The first snow of the season fell this weekend and the wind
was too high to want to be outside, so we headed to town to a “Victorian
Christmas” in the Recreation Centre. I’m
not sure what made it Victorian, but the hall was filled with vendors selling
artwork, sweets and crafts that might become Christmas presents. I walked along the aisles slowing down to
look at the work of so many people until I came to a booth with a stuffed toy
giraffe, African looking cards and bright hats.
The sign read “Home Free”. 
The woman at the booth explained to me that she was raising
money for this group that helps to fund families in Uganda. She went on to explain that the group tries
to get children out of orphanages and back with their own family members who
need financial help to raise the children or to foster families. This woman, Linda, makes hats and sells them
to raise money for Home-Free. She had travelled
to Uganda this past year and met many of the families and the women that Thrive
Uganda which is a part of Home Free supports with micro loans.
Linda explained to me that eight women here in Canada
support five Ugandan women who are the staff of Home Free who are supporting
roughly four thousand Ugandans. So, of
course I bought a hat – a bright multicoloured cotton hat for gardening. How wonderful to be a part of this program funded
by women, staffed by women, to help women take care of children. I saw the irony in the fact that this “Victorian
Christmas” sale that was somehow linked to Queen Victoria, Empress of so many
colonized countries was where I met one woman, Linda, who was seeking to undo
some of the harm that was done by the colonizers. It seemed an odd place to have a Decolonizing
experience or maybe it wasn’t.
The next day, there was more snow on the ground, but the
wind had died down and the sun was peeking out.
Suddenly, the world looked bright and new and much friendlier than the
previous day. We headed back to town to
the Midland Farmer’s Market at the Huronia Museum. Much to our surprise, there was also an art
exhibition being held in the hall that is the winter home to the Farmer’s
Market. It was called Rekindling Voices. This exhibition
celebrates Indigenous culture and included the work of seven local
artists.
Curated by Paul Whittam (Negik), this powerful group of paintings was displayed
on the walls of the hall. In front of
them were the market vendors. We had to
excuse ourselves to go behind their displays to read the plaques describing the
pieces and then step back into the centre of the hall to see the paintings from
a distance. One plaque describes how all
these artists are “storytellers in their own way.” Each one was “selected for a light that
shines through their artwork into the hearts and minds of people willing to
accept the resilience and inextinguishable fire of our collective peoples.” The paintings told their stories beautifully. We could see the light that shone through the
artwork as they told their stories of resilience.
It wasn’t until we were finished spending time with the art
that we turned our attention to buying food.
The powerful art juxtaposed with the buying and selling of food seemed somehow symbolic of the society that we live in. The inextinguishable fire of
the paintings telling the Indigenous stories surrounded the settler farmers who
appeared to be oblivious to the beauty behind them. This was yet another decolonizing
experience that made us think about how our stories are interconnected.
This past week I was aIso reading Richard Wagamese’s last book, Starlight which was published posthumously. It is a lovely narrative about a man who
lives so close to the land that it fills him up. In the novel, he teaches a woman who has escaped
from an abusive relationship and her young daughter how to be on the land. With this narrative in my head, we stopped at
the Wye Marsh to walk in the forest after our Farmers Market experience.
The first snow in the forest is like coming home for
us. The familiar creak of boots on the packing
snow, the snowflakes gently floating down through the trees, the beauty of the
snow accentuating the shape of the spruce boughs and … the hungry
chickadees. We always carry sunflower
seeds in our pockets at this time of year for these bold little birds. No sooner had we entered the forest than the
familiar chick-a-dee-dee-dee could be heard.
I held out my hand with sunflower seeds in my palm and a chickadee quickly
landed on it, took a seed, looked me in the eye and fluttered off. I kept walking for a bit and then stopped on
a bridge to look at the creek burbling below.
The chickadee swooped past me and landed in a cedar tree inches from
me. I extended my open (and sunflower
seeded) palm through the boughs of the tree to the bird. It hopped the last four inches onto my hand
and fed once again.
As we continued down the path, this same bird swooped in
front of us to get our attention and then landed on a tree. We took turns feeding our hungry little
friend in the dance of swoop, hand out, feed, walk, swoop, hand out, feed,
walk. After a while, more chickadees
joined our friend and then the antics began.
At times, two chickadees at a time would try to land on my hand and then
little feathered squabbles erupted. At
one point they were all in the trees eating their seeds and I held my hand out
waiting. Snowflakes gently landed on my
palm and melted. I might have said that
the chickadees weighed no more than a snowflake, but upon comparison with an actual
snowflake, I could not say that that was true.
My hand was home to snowflakes, sunflower seeds and chickadees. My hand was home.
My partner put seeds on the top of my winter hat and I
stood still in the forest as the birds landed on my head to eat. I could hear the whirring of their feathers
as they flew in and feel their little wiry feet through the wool. I imagined that I was a tree and birds were
landing on my branches. I felt myself sway
like a tree in the wind and imagined roots buried deep in the forest
floor. I felt like a character in one of
Richard Wagamese’s books. I felt at home
there on the land. This land is not a
commodity for me to buy and sell. It is
not full of resources to extract. It is
not something to take from. It is my
home and I am part of it. Perhaps this was
another decolonizing moment.
All these moments of becoming conscious of colonial
thinking, of listening to the voices of Indigenous people through story, art, and
music, of connecting to the land are for me decolonizing moments. All
these moments are creating a new way of thinking and being here on this land
that we now call Canada. These moments
are writing this new story.
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