After three days of late February snowfall, we walked down
to the lake to shovel off our dock. The
sidewalks had been plowed so walking was easy.
We passed a neighbour’s house and saw her blue box knocked sideways and
semi-buried in the snow. I stopped to
pull it out just as she came out of her house with her dog and we spoke a few
words before she got into her car. Once
at the end of the road, we trudged through the unplowed portion of the driveway
to our little property on Georgian Bay.
Each taking a shovel, we pushed and lifted the snow off of our U-shaped
dock onto the ice. It had been windy
during the storm and the ice had risen quite a bit so that the snow piled onto
it was actually higher than the dock itself.
Warmed by our work, we took a few minutes to sit down and
survey the frozen landscape of ice and rock and snow. One snowmobiler whizzed past in the distance but
otherwise all was still. We could hear a
few birds twittering nearby, maybe a nuthatch but something else as well that
we couldn’t identify.
Suddenly a beautiful
robin landed on a tree beside us. It
hopped onto the Mountain Ash, Rowan tree and gobbled up a few of the remaining
berries. Then it sat high in the tree
and surveyed the same view as we did. We
kept our eyes on it, thrilled to see this harbinger of spring amidst the snow
and happy that our tree was providing food for it since the worms were buried
safely in the earth. Eventually, it
hopped down and ate more berries. Its
feathers were fluffed out to keep it warm longer than we featherless creatures could. We trudged back up the hill to the fireplace inside the house. But our hearts were warmed by the sight of
the robin.
Two weeks ago, I was in my happy place, the local
library. I was in a section I had never
been in looking for an audio book on Basic Ojibway. My partner and I have been learning this
language, now called Anishinaabemowin from an enthusiastic student of the
language in a nearby town. On the end of
a row of books, was a display of books chosen by the librarians. One grabbed my attention because on its cover
was a bright painting in the Woodland Style of Indigenous art. Reading the back, I was excited to discover
that this was by a retired history professor from the University of Ottawa who is a member of the Wendat First Nation, Georges Sioui. I live on the Wendat’s ancestral territory and
have been trying to learn their story for a number of years now.
As Sioui states in Eatenonha: Native Roots in Modern
Democracy, “Once situated at the very heart of northeastern North America,
our Wendat Nation was, because of the Europeans’ arrival, one of the most severely
depopulated on our continent. Having
numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 at the time of contact, our Nation (we were,
in fact, a confederacy of five nations) has now been reduced to a few thousand
descendants who live on or claim affiliation to two Reserves;: one in Canada,
close to Quebec City, named Village-des-Hurons (now renamed Wendake) and the
other, situated in northeastern Oklahoma, named Wyandotte.” (p. 24)
Sioui, who was the first Indigenous person to earn a Ph. D.
in history in Canada, describes how “by the time the Europeans arrived in their
midst, the Wendat had created the most extensive, influential, prosperous, and
virtually war-free civilization of trade anywhere in the northern part of the
continent.” (p.11) Through the study of
original documents and oral history, Sioui describes the positive aspects of
Wendat culture that can inform modern day Canada and provide solutions for the
crises that we are now involved in.
 |
| Éléonore Sioui |
Sioui references his mother, Éléonore Sioui who was the
first Indigenous person in Canada to earn a Ph. D. in Indigenous Philosophy. “My mother," he writes, "like many sages,
believed and said that as long as man uses force to place himself at the centre
of all his man-made world and its organizations, the only result to be expected
is abuse, strife, dysfunction, violence, and degradation of the natural forces
that give and sustain life in all its forms.” (p. 71) And again, “…the most central tenet in her
philosophy: that for any healing to be possible, the woman must return to the
central place she once occupied in our nations.” (p. 71)
He goes on to describe the idea of matriotism as opposed to
patriotism. Sioui describes “matriotism”
in which the “first loyalty of humans should rest with our common Mother Earth.”
(p. 90). The title of the book, Eatenonha means Mother Earth. Matriotism is based on “our
Wendat’s Indigenous thinking that our whole ability to live in balance, as
humans, depends on our being conscious that it is our Mother Earth who sustains
us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.” (p. 91) He therefore, sees his culture as “matriocentric”
(Earth-based) whereas mainstream socio-political and religious systems are
patriarchal and patricentric. Sioui then goes on to describe ideas on “how to create true,
inclusive circular (and Mother-centred) democracy. (p. 92)
You can hear Georges Sioui speak about matriotism in this youtube video:
In Canada, we are in the midst of a time when some
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are standing up as land defenders. Sioui sheds light on this based on a
matriocentric worldview when he writes, “Indigenous people resist in the name
of all the beings that are wantonly destroyed at every moment of every day: the
forests and their inhabitants, the water, the air, the rocks, the people –
especially the women, the children, the marginalized in society, the homeless,
the artists, other creators, and so many people who have ended up in the jails
for motives often invalid and unjust.” (p. 102)
By describing the circular thinking of a matriocentric worldview, in
which women are at the centre of society, bringing nurturing and life-giving,
new hope is offered to create an inclusive democracy.
This made me reflect on our government’s response to
Indigenous land defending which I think could be accurately described as
patriotic. Éléonore Sioui's words seems
to apply to the forced installation of pipelines in the territories of land
defenders: “abuse, strife, dysfunction, violence, and degradation of the
natural forces that give and sustain life in all its forms”.
Sioui wrote this
book as a gift to the world which he sees is in need of help at this time. Like the robin on the snow covered tree, Sioui is a
harbinger of a new season in our shared history and a bright voice of our new
story.
Georges Sioui (2019) Eatenonha: Native Roots of Modern
Democracy. Montrreal & Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press.
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