Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

Awakening the ‘Voice of the Forest’ • 83
some of the prerecorded station IDs mixed in, locked the door to the
school and headed over to Marylynn’s house.
Cramped into Marylynn’s tiny living room, a group of elders and
young adults sat around a small table covered in a flower tablecloth,
listening to Hank Williams on the radio. Some young children were
running around, prompting Marylynn to tell them to go to sleep in
the next room. Norman, Courtney and I took a seat with the others
and began to joke about our day at the radio.
“So how many people showed up?” asked Marylynn.
“Just me and Angelo!” responded Norman. “More will come to
tomorrow’s training, I hope.”
For a moment, the music interrupted and a station ID came on the
air, one that Marylynn had recorded before with some other women.
“Oma nogom ki ne deta naba mitchikinabiko’inik nodaktcigen” —
“This is Radio Barriere Lake, ‘the Voice of the Forest’, broadcasting
live from the Rapid Lake reserve, Kitiganik.”
As the music resumed, Marylynn started to laugh, and joked in
Algonquin to her father Albert, seated across the table from her, who
began to laugh as well.
“I’d never heard that before,” she said to me, laughing and apparently
very flattered. “I hadn’t heard my voice on the radio!”
With some prodding from Marylynn, Albert offered to tell a story
for the radio. I grabbed the portable recorder and handed it to Norman.
Putting on the headphones, he activated the mic and checked
the levels. After pressing record, he asked Albert to begin his story. I
listened in fascination to the tigweygan (drum) story, even though I
only understood a scant few words. After fifteen minutes or so, Albert
ended the story and Norman packed up the recorder. As I turned the
volume back up on the radio, somebody opened a case of beer and
passed a few around. For the next few hours, we were trading stories
and laughing the night away, all to the backdrop of Radio Barriere
Lake. All over the reserve, people were gathered around together doing
the same thing. The frozen night got even colder, and ol’ Hank wailed
through the speakers of dozens of tiny radios, as if asking the moon to
slow its course so the party could go on just a little longer.
The next morning, Marylynn’s husband Clayton woke me and
handed me the telephone. On the other end was Sonny — a youth
who was very enthusiastic about the radio but was in jail at the time
for having participated in the peaceful blockade of a nearby highway,