Because of his tremendous visibility and the success of the demonstration, Paiakan had been receiving death threats daily while in Altamira. We knew that in Brazil union leaders, Indians, and religious and civil-rights activists had been murdered with impunity. While in Altamira, Tara and I met late at night with a handful of trusted Brazilians concerned that Paiakan's life was in jeopardy. It seemed surreal; the death threats were serious, and here we were, coolly discussing ways to avoid Paiakan's assassination.
I marveled at the courage of the Brazilians present, who were surely putting their own lives in jeopardy by supporting Paiakan, while Paiakan himself showed no signs of fear or backing down. As long as he remained in Aucre, he would be safe, because the only way in was by plane on a tiny airstrip completely vulnerable to Kaiapo warriors. But in Aucre he also would be isolated. We spoke of setting up a fund so that when he needed to get out to Brasília or to travel abroad, he could call in a plane.
Dick in full regalia behind him.
In the end, it was decided that Paiakan needed to get out of the country so that things could cool down. We asked him where he would like to go. “To Canada, to stay with you and Tara,” was his reply.
WITHIN DAYS OF OUR return to Vancouver in March 1989, Paiakan arrived with Irekran and their three daughters, Oe, Tania, and baby Majal. Their body paint had faded, but the girls' heads still had a triangle of shaved hair, just growing in. In the chilly night temperature we had taken to the Vancouver airport clothing we had gathered from friends, but Paiakan refused to let his family wear anything used. Tara and I had prepared an apartment in the basement of our house for the family. But when Paiakan found out that the sheets were not new, he said they wouldn't sleep in the beds; our diseases were a very real hazard for them. New clothes and sheets became our first priority.
We had set a fire in the fireplace, and once the family was settled, we went downstairs to visit. We discovered that the little girls had
dragged coals out of the hearth onto the bare wooden floor and were playing with them; we explained that wooden floors are different from dirt. When my father-in-law, Harry, went out the next morning for his usual early walk, he found the downstairs kitchen door wide open, one of the stove's burners red-hot, the television on, and all the lights blazing, but everyone apparently in bed.
Irekran and the girls spoke only Kaiapo, so all of our communication was through Tara and Paiakan speaking Portuguese. Paiakan's daughters and our girls got along famously, each learning many words and songs in the other's language. I have a vivid memory of Oe and Tania pedaling tricycles furiously along the sidewalks, Severn and Sarika running madly after them. I'd built our girls a playhouse high in the dogwood tree in the backyard, and Oe and Tania loved it, playing there for hours. They easily took to dressing up; we'd find Sari, Oe, and Tania sitting laughing in tiaras in the shower stall. Sarika took Oe and Tania to school with her as the best show-and-tell she'd ever come up with.
The whole family loved the killer whales then on display at the Vancouver Aquarium and returned again and again — six times in all — to gaze at those magnificent animals through windows that gave the public an underwater view from inches away. But our visitors' likes and dislikes were unpredictable. We took the family up Mount Holly-burn just outside the city, and while Irekran and the girls loved tobogganing and playing with snow for the first time, Paiakan sat in the car and smoked cigarettes.
The girls loved the sea and waded straight into it (in March!), but Paiakan and his wife always sat with their backs to it, which puzzled me. Then one day, as we were driving, our car drew alongside a wild river. All five of Paiakan's family flung themselves at the windows, everyone talking at once, pointing out the river's features in a flurry of excitement.
We arranged for translators and took the family to visit as many different First Nations as we could. The first place we visited was Tofino, on Vancouver Island, where the Nuu-chah-nulth people were holding a meeting. As we flew across the island in a small seaplane, I pointed out the extent of clear-cutting below to show Paiakan we had our forest battles too. Gradually I realized he and Irekran weren't listening to me but were staring straight ahead, clearly uncomfortable. In the Amazon, it turns out, some pilots fly very close to the forest canopy; if there is a mechanical failure and there are no clearings to set down in, the plane can crash-land on the trees. Paiakan had survived three such crashes. But over Vancouver Island, we were flying very high to avoid the mountains, a couple of them more than seven thousand feet high. When Paiakan and Irekran looked down, they saw a lot of snow and rocks — not a very welcoming surface. After we finally landed, Paiakan announced, “Chiefs don't fly in small planes,” which was baloney, but I wasn't going to argue. We ended up having to take a long bus ride and a ferry trip to return to Vancouver.
In Tofino, Paiakan was feted like a relative by the Nuu-chah-nulth. As he spoke through the translator about the struggle to protect his territories, you could have heard a pin drop. These were far from wealthy people, yet they collected thousands of dollars to help their brother from the Amazon. One old man hunted around in one of his pockets and finally came up with a hundred-dollar bill folded into a small square and obviously carefully saved for a long while. “He really needs it,” was all he said as he threw it into a pot. Canadian First Nations people understood that the Kaiapo were going through what their own people had suffered and felt an instant bond with them.
At our cottage on Quadra Island in the Strait of Georgia, I showed them how we dig clams. Irekran and Paiakan loved looking for clams as a kind of game, but when I broke one open and ate it raw, they were revolted and lost interest in clamming. They wanted to eat only what they were familiar with — chicken, white-fleshed river fish, beans, farinha, rice, and bread, which they loved toasted. When we fed them halibut, they found the taste and texture a satisfactory substitute for freshwater white-fleshed fish.
But when we caught a small halibut on a fishing trip with a group of First Nations leaders, Paiakan was appalled. He'd never seen a flat fish, with both eyes on the top of its head, and found it monstrous — ugly and unappetizing. When I told him that was what he'd been eating, he never touched halibut again. At first, he and his family wouldn't eat salmon, either — too red.
Paiakan often surprised us. On one trip, we were driving up Vancouver Island toward Port Hardy and spotted a huge plume of smoke. As we drew nearer, we could see that an area of forest had been clear-cut and the slash gathered into massive piles and set alight. Paiakan remarked, “Just like Brazil.” Another time, having flown over large areas of clear-cut that were covered in snow and visible as a checkerboard pattern from the plane, he said, “Brazilians destroy the forest because they are poor and uneducated. Why do Canadians?” When he first settled in our house, I drove him through downtown Vancouver, figuring he would be impressed with the cleanliness of the streets, the gleaming buildings, and the stores filled with goods. His response was unexpected: “To think all this comes from the Earth. How long can it go on?”