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Former nurse turned to writing to voice strong convictions

JOYCE ATCHESON Born Aug. 7, 1947, Port Arthur, Ontario. Died Nov. 22, 2012, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Joyce Atcheson had a laughing voice.
JOYCE ATCHESON
Born Aug. 7, 1947, Port Arthur, Ontario. Died Nov. 22, 2012, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.


Joyce Atcheson had a laughing voice.

For a woman of strong convictions -– who never compromised her principles for a pay cheque -- she always sounded happy. You never sensed that she had been discouraged, let alone defeated, by her latest setback.

We first met in early summer of 1997 at First Nations Technical Institute on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. The half-dozen students who had signed up for the first-ever aboriginal diploma journalism program were meeting at the FNTI site, and Joyce and I were immediately drawn to each other.

We had a lot in common. Joyce was about the same age as me -- her teacher -- and more than double the vintage of the other students who had enrolled in the program. She had been a nurse for 30 years – the same length of time I had been in Canada’s daily newspaper industry – and, like me, she had come to the realization that she wanted to use her life’s experience to make life better for Aboriginal peoples.

We had both left our chosen careers somewhat disillusioned – me because journalism had become more a bottom-line business than a way for writers to make the world a better place, and Joyce because she had seen back home in Alberta -- where she took her nurses’ training -- that the health care system had a lower standard for treating First Nations patients than other people.

Over the years, Joyce and I always kept in touch, right up to the week this November when a phone call informed me that she had apparently died in her sleep in her Nova Scotia apartment. As news of her passing trickled out, it shocked her loyal friends, who remembered a lithe and trim woman who jogged daily and whose hair was as black in her Sixties as it likely ever had been in her youth.

Joyce clung tightly to the Cree roots that forged her Metis heritage. She was engaged in a lifelong learning process about her culture, which sustained her during some perilous problems with personal health that she was convinced were caused by her not being where the Creator had intended. So she kept moving, following a series of Eagles, she told me, to the journalism course in Tyendinaga, then to Ottawa for a media relations stint at the National Aboriginal Health Organization, then to Northern Ontario to work for a First Nations children’s agency before landing a longed-for reporting job at Wawatay newspaper in Thunder Bay.

She lived with a First Nations partner in Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation – formerly known as Big Trout Lake – a fly-in community nearly 400 miles north of the Lakehead. There she continued to use her story-telling skills as a freelance writer to tell the world about the First Nation’s struggles to assert sovereignty in the face of repeated attempts by mining companies to unilaterally stake claims in the area. Chief Donny Morris refused to permit prospecting in their territories and he and four band councillors spent 68 days in jail in the spring of 2008 for defying a court order.

Joyce’s writing helped create Canada-wide awareness of the issue, and the province subsequently made amendments to the 100-year-old Ontario Mining Act that respected First Nations rights to be consulted about commercial development on their traditional lands.

She said the Spirits kept calling her East, and she found herself unemployed and without a place to live in a small community near Halifax. For grounding, Joyce sought out First Nations connections and found herself attending ceremonies conducted by David Gehue, a blind Mi’Kmaq spiritual leader renowned as a healer among First Nations across Canada.

As her worldly fortunes waned – she eked out a livelihood washing dishes, short-order cooking and writing book reviews for the Anishinabek News – Joyce’s spiritual stature blossomed. Again it was her writing skills that enabled her to derive the strength that she drew from her Native ancestry.

In 2009 David Gehue published “Voices of the Tent”, a riveting biography of this charismatic man who had accepted the responsibility of conducting the Shake Tent ceremony used in his healing practice. The book was the result of dozens of hours of interviews with Joyce, who did an incredible job of blending David’s blunt manner of talking with the deeply spiritual messages contained in his words.

David died March 6, 2011 --the last time I saw Joyce in person was at his funeral in Indian Brook -- and she was working on a sequel to their first book. She moved to Dartmouth, and was making a living as a personal support worker for elderly clients, as well as writing book reviews about Aboriginal titles for a number of publications.

Thanks to e-mail, we were in contact several times weekly. The last message I received contained one of those corny Internet jokes about the aging process that Joyce delighted in circulating to friends. Her voice – in person or in print -- could always bring a smile to my face.

A blood clot adjacent to her generous heart brought her earthly presence to a quick and peaceful end. She leaves behind her mother Dorothy, a Metis World War II veteran, sisters Theresa and Elise, and brother Tom back in Edmonton.

Joyce’s own words on David Gehue’s book cover best describe who she was.

“Joyce Atcheson is a nomadic Cree Metis woman who worked many years in nursing. Through her recent journalism career of 11 years, she is helping people tell their stories. Joyce, a step-mother to four, grandmother to nine, currently lives in Nova Scotia.”

May her Spirit be in a better place, and shine in the night sky with all the other stars.