Holly Buffalo Rodrique has a dream.
She dreams of healing for those who have gone through residential schools. She wants the young generation to carry on and pass down the culture. She hopes there will be healing in Timmins and everywhere where there's homelessness and the substance use problem.
Buffalo Rodrique, 55, is Ojibwe born and raised in South Porcupine.
As a traditional dancer, drummer, singer and member of New Moon Singers, she can be often seen at various community events.
"It's a beautiful, beautiful culture, vibrant. It all has spiritual meaning, significance and connection," she says.
A Matachewan First Nation member, Buffalo Rodrique grew up in a close-knit family who lived off the land. She describes her childhood with three siblings and parents as “awesome and amazing.”
She grew up hearing the Ojibwe language but she's never learned it.
Her father was a hunter who would trap beavers, rabbits and sometimes foxes, and Buffalo Rodrique remembers watching her mother prepare wild meat.
Growing up, she didn’t know about friendship centres or that she was a part of a First Nations band. Nor did she know she was Indigenous or what Indigenous meant until she was 15 or 16.
That’s when she started discovering her identity and noticing there were other people like her that came from up the coast to go to high school.
When Buffalo Rodrique met her partner George Rose over a decade ago, she started practicing the traditional ways.
“He taught me a lot of things and then I picked up the drumming here in Timmins because my two daughters wanted to learn drumming,” she says.
When she first started drumming, it took about a month before she started to learn the sounds and connect with the drum. Drumming represents a mother’s heartbeat and it’s the first sound you hear in the womb, she explains.
“It was a very spiritual experience, and still is for me, to be able to connect with the Creator and Mother Earth," she says. "And I see things now with new eyes. Everything is alive and it awakens your spirit inside. And it's like lightning something inside of you."
Buffalo Rodrique enjoys representing her culture and the work in the community.
Before the pandemic, she used to go to the Detour Gold Mine every June 21 where, along with other drummers and dancers, they celebrated National Indigenous Peoples Day.
In August, she participated in creating peace poles for the new park in Schumacher.
“Of course, I always give thanks to the Creator for allowing us to share this way, opening doors for us to be able to do it. We do a lot of those powwow demonstrations,” she says.
Recently, Buffalo Rodrique, Rose, their friend Jennie Dundas and other multicultural groups decorated Christmas trees for the Holiday Pop Up Shop. The decorations on Buffalo Rodrique’s tree represented First Nations, the Seven Grandfather Teachings and the four colours of the medicine wheels. The tree's decorations also included homemade drums and orange gift boxes representing Every Child Matters.
“There are a lot of homemade decorations on that tree,” she says. “And the story behind the tree was to show the Indigenous culture. And I think we captured that pretty good.”
She has also been teaching drumming to children at Pope Francis Elementary School for about six years.
“I love working with children. And with teaching the youth and the adults through drumming, lighting that inner spark in them and seeing it come alive,” she says.
After Buffalo Rodrique took part in the Sundance ceremony in Matheson, she became sober.
“When you’re living this traditional life, walking the Red Road, you have to be sober, totally sober,” she says.
Currently, she works as a chief custodian at Timmins High and Vocational School overseeing about 12 staff. She’s been working for the school board for 33 years.
Buffalo Rodrique also works for the union as a secretary-treasurer for the local Canadian Union of Public Employees 8888 (CUPE). She’s been in that position for at least 16 years. She also served as vice-president for three years.
“That was awesome because I enjoy helping people,” she says. “And if we have a contract with the school board, and if they’re not abiding by that contract, I’m not afraid to stand up and say, ‘Hey, this is what the contract says. Is there something you can do to make it right?’”
She also sits on various committees such as the CUPE Ontario Indigenous Council and the equity committee with the Ontario School Boards Coordinating Committee in Toronto.
“I call them families. My family in Toronto,” she says.
When she’s not doing work in the community, Buffalo Rodrique likes to rest and watch movies with Rose. She also has three close friends, Sharon, Diane and Lisa, with whom she grew up.
She doesn't live her life with regrets but she wishes she'd met Rose earlier and learned about the traditional ways sooner. With four children and five grandchildren, she jests she’s jealous because they’re growing up into the culture, while she only learned about it a decade ago.
"But the Creator has a way of rolling out our life, how it's supposed to be," she says.
