Native American dives into ancestry, still fighting for a voice
By Ashleigh Plemper
Farmer Staff Writer
As a young Aboriginal boy living in the Canadian province of Manitoba, Mervin Lewis (Kakapshe) knew his region of residence was landlocked. But it was his soul that felt isolated.
“When I was younger, I’d always walk around with this ache inside and I didn’t know where it came from,” he says. That sense of incompleteness would follow Lewis for the better part of his life.
“Where I was from it was so isolated that the Trans-Canada Highway wasn’t completely built until 1965 and that’s where being isolated in the bush and being in society changed,” he says.
It was hard to see what a normal life would be like says Lewis.
“You see people living a normal life and having a career, but cannot achieve it yourself,” says Lewis of being a Native American.
That is until he began to take an interest in his ancestral lineage.
“The last name, Towab, comes from the oldest lineage of the Native bloodline in Northern Ontario/North America. That’s where I come from,” he says.
The problem with being from that bloodline, Lewis says, is that it’s almost like being a nonexistence.
“I couldn’t get educated, I couldn’t get a career and I couldn’t get a legal lawyer to defend me,” he says.
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