On behalf of OIYPP's staff, youth advisors and Indigenous grantees we are so very honoured to share a story with you about an incredible woman named Dixie Crowe and the power and beauty of human connection. Delphine White, artist and costume designer and dear friend of Dixie Crowe, gifted thirty thousand dollars for our granting pool for 2022. This is more than a donation for the youth we serve but a deeply moving story and testament to the impact of deep loving relationships. Below you will read two stories told from Melody Crowe, Dixie Crowe's daughter and Delphine White, good friend of Dixie. OIYPP is incredibly grateful for this gift and will put it directly into the hands of the young people we serve.
Our Mother Being Honoured
Dixie Crowe was a proud Mother and Grandmother. She was a Sister, Aunt, Friend and Elder. She lived on the Alderville First Nation Reserve all of her life and was an active member of the community. She was the youngest of 10 children born to Borden and Lucy Crowe. Her father Borden was born in Alderville where he lived all of his life and her mother Lucy was born in Hiawatha First Nation. Dixie had a very close relationship with her brothers and sisters and loved them all very much! Not a single day would go by throughout her life that she didn’t have some form of contact with at least one of them. She comes from a long line of Chiefs and Community Leaders.
Her grandfather Fred Simpson of Alderville First Nation represented Team Canada in the 1908 Olympics that were held in London England where he placed 6th in the 26 mile marathon, out-distancing 50 of the worlds best long-distance runners. He was known as the ‘Ojibway Thunderbolt.’
Dixie prided herself on the love she felt for her family, her community and her Anishinaabe culture. She was a member of the Alderville Elder’s Council. She danced at every Alderville pow wow and drum social and was given the honour to give the opening prayers at many of these cultural gatherings. This honour always meant a great deal to her. She enjoyed opportunities to take part in the Alderville community women’s hand drum singing circles. She was not a fluent speaker of her Ancestral language but spoke the Anishinaabe words and phrases she did know as often as she could.
She was a proud member of the Alderville Pioneer A.A. Group – in the year she passed away February 2010, she would have celebrated 19 years of sobriety. As her children would hear her say on a regular basis, “It’s a good life!”
It was at these meetings where she met Delphine White. She absolutely loved and treasured her friendship with Delphine. She always enjoyed any occasion and time they were able to spend together. She shared with Delphine from that same philosophy that she held so dear with her own sobriety that it was a much better life. Delphine speaks of that to this day.
As Dixie is being honoured through this generous financial donation by her wonderful friend Delphine – We her family want to express such deep and sincere gratitude that she is being remembered and honoured in such a significant way by her very dear friend. We express our heartfelt Miigwech!
In Closing, may we be reminded of the Grandfather Teaching of Zaagidwin Love. Dixie had a deep unconditional love for her family and those around her. Our Medicine Wheel Values of Caring, Sharing and Kindness were important to Dixie, and she put those values forward to the best of her ability in all that she did. She had a grateful heart and was quick to give thanks for the many acts of love and kindness bestowed upon her. She always appreciated the smallest gestures of kindness as much as she did the bigger ones.
She believed with all of her heart in the importance of acknowledging those around her. It is one of her legacies that Dixie left for all of us, to remember the importance of reaching out, especially when it was a special day for someone else. Not a birthday, anniversary or special occasion would go by without her taking the time to acknowledge those things for other people.
Every single time she would leave a phone message for her children, or a note for her son Adam, she would tell us she loved us all and would name each one of us, including our Partners - every single time. We always knew we were so deeply loved by her.
May those who benefit from this very generous donation from Delphine White in honour of her friend Dixie Crowe really make a difference to the Recipients. May such an act of kindness, of generosity, of honour, ripple out in good and wonderful ways and may these two beautiful women Dixie and Delphine be remembered always and forever.
Chi Miigwech!
Written by Dixie’s daughter - Melody Crowe.
Dixie Joanne Crowe
Please let me introduce myself. My name is Delphine White, I am the daughter of settlers on both my Mother and Father’s side of the family. I live on the traditional treaty territory of the Michi Saagiig (Mississauga) and Chippewa Nations, collectively known as the Williams Treaties First Nations, which include: Curve Lake, Hiawatha, Alderville, Scugog Island, Rama, Beausoleil, and Georgina Island First Nations. I grew up on the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, composed of the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi Peoples.
The land I live on is remote, I love it and I believe I have had a love affair with it. It was when I had to move off the land that I mourned it like a soul. To console myself I would say “At least you have a choice in this decision” none of the First Nations people did. It was a realization of what my people had done when they came to the country we call home. I am now on my Mother’s side, the 6th generation of family that have lived in this country. My brother and sister’s children are the seventh and their children are the eighth. I do not feel this entitles me to the land, it is land that benefited the settlers more than the First Nations.
The realization of what the settlers had done to the children of the First Nations of Canada cut very deeply into my being. There is a deep sadness when I think of the culturally rich country we may have been today had my ancestors understood and communicated with the First Nations People of this land, but I am also filled with a strong belief that we will have a future together.
Dixie Crowe, Mother, Daughter, Grandmother, Sister
I have been close to and had a friend from Alderville First Nation. My truth with this friendship was that it had been deep and we had connected. I now understand that it may have been one sided. By that I mean I never heard her complain once about her life or her situation. She would say things such as “It was something else when I got my own house “. Her house was right across the street from the home she had grown up in. She and her daughter lived in the house Dixie grew up in. At one point she got a house and she lived there with her son Adam. It was a three bedroom house. A house without a well, that she had water delivered to. She was so happy to live in that house. She could watch her daughter go by on her way to work as the First Nations Liaison for the local school board. I met Dixie Crowe at the Fenella Town Hall right near Alderville First Nation. I was told if I went to a particular A.A..meeting that there would be women with the same challenge that I had and I would find a sponsor there. Every other meeting I had gone to in the area was filled with men.
It is odd because after I knew Dixie better I realized I had seen her at the Alderville Pow Wow the year before. I had three friends come to visit from the city and they wanted to go to the Pow Wow. I remember her sitting under a covered tent in her Blue Regalia with a group of people and I am pretty sure she got up and said the blessing that year at the beginning of the Pow Wow. It may have been that memory, although subconscious at the time, that triggered the feeling I had when I entered the room. She was sitting over at a round table, drinking a cup of coffee out of a styrofoam cup. There was coffee at every meeting and sandwiches and cut fresh vegetables. I knew then that I wanted to know her. I can’t explain why, I just knew. Dixie always had someone sitting with her at the table and I can’t remember how I got up the courage to speak to her but I did at one point. We had sponsors in this organization and there was a woman who I had already asked to be my sponsor, with Dixie it was different we became friends and Dixie had a huge impact on my life. Dixie and I started to speak on the phone and then we started meeting. We’d go to her brother’s restaurant on the reservation and have a meal. I was doing volunteer work on the costumes for a show in one of the towns nearby and Dixie came to see the show. We laughed and had a good time and went backstage to see the actors and the costumes. I loved to share this experience with her because she had shared so much with me.
Dixie asked nothing of me. The first time we sat down and talked we ate at her brother Glen’s restaurant and she told me of her love for cartoons. She had DVD’s of cartoons. She loved to talk about her two children Melody and Adam and her Grandson Dominic. She loved to get postcards and she had a collection of them. Every time we met she would say to me life is so much better now. I would hear about the Friday night socials at the Alderville Community Centre though I never went to one. She loved to dance. On her birthday she would be so excited it was coming and I would hear about her plans for her birthday and who was going to be there. After her birthday she lined all her presents against the wall and she invited me over for coffee to see all the gifts she got that year. I went to see her at the Alderville Hall when she modelled a pair of jeans for a fashion show. I’ll never forget how nervous and proud she was as she walked across the stage. I loved watching her At that show I met her sister Sheila and her daughter Melody. She talked about both of them every time we met so I felt as if I knew them through her eyes. I knew the house
Sheila lived in before I met her.
Slowly but surely I became used to living sober. Dixie helped me in ways she will never know. Her companionship and acceptance and the friendship she gave so freely to me a settler from a completely different world. My sister struggled with addiction issues as well and when she came to stay at my place for the summer she came to the meetings with me. My sister Sheila met Dixie and after she went back to the San Francisco Bay area Dixie called her and encouraged her to stay sober.
I was sitting with Dixie at the meeting when my phone rang and I went outside to answer it. It was a phone call that would take me away from the country and the meetings for a while. I went back in and told Dixie that I was going away and I would see her when I got back. I still called her from the city when I could. It happened that I would call and she wasn’t answering her phone. I managed to get back to a meeting and one of the women told me that Dixie was in hospital. I called her daughter Melody. Melody called back to tell me where and what had happened to Dixie. She had been airlifted into St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto. This timing gets all mixed up for me at this point. Because I know I made a point of going to the hospital near my country home on weekends to spend time with her. She was on a respirator and if she was conscious she didn’t seem to respond but I held her hand, and sang to her and I remember a woman from the reservation coming with her two daughters and drumming and singing to her. . There were cards and a large white card with pictures of all the people who loved her and wanted her to get well.
I was working , it was 9 at night when my cell phone rang. It was Melody calling to tell me that Dixie had passed away. It was February and I went outside the trailer to speak to Melody. It was devastating news. Dixie, the small woman on the Reservation who left such an impact on me, and through acceptance, and constant referral to how good life is sober helped me to become the person I am today. She was a rebel. She used to say to me you just need to make up your mind, and life will be so much better for you. She used to get up and say “I am recovered”. My sponsor asked me to tell Dixie that she can’t say that. I never spoke to Dixie about that because it was her belief that she was recovered and I respected that.
I know she’s up there looking down on her children and her two grandsons. One of whom, Sonny she never met but she told me was on the way. Dixie led her own path, loved who she loved and befriended whom she wanted. She was one of a kind and her impact on my life will forever be special.
I speak with gratitude for Dixie and her gift of friendship. It was an honour to know this spirited woman.
It is also with gratitude to Melody and Adam Crowe, her children who have given me permission to write about this.
Gratitude also to Hayden King of the Yellowhead Institute who I heard on the CBC speak about Land Rights, and to Kris Archie of The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (The Circle). Both Hayden and Kris met with me and directed me to Thea Belanger at Ontario Indigenous Youth Partnership Project (OIYPP). There are ways settlers can honour the First Nations, and give back through First Nations Led Organizations. It is with their help we are all able to honour Dixie, her children and her grandchildren.