Interview with Marjorie Beaucage

JENNY FOIDART: All right, so, we're recording now. This is Jenny Foidart at the Oral History Centre in University of Winnipeg, for the Two-Spirit Oral History Project. I am here with Marjorie Beaucage. Would you like to introduce yourself?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Hi, I'm Marjorie Beaucage. I'm Métis, from Manitoba. I was born in Vassar, Manitoba, in the southeast corner of the bush there, now called Sandilands Forest, because the government gave it to a pulp and paper mill, and we had to move out. What else do I need to say? I’m Two-Spirit. I 00:01:00live here in Saskatchewan, in Duck Lake, in the Métis homeland and I've been here for twelve years. I'm a filmmaker, storyteller, writer, I'm writing a book about my life right now. Yeah. I do whatever needs to be done to help the community here.

JENNY FOIDART: That's awesome. So, this first part of the interview is the life story, which can be whatever you want to talk about [laughs], but kind of, I guess, what led you to where you are now.

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Well, I follow the movements of my life, it just has taken many different forms over the years. My first fifteen years were 00:02:00in the bush, that's where my grounding is. I grew up on the land, the land raised me. -- Then, when I left home, I went into the convent [laughs], so that my sexual being kind of went frozen. I -- didn't know there was such a thing as lesbians or Two-Spirit or anything like that. I'm seventy-five years old and -- I didn't have knowledge or awareness of those things when I was growing up. 00:03:00Ceremonies were outlawed, still, when I was growing up, so we didn't have ceremony. I was raised Catholic -- you know, and the whole idea of being a sexual being was not part of that frame of reference either [laughs]; it was pretty hidden. So, it took me a while to find who I was. I was in my thirties, I think, when I fell in love [laughs] with a woman. Then I left the church and all of that. Then I started going to ceremonies with the cultural revival. -- 00:04:00But the women and Two-Spirit were never really a big part of that picture, it was the men that kind of took over. I was a social activist, I guess you would say, I was involved in anything around social justice and making room for difference. I always questioned everything, I always got into trouble for it, but I kept on going because that's part of my gift is to question, to not just take things as “That's the truth.” I always especially challenged systems and patriarchy and authority, because they used their power over people in not-so-good ways 00:05:00. So, how did I get here? Well, I started my life as a teacher and I didn't like the school system, so I started to work in adult education and training. Then I -- ran away from home when I was forty. I went to film school [laughs] and I started to use storytelling as medicine, and help people find their voice, as I was finding my own as well. And that's what I've been doing ever since. Now, that's the Reader's Digest version [laughs].

JENNY FOIDART: So, 00:06:00growing up, it was at Duck Lake, correct?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: No, in Manitoba, in the bush. The first fifteen years of my life were in the bush in Vassar, Manitoba. Just a little hamlet. -- It was a one-room school, it was like very small community and we were related to everybody. I grew up in an extended family situation, as they would say, my aunties and grandparents and everybody all around. So, there was like basically two families in the area, or maybe three, and we were all working on the land. My parents, my dad and my uncles and my cousins, they all worked in the bush harvesting 00:07:00the forest. -- Then when we had to move out, then we moved to the prairies, yeah, in Manitoba. Then later, I traveled all over for work and all across the land I've worked in Canada. -- Moved around a lot, True Métis fashion, you know, going where you need to go to survive [both laugh].

JENNY FOIDART: Do you speak any other languages other than English?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Oh yeah, I didn't speak English until I went to school— like one hour a day we had English—but we spoke French or Michif at home. Yeah. So, that's what I speak; my first language was, I guess you'd call Michif, or French, 00:08:00or both— a mixture.

JENNY FOIDART: Very cool, did you learn that just by being around it, I guess, with the other families in your area?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Yeah, that's what everybody spoke. Yeah, everybody spoke that. We had our own language [laughs]. It's like every community has their own language, really. It's a little different everywhere. Like even Michif, ours had a little bit more French, but you know, Saint Laurent Michif is different than Saint Eustache—where I worked in Saint Eustache, it was a little different when I was teaching there.

JENNY FOIDART: Would you be able to tell me a little bit more about your Two-Spirit 00:09:00 journey?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Well, it wasn't until, like I said, I was in my thirties. We started to gather—when I was living in Winnipeg—in Myra Laramee's basement on Sunday afternoons. We used to be part of the Midewiwin Lodge in Roseau River, but they weren't Two-Spirit-friendly, and so we walked away from there and -- started to gather on our own. I was the keeper of the drum. We had a drum, and we used to get together and drum and sing and share, like have our own little sharing circles, and there was an elder there, Barbara. She would come 00:10:00and sit with us and help us. Yeah, that's how it started in terms of us getting together.

Then in the ‘90s, early ‘90s, a lot of our brothers were dying of AIDS, and were dying alone, because of the stigma against the, you know, gays. So we started to gather; they started those international Two-Spirit gatherings to help each other, and also to help us find our place. Because we realized we were different than the LGBTQ people. We had a different responsibility, or role, that was based on our cultural practices. And we wanted to restore our place within our own communities 00:11:00as well, and distinguish ourselves from LGBTQ. And that's how the name Two-Spirit came, because of that. We were Indigenous and we were queer, but it was based in a spiritual worldview. That really spoke to me, because I am, basically, a spiritual person [laughs]. I always wanted to connect with that larger cosmos, you know, the universe. I know life was bigger than me and bigger than any institution. And so finding that place of Two-Spiritness really helped me a lot to ground myself in my journey in this world. I realized that my 00:12:00role in life was to be in-between, and to stand in the middle, and to hold that balance of masculine and feminine. That's medicine, to be able to do that. And that's what brings healing to people, to create that balance between those principles, you know, the masculine and feminine principles in the universe. So, that's what I've been doing ever since, you know, I grounded myself in that. That's how I define myself. In the Cree word— Well, we had the word Two-Spirit because we didn't have our original names in our different languages, because they had been buried under the colonial trash. We had to dig through all that trash to find our truth. And slowly the names started to emerge, 00:13:00as especially the young people demanded those things, they needed to have that place. As the names started to appear, like in Cree, Tastawayihk-iyiniwak, that means “Standing in the Middle,” the middle beings. All the names in all the different languages, more or less, have that meaning. Because that’s --the roles, the responsibilities that we have is to balance that circle. And that's why our people are really suffering, because we're not recognized or acknowledged with the medicine that we carry. That's our gift, to be able to balance that circle. It has been historically, and still today that is needed; hat medicine is needed to heal the people. So I work really hard to, 00:14:00again, question and challenge the way things are and try to restore that place, especially for the young ones now coming after me. So, that's what it's all about.

JENNY FOIDART: That's really beautiful. I'd love to hear more about your career, your filmmaker life [laughs].

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: You can see all my films on Vimeo, I have my own Vimeo site; you just put “Vimeo Marjorie Beaucage” and you'll find me. All my stories, well, started out pretty much with 00:15:00land-based journeys. Whenever there was any— My camera is like a witness, my camera is like a mirror sometimes, it helps people see themselves, or it helps others see us in the way that we're not seen or understood. Whenever something is going on or a story needs to be told that isn't usually told, that's where I am with my camera. Like I guess you'd call me a documentary filmmaker. But for me, it's more being witness or giving voice to what's going on. I have my own way of doing it, I'm not a conventional filmmaker, you know, like not television or Film Board or whatever. 00:16:00I start out with the intention and a question. I don't have the answer before I start. And that's different than, you know, the reporters and whatnot; they have a question and they already have an answer, and they go and find the people that will give them that answer [laughs]. But it's a search. It's a search for truth. It's a search for what's digging underneath, what's going on, and trying to do some analysis, I suppose. But I leave the viewer to come to their own conclusions. I don't tell them what to think. I don't have voiceover narration and all that kind of stuff. I really try to respect that moment in time and let it lead me to wherever I need to go. That's how I approach my work 00:17:00with the questions and intentions. Yes, the intention is everything, why you're doing something is important, the most important. Why am I doing this interview, because I want the young ones to know that who they are is important, you know? Like that they have a place and they belong.

[Brief interruption due to technical issues.]

JENNY FOIDART: Sorry.

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: I did make a film about Two-Spirit in Saskatchewan a few years ago, because there was still so much stigma and homophobia. I wanted to put faces on the youth that needed their place and what would happen to them 00:18:00if they don't get it. You know, they end up on the street, they end up with all their troubles, and they end up alone. And I wanted elders and other community workers to see them as youth needing their support, and to show that they also had a place and a purpose. -- So, that’s what I do.

JENNY FOIDART: And what led you to film?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Sorry, I didn't get that.

JENNY FOIDART: Is there anything specific that led you to film, to video as a medium?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: Oh, well I started out, I was using popular theater actually, in my work, 00:19:00to help to create justice. Then I was so burnt out with all my activism, and I was working in literacy at the time, and I decided to go—for my fortieth birthday—to go on a women's writing retreat in New Mexico. When I came back from that I realized that I couldn't do this work anymore, that I needed a break, a longer break. So, I told my co-worker. And so she said, “Well, why don't you go to film school?” I said, “What?” I was a total techno-peasant, I did not [laughs] have anything to do with it. And she said “Well, you're a storyteller and you think visually, and you're doing all this theater work.” You know, all of that. And I had 00:20:00done photography and other things but— Then that night, deep down inside me, there was this big joy that came out. You know, it was like— When I thought about it— And then I thought, “Okay so what do I do?” I went back to work the next day and she helped me put together what they call a portfolio, because her brother was working at Ryerson University at that time. So, they sent the information, and I applied, and I got in.

So, off I went to Toronto, which I considered the belly of the beast, you know It was like— To me, I hated Toronto and all that it represented in terms of the capitalist empire, and everything that I was fighting against. But there I was in the belly of the beast, going to film school. And it was like I found my home, you know, in terms of my own spirit. And it was great to move out 00:21:00of Manitoba and to go to Toronto, because nobody knew me. I could be an absolute nobody; I could just be a student at school. And I went into that place, and I just loved it. I just felt like I found my voice, my way of expressing myself. Whenever I was editing, I would just like, forget to eat and drink, and go to the— But you know, it was so absorbing and it just fed my spirit so much. I just knew that’s what I was going to be doing till I die and so, yeah! -- And as an independent creator—because I didn't work for any institutions—I wanted to have control over my own stories. I'm a 00:22:00self-governing Métis [laughs]! And I own myself, I own my stories, I own my voice, and nobody was going to tell me how I was going to do it. So, I didn't work for any companies, I just created on my own. -- That's how I started making films.

JENNY FOIDART: That's so cool. Sorry there's a little bit of a lag [with the internet], so, sometimes I’m kind of not sure when to jump in.

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: You're going to edit this anyway, right? Or no?

JENNY FOIDART: It'll be transcribed and also possibly an audio version, depending on the form you fill at the end. So, I have at least a couple more questions, and feel free to lead the conversation 00:23:00if you want to. Are there any particular areas of concern regarding health or well-being of Two-Spirit people that you have identified over your time, in this space?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: I've been working a lot recently with harm reduction, because I see a lot of our young ones on the street, and with crystal meth, and how that's destroying them. What is the way through that darkness that has come over our communities with all that drug stuff? That's the biggest question right now for me. What I've figured out so far, that needs to change, and that they need to have a purpose, they need to know why they're here 00:24:00on this earth. They need to belong and use their gifts, and they didn't have a place for that. They need to be on the land and in ceremony to find that. -- And though that's not available to Two-Spirit youth very much, because they're discriminated against in ceremony. You know, they're in the cities and they've lost that contact with the land, which is the teacher of, you know— That's where you become who you are, on the land; you know your place when you're there. I take youth out to camp every summer, out on the land, and as soon as they come off the bus, you know, like they're “Ah!” They can breathe, they can relax, they don't have to worry about what's going to happen to them. 00:25:00You know, they're safe. We need those places of safety in our communities for the youth. There is no safe place in our communities that they can go to. I think every community should have a healing place, a safe place, that people could go to -- and not be judged. Yeah, that's the biggest killer, right there, judgment. -- So that’s a big—

[Digital noise from the online connection]

So, I did six videos recently about harm reduction. I haven't put them out yet on my site, but I will soon. 00:26:00Oh, I think they'll be released on World AIDS Day. But yeah— It’s really, really huge, here in Saskatchewan, and I know it is in Manitoba, too. It is in all our communities, I mean look at that murder that just happened in James Smith, it's all related to that -- these drug wars.

JENNY FOIDART: What stories would you tell younger, or future, Two-Spirit generations?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: [Brief pause] Well, they have a place, they have a purpose, you know. There's 00:27:00a lot of people standing behind them, in terms of ancestors that have already walked that path. There’s— I don't know. -- I’m more of an in-the-moment person—

JENNY FOIDART: That's fair. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to add?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: [Long pause] You just have to be who you are and not worry about what other people think. Try to 00:28:00find, you know, your people, your tribe. If it's not at home or in your family, there's always someone out there that can be there for you. There's little tribes of people everywhere. Like in Saskatchewan, we got our Dragonfly Society, the Two-Spirit Alliance—there's communities growing everywhere and it's changing, and more and more people are standing together and asking for what they need. That's important. To not just be silent, and to express what you need and find the people that can help you, because there are people out there. You just have to find them. Yeah.

JENNY FOIDART: Well, thank you so much for all of this today. 00:29:00Is there anything else you want to add before we kind of wrap it up?

MARJORIE BEAUCAGE: No, I'm good. It is what it is, for now [both laugh]!

JENNY FOIDART: OK I’m going to hit “stop recording” but please stay on if you can.

[End of Interview]