The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 36

BEVERLEY MITCHELL rj ift irt for her and him Imagination 's the limit sexy new book claims si Lighting fires II I I II I. I. ,11,. 1.1... I or ihc first time in many years, I can hardly wait for Halloween.

I'm excited because on this night 1 am going to don a rubber gorilla mask and a roomy raincoat and nothing else i I MS i 4 I -m 4 i Mary Two-Axe Earley can pause to reflect on the years she has spent championing the cause of native women. mm 1,, it, i ,4 GAZETTE. GORDON BECK and creep around to our back door and ring the bell. When my husband answers the door, I am going to leap out of the shadows, fling open my raincoat, yell "Trick or Treat!" and Light His Fire Well, that's what Ellen Kreidman says will happen. If he has a heart attack instead, 1 intend to sue.

Kreidman, a psychologist -educator who, perhaps fittingly, lives in El Toro (the Bull), Calif, is the founder of Light His Fire and Light Her Fire seminars. The six-week workshops, she claims, have taught thousands of men and women "how to keep your man (or woman) passionately and hopelessly in love with you." Now seeking a wider audience for her philosophy of love life, Kreidman has published companion books on the subject. Light His Fire is currently available in Canada (at least the copy nestled on my bedside table is). Sadly, Light Her Fire will not be out until February. It would have been perfect as a Christmas gift.

Would have been an ideal stocking-stuffer 1 certainly planned to stick a copy in my husband's Christmas stocking. And I strongly suspect thousands of other women would have followed my lead. I get this feeling because I first heard about both books while lounging at the local swimming pool with a group of women way back in August. One was desperately trying to find a copy of Light His Fire, having been assured by a friend of a friend of a friend that the advice contained in the book "really works!" Another of the group rolled her eyes: "I don't need any advice on turning him on! Let me know when Light Her Fire comes out. I'll give you the money and you send a copy to my husband at his office.

Please!" There was a veritable chorus of "Right ons!" perhaps because we were all of an age where we remembered Jim Morrison and the Doors emoting to "Come on baby, light my fire" and were feeling vaguely cheated at this stage of our lives. Anyway, for the time being, I've been digesting Kreidman's advice on romancing the stone, I mean my husband. I have covered the book in plain brown paper so he won't know what I am reading and will be completely surprised when I put what I am learning into action, beginning Halloween night. Depending on the reception that surprise receives, I may try other of her suggested gambits. In what is definitely the raciest chapter of the book, Kreidman lists "Fifty-One Ways to Keep His Fire Lit." Kreidman insists readers skip the ones that don't make them feel ridiculous.

"I want you to stretch to go beyond your normal limits," she says. "Surprise your mate. No. Shock Knock his socks off and don't forget to have fun." 'Love Hunt' has possibilities I must say, several appealed to me, beginning with No. 1.

"Love Hunt." In this one. you send a note to your husband at his office, telling him to leave work immediately and follow the enclosed instructions. They send him to a liquor store for champagne, a florist for flowers, a party supply store for a dozen "I Love You" balloons, a record store for a favorite tape and a restaurant where you are waiting. This isn't the end. After dinner you excuse yourself, but not before you slip him a note that tells him to wait 10 minutes and then meet you in a certain room of a certain hotel.

She doesn't specify what you do then. No. 14, entitled "Kidnap Him," sounds like a blast, though I don't know how my husband's partners would react to my walking into the office unannounced, brandishing a toy gun at him and placing toy handcuffs on his wrists before whisking him away for an "afternoon delight" (is that a new Ben Jerry's ice-cream SUSAN SCHWARTZ THE GAZETTE 'National treasure' Mary Two-Axe Earley gives natives' struggle to younger women first hearing Two-Axe Earley speak at a Secretary of State conference in the early 1970s. "I heard a voice: 'What are we older ones going to do when we die and can't be buried in the same burr ial ground as our parents and grandparents and we have to go out into the big white world and be buried she said. "Mary is a woman of such hori-esty and integrity, of values so deeply rooted.

She is one of the last Mohawk speakers on the To Parent, who met her at the founding convention of the National Action Committee in Toronto in 1972, Two-Axe Earley is a "very wise, very persistent, very patient and very strong woman who takes no insults from anyone." i Monique Simard, vice-president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, calls Two-Axe Early a "national treasure." "I always supported her and her struggle," she said. "She is not all that well-known and I was pleased when, during the 50th anniversary celebrations this year of women's right to vote in Quebec that we talked about her a lot. "The struggle is never easy. You need a lot of determination, courage and patience to be engaged in it. We can find inspiration in women like her.

She opened roads we are now taking." Sent to ceremony Over the years Two-Axe Early received many honors including the Ordre National du Quebec in 1985 and the Persons Award in 1979 for contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of women in Canada. i The one of which she is is proudest is the honorary Doctor of Laws degree she received in 1981 from York University. Rene Levesque, who was premier of Quebec at the time, sent her to the ceremony in Toronto aboard a government plane. And told her to take along 20 of her friends. "Levesque abhorred racism," Parent said.

"He was profoundly non-racist and showed it in his respect for native people. "I think he was embarrassed that a university outside Quebec was honoring this Mohawk Indian from Quebec and so he made the plane available," said Gordon, who had sent briefs to Levesque about the Indian Act. "Mary spoke at the convocation and she was fantastic." Of course, there are still problems for native women. Not enough money, for one, to enable more women to return to the reserves. The fact that local band councils have as much as discretion as they do about who they do and do not welcome back into the fold.

The fact that local band councils have been reluctant to confer native status on the children of native women married to non-natives, according to Michele Rouleau, president of the group Femmes Autochtones du Quebec. But Two-Axe Earley is tired. "Now I give the torch to younger women," she said, "to continue the fight." It's not exactly a household name, Mary Two-Axe Ear-ley. Yet she has done more to eliminate discrimination and injustice against native women than almost anyone in this country and earned a place in Canadian history books in the process. Along the way she has also earned the respect and admiration of such noted opinion shapers as labor-leader Monique Simard, veteran labor organizer Madeleine Parent, former federal politician David Crombie and Quebec's own Rene Levesque.

Yesterday was Two-Axe Earley's 79th birthday. Dozens of friends gathered in downtown Montreal last night to help her celebrate her life and her work work she did with wisdom and strength, work for which was nearly evicted from her home and shunned by those in the community who had a different idea of justice from hers. Under a law enacted during the term of Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, a native woman who married a non-native man lost her status as a native: She could not live on the reserve where she was born, could not own land, vote in band elections or be buried with her people. A native man who married a non-native woman, on the other hand, retained his legal status and all his rights as a native.

For more than 100 years, the law stayed like that. Then came Two-Axe Earley, a Mohawk who had grown up on the Kahnawake reserve on Montreal's South Shore and lost her native status when she married a non-native. With the support of other native and of non-native women, she worked tirelessly for more than 15 years to change the law crisscrossing the country attending conferences, educating women and lobbying governments. The fact that she was nearly 60 when she began the struggle gave her a measure of wisdom and patience a younger woman might not have had and makes her strength and persistence more remarkable. Men benefit She has said often that her struggle was not against other natives but against the government, which alone could repeal the statute, and that men the children of women who had lost their status as well as women stood to benefit.

When her husband died in 1969, Two-Axe Earley moved back to the home her grandfather built on Kahnawake, where she lives today with her daughter and her family. In 1975, while she was in Mexico City at an International Women's Year conference, she learned the Kahnawake band council had served her with an eviction notice, withdrawn only after much national and international pressure. When the Indian Act was finally amended in 1985, Two-Axe Earley was the first native woman in the Madeleine Parent, a long time labor organizer, Quebec's representative to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and a friend, supporter and admirer of Two-Axe Early. "They had to bring women down a peg in the community, and not have them be a bad example to white women, who had no right to vote," she said. Just how much native men listen to women today is open to debate.

Some observers of this summer's events say the men relied heavily on the women: Others say it was simply so much grandstanding. Two events in Two-Axe Earley's life galvanized her to action. One was her friend Florence's death. Officially, a heart attack killed her that morning as she lay on Two-Axe Earley's living room sofa in Brooklyn. Two-Axe Earley believes unequivocally, however, that the discrimination in the Indian Act was responsible: Florence was married to a Mohawk from another reserve.

Because he was from another reserve, she was asked to sell her house. Instead, he left the reserve and her. "It was her grief and her anger over that that generated all this energy. From that time on, Mary started organizing," said her friend Joan Gordon. Another powerful catalyst was the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

Two-Axe Earley wrote to Senator Therese Casgrain, an outspoken advocate of women's rights. She responded immediately, promised her support and urged Two-Axe Earley to submit a brief to the Royal Commission. Many reports It was the first of many reports and proposals she would submit to task forces, government ministers and royal commissions over the years. She would establish several native women's groups as well and their cause would be helped by non-native organizations primarily support from member groups of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and Voice of Women. Talk to women who know Two-Axe Earley and most met her at a conference or a convention, a place where she had a podium, an opportunity to speak she always, it seemed, used eloquently.

Justice advocate Gordon, a longtime friend, worker with Voice of Women and one of the people who planned last night's party, recalls country to regain her native status. "I could find no greater tribute to your long years of work than to let history record that you are the first person to have their rights restored under the new legislation," wrote David Crombie, who was then Minister of Indian Affairs. Friends at Voice of Women, an organization that works for peace and justice, organized last night's celebration, which took place at the Unitarian Church hall. Dozens of women from near and far, native and non-native, lauded Mary Two-Axe Earley with messages of love and gratitude. Still, it was bittersweet.

Ill health For one, she is feeling her years. She is plagued by ill health and she is often in a good deal of pain. She has arthritis and severe back and leg trouble, high blood pressure and glaucoma. She recently underwent cataract surgery and is still recovering from the death of a friend. Another thing: It has been a stressful summer for her.

Until last week Kahnawake was the site of a blockade and standoff that pitted not only natives against police officers and soldiers but, in some cases, neighbor against neighbor. The atmosphere during the 78-day armed standoff was tense, food supplies were short and she wondered how it would all end. Friends say that while Two-Axe Earley questioned the tactics used in the standoff, she believes without them it is unlikely that the concerns of the Mohawk people would be on the government agenda at all. Two-Axe Earley was 25 when she married Ed Earley, an engineer she'd met in New York, and settled in Brooklyn. In the process, she had lost her native status "Who thought about status? We were in love," she reminisced in an interview this week but as she busied herself raising two children, it was not a pressing issue in her life.

Besides, all this was before the women's movement. Women simply did not speak out. They were afraid to. Afraid of their men. The law had succeeded in what it had presumably set out to do: make outrageous the very notion of women demanding rights equal to those of men.

When the law was enacted, white women had no right to vote. Native women, moreover, had a lot of say in their community. They were respected and listened to and this did not really suit the Canadian parliament of the 1 9th century, explained flavor or Perhaps her No. 1 8 suggestion. "Play Ball," might be better.

In this scenario, if the man in your life played football in school, you make love to him on the football field; if he played basketball, you make love in the gym; if he was a spectator, you do it under the bleachers. My husband's best sport was hockey would centre ice at the Forum do the trick, I wonder. And how would the local police department react? Stsp-by-step instructions incomplete Maybe I'll just stick to No. 7, called "Forget Your Underwear." It seems less complicated, more private. With this one.

just before you enter the restaurant or your friend's house, you tell him you forgot to put on your panties. I don't know what happens then. Does it mean you miss out on a good dinner? Kreidman isn't writing this stuff off the top of her head. Aside from her combined degree in psychology and education, she has had a 22-year love affair with her husband. She has personally tried many of these techniques, some of them contributed by graduates of her courses who are now leading wildly sensual lives with husbands and significant others.

She also advocates the use of pet names like Tarzan and Rambo, flowery compliments along the lines of "Oh, at last I know what Michelangelo meant" on seeing him disrobe, and baby talk when you've been naughty and spent too much on a sexy negligee. Other chapters are more sober-minded because, as she points out, having a happy, passionate relationship with one's mate isn't all fun and games. Sometimes the games don't even work. My friend. Patsy, for instance, was a way ahead of her time when 20 years ago she decided to serve her husband dinner wearing only black lace panties.

He loved it but they were divorced a short time later because she refused to wear this ensemble every night. Her husband is now married to the topless waitress at the local brasserie. (in exhaustive search of major book stores in A font-real failed to turn up a single copy ot Light His Fire. However, interested readers can obtain the book, published by Random House of Canada, by ordering it through their load book store. It costs $24.50.).