… for these tracks will forever show the character of your passage
1997 Convocation Speech at Dartmouth College: Louise Erdrich
(Class of 1976)
(Sept. 23, 1997)
CONVOCATION SPEECH
Ahneen, apijigo megwitch. Niminwehndam ikidooyeg noongoom
onishishin geezhigud.
I entered Dartmouth in 1972, a member of the first freshman
class of women and in the first class of Native Americans. I had
never been east of the Mississippi. I didn’t know what a bagel
was. I found Brooklynese both strange and moving. I’d never met
a Californian, never heard the term prep school. I was
frightened of my new surroundings and overpowered by the classes
I was sure I’d fail.
And I did fail.
I am standing before you, now, not as the invited alum, not
as the returning honoree, but as someone whose biggest
accomplishment has been to fail, and fail with all of her heart,
at many things. I am not here to tell you how to succeed. You
have plenty of people who can tell you how to do that. I’m here
to tell you how to fail, for there is an art to it that I have
learned.
I will tell you about it by telling you what has happened
since I first accepted the honor of speaking at this
convocation.
At the time, my family life and that of our children was
intact. In the months after, my husband Michael Dorris, a
vibrant member of the Dartmouth community, took his own life. I
thought, of course, of cancelling this engagement and retreating
completely from public life. But I knew that if I did, I would
lose a very powerful chance to address those of you, and that
includes all of you, whose lives will include grave setbacks and
shocks, and yes, failures. I would lose the chance to address
you human to human, as though there were no age, no difference,
no podium between us. I would lose the chance to speak to you as
someone who entered Dartmouth more scared than you, more
confused, more filled with irrational self confidence, yet
without any self esteem whatsoever.
And yet, somehow, I am standing right here talking to you.
Had I succeeded in everything I tried at Dartmouth, I would
not be a writer. For instance, math. I entered before the
invention of the microchip, when the computer itself, at Kiewit,
was the size of a tennis court. My programs, based on dream
logic, threw the system into such a tizzy that I passed Math for
Poets only on the condition I did not approach the computer
again. I headed for Sanborn, made my home at the English
Department, and embarked on a life of failing passionately at
the thing I love to do most.
One thing I could do at Dartmouth, one thing that did keep
me going, was my work study job at Thayer Dining Hall. I rose
before dawn every morning, went in, and made breakfast. I am
proud to say that I believe, whether or not it is true, that I
was the first woman at Dartmouth to be trusted with the pancake
spatula. I had a terrific boss who’d once been a high ranking
army cook. He taught me to poach and scramble. He also taught me
organization, tenacity, and how to crack 30 or 40 dozen eggs
four at a time. I can still crack eggs one-handed, and I learned
that there are many people here, besides professors, who will
teach you what you need to know. So let the people who work all
around you to make this a good place, people in the accounts
office, library, dormitory, buildings and grounds, also be your
instructors.
Challenge is an inevitable part of education. Despair and
exhaustion are part of challenge. You will hit some walls here –
– emotional, intellectual — part of growing is that sometimes
you clear them and sometimes you don’t. Whether you clear the
walls of not, the stress of trying can deplete you to the point
of depression. I have to say this in the light of our family
year. Treat any signs of depression as you would a dangerous
virus. See the excellent doctors here. Get help. See your dean.
Talk to your friends. Depression is an illness that feeds on
isolation.
I can tell you, no one who loves a suicide will ever be
intact again. We are left holding the curve of the question
mark, above the dark period of that decision.
And yet it is possible, I hope, to hold that question in
the open as an archway for others to safely pass beneath. True
knowledge, deep knowledge, includes the pain and mess of life,
but also, and most importantly, I think, it includes
extraordinary, everyday, joy. Knowledge doesn’t come in a tidy
package. In the years to come, reach out to others with trust.
Cultivate your inner resilience and strength, because to trust,
you must have the soul of a great athlete, one who can rebound
when trust is violated, and revive to throw yourself again and
again at the goal of understanding.
Fail with the same attitude that you succeed. For the two
are more alike if you regard them with an open mind. Failure is
a consequence of taking risks. So, if you have taken a risk that
leads to failure, you must see yourself as having suceeded in
taking a true, real, important risk. A chance. A challenge.
There is honor in that.
With this attitude, many of your risks and failures will
turn to opportunities. If I hadn’t taken risks beyond my
understanding, for instance, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to
speak to you now.
During this year of listening to loss, I was at times
advised to turn my problems over to a higher power. But higher
powers don’t have to pay taxes while in shock, make edible
meals, wake grieving children up on cold, gray mornings and at
the last minute find cleverly stashed school shoes. No higher
power wanted to take on those mundane jobs. There may be times
you, too, have to dig deep for strength, so I want to tell you
about the person I found to fill in for me when times got tough.
I turned my problems over to an earthen soul, a person I
call Nurse Louise. My Nurse Louise took care of the weaker,
frightened, uncertain, impulsive, sorrowing Louise who had, once
upon a time, immersed herself in her fictions. Nurse Louise, a
realist, came to my rescue. Told me to look inside. I did.
Instead of an inner child, I found her, an inner grandma, a
tough old lady with an attitude.
My inner grandma — and I’m sure you all have one, or a
similar person — told me not to give up reading to my children,
acquiring pets, running, planting flowers, enjoying parents and
family, playing piano, loving deeply, hurting, praying, growing
tomatoes and learning languages.
For several years, I have been studying my native language,
that is, Ojibwa. The final reason I wanted to be here was this –
– to speak to you here on this historic occasion in a language
that by all rights should have disappeared a century ago but,
like native people, is alive and enduring today.
I want to so to you things that only can be said in Ojibwa.
It is a language in which everyone is related, and,
significantly today, in Ojibwa there are no gender distinctions.
Everything is either animate or inanimate, alive or dead, and
that distinction is the result of a private understanding of the
world. There is no word for greed in Ojibwa. No way to convey
the concept of personal ownership of this immense and flowing
earth. It is a language entered in the Guinness book of records
for its endless number of verbs. Ojibwa words describe every
movement and temperature and visual sense of water. It is the
language that my grandfather Anishinabe Patrick Gourneau, his
father Keeshkimunishoo, the Kingfisher, and my great aunt
Shyoosh, a healer, spoke. It is a language that my late husband,
Michael Dorris, taught me to appreciate.
Ikwaywug, ininiwug, Dartmouth –-
Nibago sendam sana gigah nandagikendan, nibagosendam gigah
gikina waabaaman, meenawa giminobimaadisin omah. Chi gikino
maday wigamigoong a’aw mazhii gewag mekina. Gibimosaym a’aw
mikina giga nisidotamawaa.
Mino aya sana.
Women and men of Dartmouth, I dearly hope you learn here in
the fullest way and lead a good life, that is, a life of
kindness, challenge, vision and consideration. This college has
prepared a road for you. As you walk this road, you will
understand that the beauty of the road lies partly in its
difficulty, just as the most scenic road has traversed the roughest
terrain. Don’t forget, you walk in others’ tracks and leave
tracks as well. Make them straight, keep your path true, for
these tracks will forever show the character of your passage.
Live well, in blessings.
Apijigo megwitch.