reason for the absence of an Aboriginal Veterinary program seems obvious. It is because the Indigenous people are denied basic rights and recognition from many veterinary legislations and regulations, and services.

A common assumption among non-Indigenous people which is supported by factually incorrect and often dismissive historical accounts is that Indigenous people did not endeavor in agricultural pursuits. In reality they had been farming for countless numbers of years before European settlers arrived. Lies were perpetrated early, when British born historian John Hawkes moved to Western Canada in 1884 and wrote that, "The Indian was not a natural farmer. He was born a hunter and a warrior." Archeologists have uncovered plenty of evidence of farming in Canada. As early as 1100 AD corn was being sown north of Winnipeg near the Red River.

It is the exclusion of Indigenous people from federal and provincial commercial laws that has always prevented them from having a successful agricultural footing. The lack of an Indigenous community veterinary infrastructure prevents economic development, prevents the sale and public consumption of livestock and traditional foods. Indigenous Canadians are prevented from reaching globally acceptable standards of food safety because there is nothing in place to ensure the health and prevention of diseases in livestock. One result of this is extreme poverty, unmonitored and unresolved canine overpopulation and health crisises.

Blue a 13-year-old Husky cross was mauled to death by two feral dogs on a reserve in New Brunswick January 4th 2010. His owner Caroline Ennis pleaded with police and provincial government as well as other organisations for a better system of animal control. She was told there was little hope anything would be done to resolve the situation. On Caroline's reserve there were an estimated 450 starving and feral dogs despite there being less than 2,000 residents. An RCMP officer walked out of her home in astonishment when her husband asked, "what if this had happened to a child?" The SPCA in New Brunswick would not provide assistance in her request for better dog control because they stated, "they have no jurisdiction on First Nation Reserves."

It should not be the case that First Nation communities must suffer the negative impact of feral dog overpopulation. Despite Canada having a number of wild animals such as bears, cougars, wolverines, etc., dogs remain the most dangerous with the most fatalities. Research indicates that statistically First Nation children on reserves are 180 times more likely to be mauled to death by a dog. This is based only on confirmed and reported cases however health Canada officials record very little of true extent of the problem, and why? Is it because they do not want the public to know? No funding is made available to change the situation for Indigenous people. Which is why a three-month old baby was stolen from his crib by a starving dog on a Northern territory reserve. It is also why in a 10-year period there have been 25 unconfirmed fatalities in relation to dog attacks of which 23 were children under the age of eight.