Interview with Jeffrey Bear

19-01-21-JB.docx




“HIV in My Day,” Jeffrey Bear (January 21, 2019)

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“HIV in My Day” – Interview 47

January 21, 2019
Interviewee: Jeffrey Bear (JB); Interviewer: Robert Ablenas (RA); also present: Ben
Klassen (BK)

Robert Ablenas: Thank you for being here to be interviewed for the oral history Pproject. And
just as an ice breaker, we talked a bit before the interview already but just for the interview now,
when did you first come to Vancouver, and from where?

Jeffrey Bear: I moved to Vancouver in 1978 and I came from the Sunshine Coast. And I’ve
been—then I lived here for awhile. But I was back and forth in the early seventies and stuff, ’79,
I think I made it permanent here. Then I moved to Haida Gwaii for about seven to eight years,
only in the summertime.

RA: Okay. You identify yourself as Two-Spirit. So, before you came here you had a life, and
then coming to Vancouver, I’m just wondering about the transition from one community to
another in that regard.

JB: Well, all my life, I sort of knew that I was Two-Spirited. I moved to Vancouver, I didn’t
realize that there were other Two-Spirited men or gay men, whatever they called it back then. I
came to Vancouver with a woman, I was with her for about eight years. And then I was out—it
was really hard to get by on a job being First Nations. No one would hire you, so I started doing
longshoring, and whatever odd job I could pick up. And what else was that?

RA: When you came here, did you feel you were able to connect with either any Two-Spirited
community or even the gay community that includes Two-Spirit? Just wondering how things
worked for you coming here, with your sexual life, sexual and spiritual identity.

JB: Yeah, I came, you know, I was living with this lady, like she’s about ten years older than me
but I knew at the time that I wasn’t really heterosexual. Maybe bi – you say bisexual, I don’t
know what it was, but I started going out and asking around when I didn’t work. And then I’d go
out, and just one day I saw this Native guy walking by, and you could tell that he was obviously
really gay, really – I don’t know, he was just flamboyant. And I said, oh, and I said, “Hi, how are
you?” And I was talking to him, and he goes, “Hey, they’re having a Native function around the
corner,” on Granville and Georgia it was. And I walked in there and I was just dumbfounded –
the bar was just full of Native people and I’ve never ever saw a Two-Spirited Native before in
my life. I think I was twenty-one, twenty-two, that was my first experience meeting them all.
And it was a different, totally different experience because they were doing a show, and I guess,
as you know, some people do dress up like women. It was that kind of a function, and I thought
oh my god. So, I sat down, everybody introduced me and then I met a really good Native friend
from Dawson City who was Two-Spirited, and he was really nice. And he goes, “Come on, you
don’t want to be here.” So, we took off, he brought me to another bar to [inaudible], to another
one, so it was my second bar in two days. And I was going, wow. And he says, “Yeah, there’s a
lot of gay bars in Vancouver.” Back then, that was maybe ‘78 or ‘79, so that was my first
experience of meeting gay people.





“HIV in My Day,” Jeffrey Bear (January 21, 2019)

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RA: Did you interact much with the gay community overall, independent of Two-Spirited
identity, for example?

JB: I did, like, go out. I totally just stuck with this one Native individual that I knew and then he
would tell me about all these different things, Native functions and Native socials or whatever it
is they had back then. But he said, “Oh, don’t go, don’t go to those,” and stuff, and everything. I
don’t know why, you know. But now I do to this day know why, I guess that’s when the
epidemic was sort of just coming to Vancouver, or people were picking it up and he would tell
me like, “Don’t go out with people and stuff, because they won’t tell you that they have HIV and
AIDS and stuff.” So, like, I just was a nomad I guess with him, I just stuck with him all the time.

RA: Did that advice from your friend influence you going out, or were there any other factors
affecting socializing?

JB: After a while, you know, like, I knew of one, two, then he brought me to three or four
places. And I just like to go out and watching different things, like they used to have shows.
Like, Halloween I used to go out all the time on that when I was here. And then I think I was in
Vancouver for about a year, then I moved up north. But I was in the community quite often, I
think.

RA: Did you notice any changes in the community? You said your friend gave you advice when
people were first hearing about the epidemic. Did you notice, just any changes in the community
over the years?

JB: Yeah, I saw people that had the illness and the disease. Even back then, it was quite – I don’t
know, rapid, rampant with them. So, after I sort of became open with my own sexuality, I started
showing with other people. And they’d be telling me a lot about, which I never knew too much
about, and then I just learned it through my friends. Saying oh, this brother here’s got the bug –
we called it the bug back then. But then you know, it didn’t bother me, like, I guess what I did
learn about it was when I watched Princess Diana go and visiting HIV people in the hospital and
she was touching everybody. So, I thought, well, you can’t get it that way. So, I felt like – I felt I
had an open mind about it anyway. And I had read stories about it from San Francisco, and how
it first originated and everything, so I was really open to helping out brothers that were – had the
disease back then.

RA: What was the earliest you were hearing about it and where were you? Which city?

JB: Vancouver. I was in Vancouver. And I started—my friend first told me about it, then I
started hanging around some people from Quebec, and I guess they had come here, and they
were saying oh, their best friend had AIDS. And they sort of like, uh, how could I put it? They
sort of – they were in a home, in a communal place. When they found out he had AIDS, he was
ousted from the building. I used to go there and just party with them. About twenty, I was about
twenty. But then, I asked where this guy was one time, and to my shock they said they boosted
him out because they didn’t want the disease. They didn’t know that you can’t get it off a door
handle or the bathroom or whatever, so they told me he was someplace in Vancouver. And I





“HIV in My Day,” Jeffrey Bear (January 21, 2019)

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went to see him, and like he had Kaposi all over his body and everything and I said, “Do you
want anything?” Because no one would help him the poor guy. So, I used to go make food runs
for him or cook for him until I went there one day, and he was gone. Door wouldn’t open. So, I
guess he had died, I’m not sure.

RA: When you said he was ousted from the building, how does that work? Do you know?

JB: Well, the apartment he lived, there was about eight French people in there. And then I just
asked, why where is he? I even forgot his name, and they said, “Oh, he’s gone.” But the other
friend of his gave me his number, he goes, “You should phone him, Jeffrey, because he’d
probably like company.” So, like, it’s not like it just happened overnight, it was like maybe a
year or two that I used to go visit him. But it was so bad you could see the—his nose and then his
neck, arms and everything. So, he had gotten to the final stages. But I helped him out as much as
I could.

RA: When you—okay, so you’ve mentioned finding out, hearing about, finding out about HIV
from friends you would hang around with – wherever you saw on the news, Lady Diana for
example. Just wondering where else you got information?

JB: I guess the information I got was just through friends that I hung around with and it was like,
back then I found it sort of like – it, like, was hidden. I don’t know, people didn’t like talking
about it back then and people were discriminated against. And I had met a lot of people – like, all
my friends now are dead that I knew back then. Well, the First Nations people that I used to chill
with. And like I wasn’t much into TV but I had saw it on TV, like it didn’t scare me or anything.
And I didn’t know that – I’d only heard through the community and like I say that was so strange
that I was seeing Princess Di on TV one time and she was in the AIDS ward in England, so that
really moved me. And that’s what I’ve been to this day, just helping people, much as I can.

RA: When you would see either acquaintances or friends, that suddenly is very personal. I mean,
in what other ways did it become personal for you?

JB: I used to bring them out, I used to make good money back then, and I really didn’t drink that
much, I wasn’t into drugs or anything, and I used to bring them out for dinner or lunch or
whatever, you know. And back then, once you got to the point where you knew you were
leaving, they didn’t eat much, but I’d try to make them eat lunch. Or I’d buy them some Boost or
whatever, ‘cause there was no really – in the late seventies, I’d say I don’t think there was that
much help for people. And what I did know, you know, like, I didn’t pick up a book or anything,
I just knew it was something really bad that they had. You know I – maybe for the first five or
six years, I just did what I could. I didn’t know anything about it until ’94, then when I was first
diagnosed, and I knew, you know. And I think it was really, I don’t know, a lot of my friends
that found out took it really bad. But you know, all I can say is that I had watched it come and
people getting it, it didn’t really—people say it’s a life-threatening thing, but maybe the first
week only I was like, just brain-dead with thinking what I could and stuff. And then, I just took
care of myself.






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RA: When it’s really personal as well—you were in a relationship at the time, right? Did any—
can you talk about how any of this affected your relationship?

JB: Okay, I’ve been in three relationships all my life. The first one when I was up north and he
didn’t know anything about it, we didn’t talk about it.

RA: What year – what year are we talking about for that?

JB: Uh, ‘78.

RA: Okay.

JB: And then after, I think in ’84 I had ran into my second partner and maybe he came with
[inaudible], I don’t know, we don’t talk about that, what’s meant to be is to be I guess. But my
current relationship, I been with him for thirty years this coming January, so me and him both
fought like, what—we did anything we could do, we take care of each other. And I don’t think
he had any family. I have family who are really – like, they just don’t know, we don’t talk about
it. But me and him take care of each other. And we do a lot with the community concerning HIV
and AIDS as well.

RA: When your partner, the most recent partner was diagnosed, at that time was information
made available to you that you weren’t getting before? Any kind of information helpful for
knowing things to do, or not to do—

JB: Yeah, I think so, because I think around that time, we both joined Healing Our Spirits – that
was there maybe later, I’m not sure. But we knew a lot about it, and like I disclosed my—my
status to him. And he, I don’t know, I can’t remember – he’ll have to tell you because I think he
may have been, I’m not sure. It’s a hard one to think about, and I’m just—you know, it just
happened. But back then I’m sure that like it was so widely, it had spread so rapidly, likem I
think everybody had had it. Like, there’s a few people now that I know that aren’t infected but
back in the late se—well, seventies, eighties, it was so rampant, like, all the years of me being
around all my friends, I know got it. Until the meds came out, and I think that helped quite a bit.
Because me and him were like human guinea pigs with the first meds that came out. Like, I was
doing, oh, I don’t know, I really don’t know how bad it was when I got diagnosed in ‘94,
because my doctor said that it stays in your—could stay dormant in your body for ten—that they
knew up to ten years. So, I may have had it for quite awhile. I’m just saying maybe from ‘85 I
contracted, I’m not sure.

RA: You mentioned the organization Healing Our Spirits. Could you tell us a bit about that?

JB: Yes. We went there for moral support. Like, they did lunches, they had a place where all
First Nations could go and meet. That’s where I met the majority of my friends, I think, was
through them. But I met a lot of them from the street too, in bars and stuff. But I think it was in
‘94 when we went there, but like we were terrified to go there. Because we started at Positive
Living too around the same time. But when I got there, I was like just shocked to see like
practically everybody I knew was in there as well. And when we went there for support and then





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they told—we didn’t realize it back then because we’re—me and my partner worked really hard,
so like going off the job and just going back on the disability back in those days it was like, pffft,
chicken feet I think, because we were making so much. But then they came up with a portable
subsidy which they gave me and him which really helped us out a lot. And I think Healing Our
Spirits was really good for the First Nations brothers because they had no place to go at all.
They’re—I don’t know, they say they’re discriminated against, but there was a lot of, there was a
lot of places to go if you wanted to look for them and seek help. Like both—my partner started at
Pos Living Society in ’94, I think, and then he asked me if I wanted to go there and I had to walk
around the block two or three times before I decided I wanted to go in, because it’s—I don’t
know, it was sort of like I was really devastated having to be around people and seeing that they
had the same thing as I did.

RA: You said you were terrified to go to both Positive Living and Healing Our Spirits as well.
What was the fear?

JB: Not so much Healing Our Spirits. I sort of had like an anxiety attack going because then
you’re letting the whole world know that you have it, right? And it’s such a fine topic to go on
because you don’t know, it really is confidential, you know, like, I just—I don’t know. Have
been like that all my life, I just don’t believe – you know, it’s like we do, we wrote everything
down? We didn’t back then. And that was like ninety—I really can’t remember what time I
joined Healing Our Spirits, but it took a weight off my shoulder knowing that there was help
there for First Nations people because during the peak of the epidemic, like between ‘85 and ’90,
they were just dropping like flies. Because they’re, I don’t know—whether they were too proud
or they didn’t want their identity known, a lot of Natives didn’t get treatment, or HIV meds. So,
me and my partner had a house and we took about six people in, and they just died. Died at our
place. And with Positive Living, I didn’t know, like, it was – it could’ve been worse or the same,
I always had these thoughts going through my brain. And when I went there, like I said, I walked
around the block a couple times, and when I went in there, like wow, it just like a gust of wind
hitting you. There was so many people in there. And like I don’t know I just—it was like a
lonely experience just having it, you know. It took quite a while to get it off your shoulder and
know that you had to live with it. And you never knew when you’re going die from it, so – but
like I thank the god, the creator that I got a really good HIV specialist and she put me on a
regimen back then.

RA: How long did it take to feel differently once you started at say Positive Living or Healing
Our Spirits?

JB: Feel different?

RA: Well, you talked about when you first went in, it felt as if there was a wave, and then you
also talked about going around the block a couple times first so…?

JB: Well, I was sort of terrified. Like, I didn’t want everyone to know, you know like, for being
back then it was so discriminating. And it really took me about—letting your status be known to
everybody, but after I got used to work—well, down there, going to Positive Living Society,
which was called PWA back then, I started meeting friends and stuff, and they’re really nice.





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And then I volunteered for Healing Our Spirits for quite awhile, and then I just made my choice
to go to Positive Living. They had more of a—uh, I don’t know they had more services and stuff
for people living with HIV and AIDS.

RA: Part of being concerned about being identified when you were first considering even going
to Positive Living Society, PWA rather at the time, what’s your recollection or perception of
how just everybody, society at large was seeing AIDS, people living with HIV? So, part of being
identified was a part of your concern in the first place, so where was that actually coming from?
What was going on in society, from your recollection?

JB: First of all, I didn’t want my family to know when I found out. And like, I was really close
to my brothers and sisters, my dad not so much, because he was living with a Caucasian lady and
I didn’t like her. But like, they lived together since my mom and dad broke up at the age when I
was seven. So eventually, like, I just felt like I had to get it off my chest. And my younger sister,
me and her, we’re like identical twins, like I could tell her anything, she’d tell me anything, so I
told her one day. I said, “Oh, sis, guess what? I got HIV.” Or they say AIDS. And she went,
“No.” But she was really – she was really… I don’t know. Oh, I guess she was my rock, I told
her everything. And then I told my brother. And then when I went to – you were saying AIDS
Vancouver or PWA, when I first went there, like, I just had this uneasy feeling because it wasn’t
like Healing Our Spirits. Healing Our Spirits was only for First Nations, Natives, men for men.
But when I walked into PWA, they were so warm and welcome, welcome. And then I looked
around and everybody was looking at me, because – maybe because we were the only Natives in
there. It was only white people in there, like Caucasians. Because I don’t have a prejudiced bone
in my body, when I was looking around, I was going holy. And everybody was looking at us,
like, wow.

And it took a little while, a couple days or whatever, a week, for me to just acquainted and you
could talk openly about your virus and everything. And I guess I really can’t remember right
now, because it was like in ‘94 we went to Positive Living Society it’s called now, and this
year—oh yeah, this year it’s going to be I think me and [partner’s name] twenty-five years of
volunteering there. So, they did something good and helped us out. Then we got a new – I don’t
know, a Director I guess from England, and she goes—she was the one that asked my partner if
he could get more people out, different nationalities in there. Because there was really no one
there, there was only me and [name] as First Nations, and I don’t think there was anyone else.
So, me and [name] brought some – we got some Hispanic brothers that we knew. I don’t know
how to call them, North American, no, Africans. I knew quite a few that had it and they didn’t
know where to go. I said, “Come on down here.” So, that’s how I got to know Positive Living
Society.

RA: What was the volunteering you were doing?

JB: We were—we both started out working for membership, which was like about four, they had
about 4000-3000 people back then. I was going, wow, I was just dumbfounded at how many
people had the disease. And I worked the front counter and we had to give them – we had
membership cards we gave them, and I’d write their numbers down and put it in the computer for
stats purposes, to get funding and stuff to see how many people were coming. So, I did—we did





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a lot, did about just about everything down there. I work in the computers down there now, I
train people. And I work in Polly & Esther’s which is a free clothing place for people living with
HIV and AIDS. And I work the lounge coffee bar.

RA: How quickly did you get into the volunteering once you’d started there?

JB: Um, when I first went there. Well, I just looked around, was a member for awhile, I got my
membership. And I don’t really recall how many people they had volunteering there, but they
asked me if I wanted to volunteer, and I said sure. We lived in Port Coquitlam then, so it was like
an hour ride, hour and a half ride to get in to volunteer. Then we were volunteering like crazy,
five days a week. Yeah, it just took about a month I think ‘till I got adjusted and felt like I fitted
in there, or whatever fitted, yeah. Then I just stayed there.

RA: Were you volunteering for Healing Our Spirit?

JB: Yeah, I sat on their Board for about seven years as well. And I used to volunteer and answer
the phone up there. Yeah, I think I did that for about ten years. Because like they gave us a
subsidy, so I felt like indebted to—they give you a subsidy to help your housing, so I felt like it
was only the normal thing to do is help out. Because they didn’t have funding for staff. Well,
like, not that much funding, so I started out as a—what is that—a receptionist there.

RA: Were there other organizations that had, not necessarily everything but something for you,
and you would go to them as well?

JB: Uh yeah, going to Healing Our Spirits, they gave us a list, like we did there, but like I don’t
see, maybe a couple, they referred us to, I think it’s called Native Health. I think I saw it, I’m not
sure. But the – what are they called—the people that – I don’t know what we call them, it just
slipped my mind now, but they referred us to Native Health where they gave us food and stuff.
You go on a weekly basis, people living with HIV and AIDS, like, which was you know it
helped out a lot. Because back before that, we didn’t know anything like that. And we also got
food from Pos Living, which we still do to this day. That does help out quite a bit. And they put
us on that speaking bureau – well, not me so much, but I was, I did blessings and prayers for a lot
of people from Healing Our Spirits had passed over. So, we used to—because I learned where
I’m from, we didn’t have no—they had no acknowledgment of—we didn’t speak our native
tongue or we didn’t have native singing or anything. So, I think when I went to Haida Gwaii,
that’s where I learned the spiritual things. And native singing dancing and prayers and blessings.
And along the way, I met a lot of medicine women and medicine men, they sent us on retreats
from Healing Our Spirits, where they’d send – like they’d always made sure they had medicine
people there, like medicine people, like a native spiritual holy man or whatever.

I sort of didn’t believe it in the beginning but when I went to Haida Gwaii I saw things, like that
they don’t talk about. Because they had – when the natives first got infected with – what is that
called now? I was just reading about the other day. Um, smallpox. They died so fast that—I
learned this up in Haida Gwaii—that they died so fast they just threw them in mass burial sites
and like it was horrible seeing those sites. You know, but there was no place to put them. You
couldn’t just bury ‘em because they were dropping like flies. Which brings a good story out





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about that, because I had met this elderly Native woman who I think she may have been a
medicine woman, I’m not sure, but she used to talk to me all the time and I told her I was Two-
Spirited, and she said that I was a berdache, and something in their language where you can cross
over to two different worlds. And I go, “Oh, you’re kidding. You know about that?” She goes,
“Oh, it’s been around for hundreds of years, where Two-Spirited men were either a man, could
be either a man or woman.” And I think that was in ‘89. And then she says, “There’s something I
just can’t figure out about you.” She goes, “Later on in your life, you’re gonna get something
really… something traumatic’s gonna happen to you. You’re going to survive it.” And then, you
know, took me years to figure out what she was saying. I don’t know how she knew that, you
know. I’m thinking that she meant that I was going to get HIV or AIDS. And she was really
sincere, like she was in her nineties, and she—that was really amazing to me.

RA: When you’re interacting with other communities, did you get a sense of other people getting
the spiritual dimension of you, or you know, maybe they’re using different language or ways of
talking about it, but did you connect with anybody just at that level?

JB: Yeah, we did a lot of speeches and a lot of talks over the last thirty years living with HIV
and AIDS. We’d do—if we went to a ceremony, or me and [name] used to go to the Positive
Living—what’s it called now? Positive Living—uh, they had some kind of a thing they had in –
they had it all over the place in Vancouver.

RA: Was it retreat?

JB: No, no, not the retreat, it was like a—I’m trying to think what it was because me and [name]
did blessings like for the first ten to twelve years of doing that. And people would come out and
say, “Oh my god, you guys tell amazing stories.” We’d tell them the beginning of time when we
first got it, it was for positive men anyway. We’d go do that and it was really nice because
people would go up and say, you know, we’d do a blessing or something. And I used to get my
uncle to bless stones, and one year I gave everybody a stone and so that’s how we thanked
people for us being so honored for be invited to this. And it was all Caucasians. Then after a
while it was a mixture – Africans, Hispanics. But that was sort of later on when people started
opening up and coming up. And we did different things all through Vancouver, like, say for
example, me and [name] were the first ones I think about twenty years ago, they had people
attend the floor where we call—everybody knew it was a death ward if you had HIV or AIDS.
And me and my partner had a couple friends that were like nearing their time to go, and one of
them requested that they get smudged, with an eagle feather thing. So, we had to through a lot of
red tape, I think it was me and him that first ever started that. But I think they’ve cut it out now.
But that was like, in the beginning, when the epidemic was at it’s strongest, before the
medications came out. So yeah, we’ve done a lot of things regarding people living with HIV and
AIDS.

RA: Okay. Among First Nations people, I think you have talked a bit about response from within
that community to the epidemic, and I’m just wondering does that picture change over the years?
Or if there’s anything that stands out for you in all of that?






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JB: I don’t think so. Like, a lot of First Nations didn’t tell, and even to this day a lot of First
Nations don’t tell their bands, or wherever they’re from. Like, just say a region, wherever around
here, a lot of them don’t disclose it. Because it’s—I don’t know, the way I feel is a lot of elders
don’t, can’t accept it. Because it’s hard enough trying to tell your family that you’re Two-Spirit
or gay, and then if you drop a bombshell and tell them you have AIDS, they just can’t pick up
the concept, that it’s a reality and it’s here and it’s here to stay. Like I—that’s just my feelings,
but I know with my, where I come from, I haven’t told a single soul. But people suspect and
know, I think. I’m pretty sure but I’m not – I can’t really clarify if they do know, but I’ve never
told them. Because it’s like, with the horrible experiences I had when I told—I sort of told my
dad. And I used to call her mom, ‘cause I didn’t know anything other than her as a mother. And
she was a Caucasian. I told her and she just went ballistics on me, saying that she—she made my
dad crossover from being a Roman Catholic and she wanted to be a, oh what is it, he was
Catholic, and she wanted him to be a Christian. And she—I had told my dad – I said, in
confidentiality, “I’m going to tell you something. I like men more than women.” And he told her,
and she just freaked out on me and had a cross and a bible. A cross and a bible which I found so
hilarious to this day, that she wanted me to touch it. And she was, like, just blurting stuff out at
me. It didn’t help, it just pushed me away from my family and stuff, you know, and that was,
thirty-five years ago or something.

So, no, I don’t think people tell anyone. Because I know a lot of—the majority of the First
Nations, like, just when they go, they’re either laying on a slab in the – well, wherever you go,
the morgue? Is that what it’s called? Yeah so, you know, we’ve been through that a lot where we
had to go just identify the body and either having to contact the family, or there was no one
there. And we used to say like, it’s not good in our culture to have them laying there, you gotta
get ‘em—it was hard because to do it legally, you had to have families consent. And then I think
we signed papers where we said that we’d do it, like we would sign them and just have ‘em
cremated and spread their ashes or something. ‘Cause a lot of—I know a lot of reserves didn’t
accept them. And it’s only a few stories, I don’t know if it’s true or not, where if you have HIV,
you can’t have a proper burial, you had to be cremated. That’s what I heard and that’s what I
believe, but I don’t know if it’s true. Because everybody I’ve known’s been cremated, that has
AIDS.

RA: Did it make a difference whether it’s someone with HIV but maybe not necessarily Two-
Spirited, but maybe through drug use, them being infected?

JB: Oh, I’m sure a lot of people got infected with AIDS through drug use. That’s a hard one
because I never really hung around with the drug—I’ve, no, now I know because I’m working,
where I’m volunteering, I’m working with a lot of people that have been infected through drug
use. But back then, I didn’t know the difference between getting it through needles or through
having sex with other men. So, I wasn’t—I don’t know, that’s a good question. I’d never thought
of that. But I know there’s a lot of people, the majority of people on Hastings Street are infected.

RA: I was just wondering if there was any different treatment, or attitude within the community?

JB: For people that got it through needles you mean?






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RA: Well, maybe backing up then, Two-Spirit versus—maybe this is not an easy question to
ask—differential treatment in the community between someone who has a health issue connected
to their sexual identity, Two-Spirited, versus someone who is infected with HIV due to drug use,
or even someone who’s infected because of blood transfusion. So, if it was specifically the HIV
in general just getting that kind of a response from within the community, or if there were other
factors involved as well.

JB: I don’t really know. I think I may have met on one First Nations who got infected through
doing whatever they do, but other than that, I really don’t know who got infected through drug
use, or I always just assumed that you got HIV from having sex with men. I didn’t realize that,
yeah, you can get it through a transfusion, blood transfusion. Which I’ve never had, or I’ve never
heard of anybody having it, so that’s a tricky question for me. I don’t know.

RA: Okay. Did you see any kind of changes either within First Nations communities or maybe
the gay community, to whatever extent you interacted with them, just in terms of how they’re
responding to the epidemic?

JB: Just through my – just through my thoughts and stuff. I don’t think it was ever brought up in
the thirty years that I’ve been helping out and living with it. I’ve only known of a one person on
my reservation that died of HIV/AIDS and he got that through drugs – he was heterosexual. And
I had—well, actually, I’d told my cousin and she used to phone me all the time and ask me if I
knew what to do, like helping him and everything. And it was like, I guess even to this day it’s
really hush-hush. I find it very – it’s something that you don’t talk about. It’s swept under the
carpet. Because there’s no help, I know that. They don’t—I have never really actually heard of
any reserve, reservation that has any kind of help. They’re starting to open up to people because
the crack, and cocaine I guess is so rampant now, I see them doing stuff for that. But to this day,
I haven’t heard of any help for people living with HIV and AIDS, from any of them. There may
be, I’m not sure.

RA: Okay. We’ve talked a lot about your identity as Two-Spirit, Two-Spirited and specifically a
man who is a part of First Nations culture. Are there other aspects of you that you might not
think are worth mentioning but maybe they’re of interest, because I don’t know, it affects things
you do, things you think about, things that interest you?

JB: Yeah, I guess there are. Like, even when I was younger, I wanted to be someone that helped
traditionally. Like, I’ve been doing it the majority of my life. Even before I was diagnosed, I
used to do ceremonial things, like sweats, and I don’t know, I guess I sort of wanted to be like a
holy – not a holy man, a medicine man who could help people and stuff. I’ve only learned what
I’ve – I only got taught what I’ve learned. And I guess that started in the early eighties. I was
taught by a lot of medicine people. And I think that was my wish that I wanted to be. But after I
was diagnosed, I think everything changed. But you know, I still tried different, other, a lot of
different things, like, you were so – what’s that word I can use? Like not discriminated against
because you were HIV, but it was like a something and I wanted the world to see that, you know,
we’re all humans. You know, and like people got cancer, and people have this and that, and I did
my best I think to explain to people that we’re – you gotta go one way or the other, the way I
look at it. But you know, it’s just hard living with it, with that like… Even though I knew that





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when I first was diagnosed, like I had a choice to make and that would be good, or a lot of them
different, they just left. They either drank themselves to death or whatever they do, or however
they do it. And you know, I made my choice, I think, when my partner told me he had AIDS and
then I knew I had to change my ways. So, I did. I did a lot of blessings and helped out people,
and it didn’t matter to me whether you were white, black, green or red, you know, I just did it.
And I think I would’ve done it even though I wasn’t diagnosed, I would’ve still done that. Was
that like, what you wanted to hear or…?

RA: I think you used the term medicine man as a way of thinking about some things you wanted
to do, or ways you saw life. I have a sense of what that means but I want to hear you say what it
means to you just to make sure.

JB: Well, I think – I can’t say for sure, but I think my dad’s dad’s dad, which would be my
great-great-grandfather, he was a medicine man, because my uncle always tells me things. He
says, if you just close your eyes, and just think. Like I’d phone him, I used to – oh, I don’t think I
even told my uncle – he knew. He’s like a wise old man. And like, I’d phone him and tell him,
like, “Okay, I need help,” or whatever. You know, like, my best friend just passed away, and I
needed words of wisdom or something and he’d tell me to – he told me a lot of different things to
do, which would be hard to believe. Like, say for one thing, that’s really vivid in my mind was
my partner had like a fever of—well I can’t say how high—but the one nurse goes “Oh my god,”
and it was just from having HIV. And he had some kind of – I don’t know, it just was at that
moment in time where he wasn’t feeling good and everything must have just come out of him,
and I was at home and I was going like this to him. I said, “Oh my god, your body’s hot.” And he
was trying to pull it off like nothing was wrong. I said, “Well I’m bringing you to the hospital.”
And they had him in there for a couple days and even the specialist couldn’t find out nothing, so
I phoned my uncle. And I – he always talks to me in Native but I don’t understand it. And I said,
“Okay, well just tell me what I can do.” Because he knows [name], and he said, “Go to the
balcony. What do you see?” He would always make like a riddle or something for me, but I
really listened to him. And I told him what happened and everything, that [name] was in the
hospital and he had a high fever, and seven specialists couldn’t find out what was wrong with
him. So, I looked out off my balcony, and he goes “What do you see?” I said, “Buildings.” He
goes, “Look further.” And then I said, “The ocean?” And he goes, “Go get him out of the
hospital and bring him down to the beach now and go get some cedar, wipe it on his forehead.”
And like within a hour, his fever was gone. So, they have medicines that like, I don’t know,
people they don’t believe, I think they don’t believe anyway. And it’s not the first time too where
it’s happened. Like he—I’m not supposed to be using the names right, or can you guys edit the
name out?

RA: We can edit them out.

JB: Okay, so another thing is where you know, I said no to, and I had to get in touch with holy
men or First Nations medicine people, in 1997, I think, he was on his deathbed, and you’ll see
him, he’s like a hundred pounds now. But when he went into a coma for a month, and I was
phoning my uncle all the time and asked him what to do. And he goes, “Is he breathing?” I said,
“Yeah.” And he would just tell me what to do. And he goes, “Don’t leave him, he’s there yet.”
And like I’d believe him but it was like a whole month. And I said, oh, and this family of his,





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he’ll probably tell you the story later, the family of his side got some medicine people from
Alberta to come in. And he’d already been in a coma for a month, and they started with two
doctors who wanted me to pull the plug on him. And I said, “No, my uncle told me he’s still
alive.” He goes, “You’re just hearing the machine.” And they really, I don’t know, I thought they
were fooling me. And they go, “He’s only breathing because the machines keep him alive. What
you’re doing is putting him through the most horrible…” - what’s that word? Horrible pain or
whatever, but I forgot how they put it in their professional thing. And I said, “Well, he’s not
telling me he’s in pain.” And I knew they were mad at me because I wouldn’t do it, and they kept
bringing different doctors, and I said nope.

And I would say is no. I phone my uncle. I used to smudge him. I brought him to Kelowna
General Hospital because it was like, much nicer than here, and after a month or so, like, it’s
not—I wasn’t losing – what do you call that when you believe something? I wasn’t losing my
faith, in that he was going to die, but in my brain, I knew something was really wrong with him,
but I wasn’t accepting it. So, this lady got some medicine people from Alberta, who did things
like, that I’ve never saw before, like spiritual things that medicine people do. And like he went
from a hundred pounds to maybe about three-fifty, and they brought him out on the bed, and they
did a ritual on him and like, boom, he was up. And like he freaked. It freaked me out too. He
goes, “What are you doing, putting me in an insane asylum for?” And that was the first thing he
said. I was like, “[Name], oh my god.” And he like, he thought I signed him into Riverdale,
Riverview or whatever it’s called. I said, “[Name], no you’ve been in a coma for a month.” Oh
boy! He just got all mad, but he didn’t believe it. But I found that to be a miracle that they did
that. So, I have a lot of faith in traditional medicines and all that. And over the years, I’ve just
picked up a lot of different medicines that I believe in and everything.

RA: Okay, thanks for sharing that. At this point, are there any things that we haven’t asked you
about that either you thought we might, and should, or just something that’s come up,
remembering and discussing these things? Maybe something you hadn’t thought of until now
that you’d like to share?

JB: Yeah, I’m sort of wishing that there was more help, back in the olden days for a lot of
brothers and sisters. You know, like I’m saying maybe they didn’t want to be disclosed or open
up to it, but like, I must’ve had well over a hundred native friends that passed away, because
there was no place for them to go. And then the only thing we knew back then was St. Paul’s.
And if you had HIV or AIDS, it was the tenth floor. So, I can say that it’s – over the past thirty
years, I’ve only been in the hospital once—well, twice, when I got diagnosed—and in 2007, I got
– I don’t know what kind of pneumonia that was but they put me on the seventh floor, so I was
thinking, hail Mary, I’m gonna live. So, it was like a terrifying thought to be going to the tenth
floor. Oh, I had bacterial pneumonia I think, so they isolated me on the seventh floor. I think that
you guys covered everything pretty much, pretty well.

RA: No, you did.

JB: Oh, I mean, yeah, the questions, your questions and stuff, yeah. But I can’t really think
except for – you know, like maybe, like in the beginning when it first started, it was so
discriminating. Like, the story I want to tell you was Mount Saint Joseph’s when I got diagnosed





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and I had double-pneumonia and some other kind of pneumonia and then when they found out
that I had it, like that was such horrible treatment back then. And that’s what like being in ninety,
between ‘90, ’95, I don’t have the exact date, but just being treated like a dog and thrown in a
room because the doctor said I had AIDS. And I got the nerve up to go to the specialists, and
even then, too, I just felt like, woah, this isn’t happening. Because the first words that they said
to me was, “You have AIDS. You’re going to die.” And that’s from a specialist. So, then I
looked around and I found my doctor now who—she’s a HIV specialist in that new office over
here—she’s been our HIV specialist for twenty-five years now, I think. She said we’re her first
patients when she came, so been with her a long time. And thank god for the meds, because in
the beginning, like, I think it was good for the HIV medications in the beginning, because that’s
why a lot of them were dying, there was nothing for people that had HIV and AIDS. And when
they did come out, I think, oh my goodness, we were on twenty-one pills a day. It was horrible.
They used to give you one that you had to eat peanut butter with so you didn’t throw all the pills
up. Oh, it was horrible.

And Spectrum Health is where my doctor is, and I think it was 2002, I had gotten Kaposi from
being like- I was about the same weight all my life, two hundred pounds, and I got down to a-
hundred-and-forty, and I couldn’t comprehend it, that it hit me finally. So, I stopped going to see
her. And she used to call me all the time and then she goes—I ended up in the hospital, I think it
was 2002—and she goes, “What do I do now, you know?” And she was crying and everything.
And she goes, “Phone your family if you want to say your good-byes,” and stuff. And then she
come back a week later and she goes, “They have a miracle drug if you want to go on it.: It
wasn’t—what do you call that when it’s not PDA approved or something? Whatever that word
is. And she goes, “You wanna try that? Because that’s the last hope.” So, I went on this drug, it
was two pills a day I think, and like within two weeks, the Kaposi started going away. It was
amazing, I couldn’t believe it. And ever since then, I think they’ve really come a long way since
then with all the drugs for fighting HIV and AIDS. Other than, yeah, I think that’s about all.

RA: Okay.

Ben Klassen: Do you mind if I just jump in with one question? You mentioned that you had
some friends that you looked after at your home. Could you say a bit more about that?

JB: These friends were my partner’s best friends, like they’re—I’m from the Northwest Coast
here, my partner’s from a couple provinces away—and like I got to know them through him.
Like I say, we’re coming up to our thirty-year anniversary of being together. So, they didn’t – the
first one, they didn’t have, we didn’t—we weren’t yet diagnosed. But our friend was and it got so
bad he—was like a she more. Like, you can come in two different ways, I think, I don’t know
how they classify it – he chose to dress up like a woman, he had really long hair. And I guess he
looked like a woman, I don’t judge people. But anyway, it got so bad, like, he’d be phoning my
partner and saying, “I got a butcher knife under my pillow.” And he was getting
schizophrenically or whatever that word is. And it was so bad, like his body was covered in
Kaposi, and his nose was pure black. And like, my bud said, “Can we bring them in?” I said, it’s
up to you, you know, like if they would need someone to take care of—I guess, I can’t really say
if they had family. Someone had a doctor here in Vancouver, an elderly lady who she called





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mum, so I don’t know if she had a mother or father really. But anyway, she didn’t want to even
go to the hospital, she had brought that up with him.

So, we brought her, him to our place where I guess he may have died – I don’t know, I can’t
remember now. But I remember driving him to the hospital, and he didn’t live that long after
that. And another one too, we just saw walking the streets, and it was early nineties. And I guess
back then, when you knew your time was up, you’d get Kaposi, whatever it’s called. I don’t
know the professional name for it, you got all those marks. And I said, “Hey, there’s your friend,
isn’t it?” And we’d see him walking up on Broadway. And we’d pull over and he’d go, “You
okay?” And he said that he got kicked out his house because they found out that he had AIDS,
HIV. And I guess he was, I can’t remember, but the second one we had about five people we
took care of. But I can’t remember how long we kept care of her – this one was a her too, like
dressed up more like woman side than a man. But he stayed with him until he was on his last day
too. And a couple other we took—we took care of a lot of First Nations people, actually. Like I
say, all my friends have gone, gone ahead, so… But we did everything possible. We used to
smudge, burn, sing, drum for them. But they found it soothing, they liked it when we used to do
that. I just thought that was the thing to do, so we did that a lot.

BK: So, even when you weren’t volunteering, you were looking after people a lot?

JB: Oh yeah, we did that maybe twenty, twenty-five years, we took care of people. And you
know, white people too, or Caucasians, better to say that, right? Caucasians, we took care of a lot
of them too. I went to New Westminster with this Caucasian brother and he got a big something,
I don’t know what you call it, tumour? On his head. And we blessed him, and they cut him from
here to here and took it off. But what do you call that word where it didn’t spread? Which is
good, he’s here to this day.

RA: I think benign.

JB: Yeah. So, we did a lot of that too in the early days, took care of lot of people. And it’s so sad
because I wish they would’ve had medications back then like they do now. Like, I’m on one a
day – they just took me off Kaletra and put me on this purple other—I don’t even know the name
of it, and I should—but like, just living day-to-day. I just tell ‘em, do you what you want.
Because they said – I was on Kaletra for, oh – Atripla, for eight years. She said it – what do you
call that, deteriorates your back bone or something? So they put me on this other – I just don’t
know the name of it right now, but it’s doing wonders for me like I’m up in the—from two-
thousand, I was on my deathbed, now I’m up to six-hundred and something, my CD4 cells, I
think.

RA: Okay.

BK: Yeah. Anything else before we wrap up?

JB: I’m sort of glad too that back then, even in the earlier days when we went out like, we’d go
out and tell our story. I don’t know, we never had no fear of telling people, like no – how do you
say that? People were – the only word I can think of is closet case, they didn’t want people to





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know. But [name] got on that speaker’s bureau, or whatever you call it, and we went out, like we
travelled all across Canada and he told them his story on HIV and how people were dying and
how First Nations people were affected by it and everything. I’m glad they had that. I don’t
know if it’s in existence anymore, but I think that’s really powerful for people to know because
even though they have medications for HIV and AIDS, there’s still like, people contacting it
everyday—you know there’s, I don’t think it’ll ever end. They say there’s a miracle drug, but I
don’t believe them

RA: How many years of the speaker bureau did you do?

JB: I think—I didn’t do it myself, but I was involved in it like, okay, say my partner who will be
here, he was on that for, I don’t know – if I can just speculate, maybe ten years. He went all
across Canada – well, he went all as far the other side of Canada. What’s that place called? Nova
Scotia. He went over there and so he did a lot of extensive travelling. And we went to as many
HIV conference as we could. You know, being on a limited disability, we couldn’t go to
everywhere. Like, I wish I could’ve went to like Africa or Austria or whatever just to hear the
different treatments and stuff, but I’m poor. But I would’ve like to have. I’d be even more
knowledgeable. And I think I have a lot of knowledge about HIV and AIDS. And we did a lot of
studies, like this here, we did a lot of them. We had doctor – I don’t know if you know Doctor
Suzuki? What’s his name? The Japanese—

RA: David Suzuki?

JB: Yeah, he came to one of our conferences. We had a conference every year too, where we
invited like big guest speakers and stuff, for Healing Our Spirits, and we had David Suzuki come
the year before it shut down. And he’d—I said, “Well, how are you?” Because he didn’t
remember I met him up in Haida Gwaii – his daughter’s married to a Haida, so I had met him
when I come up there to save South Moresby. And he went, “Wow,” and I was telling him all the
people up there and he knew them. But that was good thing too, because it brought all the First
Nations together when they used to have those conferences. We had them everywhere: Victoria,
Kamloops, Merritt.

RA: Is there anybody in particular who you think can learn something from your experience? So,
it’s not just knowing what you went through, which is preserving your part in this history, but
it’s also maybe helping make a difference in some way, and I’m just wondering if there’s
anybody you think might learn some sort of lessons from this?

JB: I think nowadays, it’s the youth that need more, they need more knowledge and – how can I
put it? They need more – if it’s the same way as it was when we were growing up, there was
nothing. And I’m thinking the Port youth nowadays, they’ve gotta be training for them or
someone to speak to them. Because I can remember when we used to go to different reserves –
oh, I did attend a couple with my partner, like when we went to Edmonton, we did a school, and
they were just fascinated and they really enjoyed it. Like, we just told them the truth, like how
you gotta be careful and use condoms, and you can get it from a needle, just like, you can get it
from, like you said, blood transfusions. It was amazing how a lot of the younger generation were





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really open-minded to it, and I think that’s what they need nowadays. I don’t think there’s
enough really.

RA: Okay. Anything else you might want to add?

JB: I’m grateful you guys listened to my story, that’s about all.

BK: We’re very grateful that you shared it with us.

RA: Thank you very much.

JB: Thank you, guys.