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If you know about beavers or happen to be Canadian you probably know about Grey Owl. But do you know about the woman that changed his mind, educated him and started an entire movement?
Nanaimo playwright tells the story of Indigenous woman who ‘saved the beaver’
Nanaimo playwright Anne Nesbitt is revisiting a play she wrote 16 years ago about the trailblazing Indigenous conservationist who saved the beaver.
Nesbitt said Anahareo is credited for convincing Belaney to give up beaver trapping in favour of promoting beaver conservation through his writing. Nesbitt calls Anahareo “a strong Indigenous hero” who deserves to be more widely known.
Nesbitt grew up in Manitoba and as a child she spent her summers in the province’s Riding Mountain National Park. There she learned the story of Mohawk woman Gertrude Bernard, also known as Anahareo, and her husband Archibald Belaney, a British immigrant who lived among the Anishnabe, invented a fabricated Indigenous identity and found fame as ‘Grey Owl.’ In 1931 the couple lived together in Riding Mountain National Park, where Belaney served as its first naturalist.
The staged reading is this weekend and you can register for a donation here. I think the entire thing sounds fascinating.
“She was a woman ahead of her time and it was her determination and dedication that actually saved the beaver,” Nesbitt said. “Grey Owl was kind of the front man, as happens, but she was a woman of vision and bravery and tenacity, for sure, and determination and she stood up to the white male-dominated culture at the time to pursue her dream.”
Speaking of gutsy women who save the beaver with their compelling tenacity, I spoke yesterday with Jerry Mallett of Colorado Headwaters who along with Jackie Corday is trying to organize the first Colorado beaver summit next fall. He told me that “Sherri Tippie says ‘hi'” And let me know about those early days many moons ago when he arranged for her to meet the man who would loan her the very first live beaver trap that she needed to borrow in Aurora. “She was a good looking woman, she had a good heart, I wrote her first articles of incorporation 31 years ago for the nonprofit she was going to start”.
Well that makes this a very small world, but you knew that already, right? I didn’t know he knew Sherri but it makes sense I guess. I thought of the name and did some math in my head.
“31 years ago? What did it used to be called”?
“Wildlife 2000, same as today’ he answered.
“But who call it 2000 if it was still the nineties?” I asked confused.
“Sherri picked that name because it seemed way out in the future back then. She thought it would ALL BE SOLVED by 2000.”
Can something be shocking and still make absolute sense? I can completely see Sherri believing that ‘the beaver problem would be solved with a decade of work. There is nothing at all grim or slogging about her personality. This SHOULD have been solved years ago. Decades ago. We know how. We know Why. But we just keeping doing the same stupid thing over and over and wondering why our wells go dry.
Beaver change is a long time coming.
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