Listening to the Stories of the Land

We went for a walk on Hallowe’en evening through the streets of our little town.  Kids don’t come to our house at the end of a long dark driveway and I wanted to experience some of the excitement of the event.  Some of our neighbours go to great lengths with multiple blow up Hallowe’en ghosts, witches, pumpkins and other scary creatures.  One house played scary music and sounds through a loud speaker.  The kids had to walk past a fake cemetery to get to the front door.  We saw cute little unicorns, princesses, ninja’s and some costumes that we couldn’t identify.  It was cold and a little rainy but that didn’t dampen the spirits of children who rushed from house to house with pillowcases and bags growing heavier with each visit.  The parents seemed to move together in a group and so we joined them and laughed at the antics. Our feet crunched the acorns that covered the sidewalk by the park with the Red Oaks and the fallen Maple leaves swirled in the occasional gusts of wind.

Sharon Blackie

It got me thinking about where Hallowe’en comes from.  The date, is the ancient Celtic New Year of Samhain (pronounced Saw-when) which was around October 31^st.  According to Celtic scholar, Sharon Blackie , it was a time for honouring the ancestors.  It was at this time that the Celts believed that the veil between this world and the Other world became thin.  For Blackie, Samhain is above all a Trickster time, a time when surprises happen to invite a shift, transformation and growth.  I had been listening to a podcast in which she discussed this with Welsh teacher Angharad Wynne.  In their conversation, they discussed how the Christianization of the British Isles had tried to make the old ways and knowledge disappear.  

Angharad Wynne

Over the years, the gods of the land became smaller and were turned into leprechauns and elves.  The goddesses of the land became fairies, while the old wise women were demonized and turned into witches.  But even after a few thousand years I could still see the remnants of the ancient festival all around me.

And so, it seemed timely or maybe just coincidental that later in the night of Hallowe’en, a mighty wind swept through our town, as well as in many other places.  We awoke dark and early the next morning to the sound of a roaring wind in the tall trees.  The power was out and I got ready for work in the dark, had a cold breakfast and headed out to the city.  Driving through the blackened town, my headlights illuminated leaves billowing and scuttling madly down the road in front of me.  As soon as I got on the highway, I discovered driven snow, the kind that looks like a Star Wars movie in your high beams.  However, I was the only car on the road and I took my time.  After a while, other cars joined me and we made our way to Barrie, where I got on a GO train to the city where it was merely raining lightly.

When I returned home that night, the power was still out and my partner was making supper on the camp stove in the workshop.  He informed me that one of our docks has come loose in the storm and was now floating beside the rock and wood crib that it used to sit upon.  It is cold and now November, so wading in the water is no longer an option.  Disaster!

After a quiet night with the gas fire, candles and playing our instruments we went to bed.  The hydro crews were outside with flashing lights, still trying to get the power back.  Our next door neighbour’s generator was loud and it’s unfamiliar groaning made it was hard to sleep.

The power returned sometime in the middle of the night.  It was pretty exciting to have power again after 24 hours.  Good news!  The wind had died down.  The sun was up.  We had to decide how to story this event.  Was it a disaster?  What if instead, we said that the North Wind and the West Wind got together and decided to blow out the old, making space for the new.  The cedars had shed their rusty brown needles and the maples were bare of leaves now.  What if the wind had something to teach us? 

After a hot breakfast and coffee, we went down to our dock to survey the changes.  I almost wrote damage, but decided against using that word.  A big Manitoba Maple had fallen down across the right of way so we had to go through our neighbour’s yard to get to our property.  The rebel part of the dock was chained to a tree in it’s new position thanks to my partner’s efforts the day before.  The water had risen so high that it had flooded my garden.  This garden is designed to look like a giant turtle.  It seemed that the turtle had had a chance to swim!  The water had receded but the garden was now covered in organic matter.  It seems like the lake has mulched my garden for the winter.  There were logs and bits of wood all over the garden.  I stacked the wood against the shed and cleaned up the big stuff.  I will clear whatever doesn't decay, in the spring.

I suggested that we bring our creativity to this situation.  After talking through a variety of solutions, we have decided to pull the dock apart and stack the wood against the shed.  In the spring as nature bursts into life, we will decide what to create with this lumber. Being creative always makes us feel good.  In fact, my partner already has some new ideas.

The interesting thing about our dock is that it was built on the stone and wood cribs that used to support a boat house.  We repaired and built docks on top of them about five years ago.  Last year we had two storms that moved the other side of the dock.  After the second storm, we pulled it all apart and rebuilt it to be stronger.  That side held firm in this storm.  The side of the dock that moved was not damaged last year.  Pre-emptively, this year, we added another layer to the dock and a heavy wooden shade structure.  We thought that the added weight would prevent it from floating away.  But not so.

It reminded me of the structures that are in place in this country.  Many of them are very colonial.  Rather than changing them, we just build more structures on top of the old ones thinking that that will work.  Perhaps, they too need to be dismantled and rebuilt using creativity.

Later that day, we walked along the shoreline.  The properties that face west had been subjected to much more force during the storm.  Some old boathouses had been pummeled into lumber.  Quite a number of boats had washed in from across the bay.  Lumber, styrofoam and plastic things were everywhere.  We realized that we had gotten off easy.  My partner noticed that things built in straight lines had been damaged while only a few trees had come down.  The areas of the shoreline that were covered in trees did very well.  However, in one spot, the Township had cleared the trees, put in paving stones and a bench to provide a nice look out and a set of stairs to get down to the water’s edge.  The wind and the waves had eroded a major portion of the shoreline here.  The stairs lay in pieces and the paving stones were no longer totally supported by the ground.  What a difference the trees make to shoreline stabilization. 

So, if we were to see the winds as evil, malicious and out to get us, we would tell the story of man made structures being attacked and destroyed by Nature.  What if we listen with different ears?  What if we tell the story that the North Wind, or maybe it was the West wind, or maybe a marriage of the two, brought in a new energy, brought in the next season.  They shook all the dead leaves and needles from the trees back to Earth where they will return to the soil.  They gave energy to the water which rose and crashed, showing all the weak spots in the human’s designs and hubris.  Just as the leaves will return to their basic elements, so our dock will be dismantled into boards and screws.  We will store them under a tarp and in the spring, just as the season changes again, we will rebuild our dock and make it stronger and more beautiful than before. 

It could have been so much worse.  Our dock could have floated out into the lake and become someone else’s dock, but somehow it simply moved to the right and nestled into a new place where we can still access it.

In listening to the land, a story emerges of returning to the elements, a story of us as creative and able to respond to change.  To return the old dock to its crib would mean big machines or many men freezing in the water.  There is no need to disturb the lake bottom or risk making people sick.  It is only a dock.  We made it and we can unmake it and remake it.  The land is our teacher.  She reminds us who we are.

People like Sharon Blackie and Angharad Wynne are researching the old ways from Celtic and Welsh history.  They say that for most of time, the people there knew how to live on the land and it is for a relatively short period of time that this has been lost.  Wynne feels that we have stretched our relationship with the land so far that it will now snap or it will pull us back. People are looking for their connection to the land and to their own centres and to all beings. 

Beth Brant, A Generous Spirit

Both Blackie and Wynne believe that the land holds the stories and tells them to those who know how to listen.  They are once again listening to the land of the British Isles.  Here in Ontario where I live, the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people have been listening for thousands of years and they have a rich tradition of sacred stories.  When I hear some of these stories that they share, they inform me about how to live on this land.  Tragically, though, the European colonization of the land we now call Canada took almost everything from these First Peoples; land, children, culture, health, language.  The stories and traditions they have protected are theirs to tell and share.  Mohawk writer, Beth Brant writes in A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant that non-Indigenous people should access something that comes from their own DNA rather than appropriating the stories of the First Peoples.

And so when I learn about my own pre-Christian ancestors from the British Isles and their connection to the land and the water, I wonder what does live in my DNA.  Do I have the ability to listen to the land for the stories that need to be heard at this time in history?  Or will I continue to impose old Christian concepts to this place. 

Tomson Highway

Cree playwright and musician, Tomson Highway, in his talk, Comparisons of Mythologies, points out that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all come from desert countries.  These religions have travelled all over the world taking the stories that came out of a desert.  The Romans adopted these stories and made Christianity a state religion.  So, when they colonized my ancestors, they brought those stories and tried to have them overtake the old ones.  And yet they persist.  On Hallowe’en or Samhain, I saw them on the streets of my town, here in Ontario.  Despite thousands of years of effort, we still celebrate this festival, albeit in an unconscious way.

As we walked back home from our survey of the “changes”, the light rain falling on our raincoats and hoods, we heard an old familiar sound.  Sandhill cranes!  If you don't know what they sound like, just take a moment to listen here:

 Throwing our hoods off and craning our necks, we searched the sky and were rewarded by the sight of about eighty of them flying high in a series of V’s.  Their long legs trailing behind and their long wings gracefully flapping, they called to each other as they headed south.  Yes, it is time to do that.  We only see the cranes if we are lucky as they migrate through in the spring and the fall, so sightings are special treats.
   

In looking for a video to show you, I  learned that these wet land birds are adaptable, communicative, and that they dance!  They teach us how to adapt, communicate and celebrate life.  If we had stayed with the old story of Nature being against us, we could well have missed the call of these beautiful birds and all that they had to teach us.   In fact, a man very close by, did miss them he burned debris.  So. here is the video I found made by two people who are passionate about Sandhill Cranes.  Our sighting felt like a big gift to us and I want to share that gift with you.

It is the Time

photo credit: Mother Earth News

It was the time of the year

When the blackbirds       flocked;

Red-winged, Rusty, Brewers, Grackles, Starlings, Cowbirds.

Gone were the   competitions

And rivalries of mating,

Nesting, laying, feeding,   and fledging.

Now they gathered as one.

Standing on the trail by   

  the marsh,

They flew over our upturned faces.

photo credit: Amazon.com

Thousands and thousands

Heading to their night roosts.

Each little bird flapped furiously,

While the flock as a whole

Was a slow graceful wave

That undulated over the trees.

It was the time of the year

When the wild grapes hung     suspended,

Dark purple orbs beckoning

From vines that treeclimbed high.

We picked them by the hundreds into   buckets,

Collected the juice to make jelly.

Our fingers becoming purple red

photo credit: Nature Hills.com

As the Red Oak leaves did the same.

It was the time of the year

When the aspens turned yellow

And yellowy brown and

A dozen hues in between.

  

We stood mesmerized

As their trembling thousands

Became shimmering gold

In the breeze, at sunset.

It was at this same time of year

That people started to flock in the   millions.

Students, children, parents, seniors

In parks, on bridges, by roadsides.

Gone were the petty squabbles

Over differences real and imagined.

The threat of climate change

Bound the individuals together.

 

Locations of the Friday for Future protests
Fridays for Future

There was something in these flocks

A sense of hope, the empowerment    of youth,

Relief from fear and paralysis.

A graceful wave undulating beneath    the trees.

Across the Earth people listened to     the land

And renewed their relationships

With ALL their relations.

It is that kind of time.

And here is a nice little video showing the flocking of blackbirds in case you've never seen them:

Call of the Forest

Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees Is a beautiful feature length film featuring the work of Diana Beresford-Kroeger.  She is a “world recognized author, medical biochemist and botanist” who was born in Ireland and was tutored in the Celtic knowledge of trees and plants by her family.  Beresford-Kroeger blends these two knowledge systems throughout the film, as she visits forests around the world and those who are planting and protecting them.

From Japan, where we view the tiniest urban forest in the midst of Tokyo, to Japanese forest bathing which has been practiced for a thousand years, she takes us to her farm in Ontario where she has been creating a living library of tree genetics for over forty years.  With her, we visit Vancouver Island and California, home to the mighty Redwoods as well as Pimachiowin Aki an  PIC area in Manitoba protected by Indigenous people who are working to have the area protected as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. 

Pimachiowin Aki from UNESCO Biosphere website

We visit Ireland where most of the trees were cut down by the British to conquer the people of that land.  It was said that the Irish would not be conquered until there were no leaves left as their understanding of life was based on the wisdom and knowledge of the forest.  For this reason, Beresford-Kroeger says that an intact forest is a mighty act of peace.

Beresford-Kroeger explains the chemistry of the medicinal aerosols that trees emit in the forest as well as the links between the health of the forest and the health of the oceans.  If the trees disappear, then so will the fish.  Japan is now planting “fishermen’s forests” after deforestation led to the disappearance of ocean fish.  “The chain is invisible until the chain is broken,” she says. 

Beresford-Kroeger also takes us to the great Boreal Forest which grows around the north pole and which represents 30% of the world’s forest.  Expansion of the Alberta tar sands threatens this forest.  All we need to do is protect the Boreal Forest, she states.

Narrated by Gordon Pinsent, the film introduces us to passionate forest protectors around the globe as well as how trees can mitigate the effects of climate change.  And the viewer meets ancient and enormous trees as well as young ones.  By the end of the film, Beresford-Kroeger sums it up simply.  Planting trees can change the climate and her calculations reveal that if every person on earth planted one tree a year for six years, that would make a difference.  Since we can’t all plant trees, some of us will have to plant trees for those who can’t and some of us can fund people who are planting trees.  

And beyond this, she wants people to develop a different relationship to nature.  She is not the only voice saying this at this time in history.  But she is adding a rich, intelligent and passionate voice to the growing choir.

Does this sound too simple?  Well judge for yourself.  You can check out the trailer here: 

Or watch the film in its entirety here: 

You can view her plan here.  As well as committing to planting one native tree per year for the next six years, she also suggests the following:

• Encourage your friends and neighbours to plant native trees
• Protect the trees in your neighbourhood
• Protect the native forests in your community by getting involved and writing letters to your government representatives 
• Help keep the Boreal Forest intact

So watch the film and decide what you will do.  I guarantee that she will inspire you.

Sharing The Weight

I recently viewed this version of The Weight, the famous song by The Band in celebration of the song’s 50^th anniversary.  Playing for Change is well known for getting musicians all over the world to play the song “together” through the magic of technology.  This version starts with Ringo Starr from the Beatles phoning up Robbie Robertson from The Band to ask him what key the song is in.  Since Ringo is a drummer, the key is of course of no significance and the humour of this “call” sets the stage for a lovely collaboration of musicians from near and far as they celebrate the song together.

Watching this video made me feel happy.  Watching people collaborate and create together makes me happy.  This is what people all over the world are doing every day.  The fact that all this good news doesn’t make it onto the official “news” broadcasts does not make it less true.  So enjoy this video.  I hope it makes you feel happy too.

Ancient Wisdom Rising

“I like your earrings!” said the older woman sitting at the café table.  We frequently meet Dolly when we go for Saturday morning breakfast at the Village Mercantile. We always stop to chat with her as people do in a small town.  Once a general store, this large building now houses vintage and antique furniture, hardware for the cottagers and a café along the front beside the huge old fashioned windows.  We are two of the regulars for weekend breakfasts.

The earrings in question are large aluminum cut outs of sea turtles.  I bought them from a non-profit organization that had a booth at a festival this summer.  They were made by people in Nicaragua who are re-purposing things that would otherwise be garbage, as a way to support their children.  I suspect my earrings are made from a pop can.  They are light and shiny and people notice them.  They remind me of my daughter who spent part of a holiday in Costa Rica and Nicaragua volunteering at a sea turtle protection group.  She spent the days picking up plastic garbage from the beach and the nights patrolling the beach to protect nesting sea turtles from poachers.  The earrings have stories attached to them, stories of people rising from poverty, stories of cleaning up and re-purposing garbage, and stories of protection. Those stories go with me as I go about my days.

Jade turtle bracelet

Brenda, one of the owners of the Village Mercantile, heard our conversation.  “I have something upstairs to show you,” she said.  A few minutes later she placed a bracelet on the table.  It was made from eight tiny turtles carved from jade.  A thick lace went through them all so that they were nose to tail.  The bodies were about the size of the end of my thumb.  They looked just like the baby snapping turtles that we had seen a few weeks earlier.

The trail that we walk on every evening is a perfect spot for Snapping and Map turtles to nest in.  Since it runs along Georgian Bay, the turtles come out in June, climb up to the trail and dig holes in the substrate that is alongside the trail.  A local man started a group called Kids for Turtles a few years back.  If anyone notices a turtle digging a nest and laying eggs, this organization will come out when they are notified, to place a “cage” over the nest.  This wire protection is secured with deep tent pegs to prevent predators such as skunks and raccoons from digging up the eggs and eating them.

Newly hatched Snapping Turtles climb over the Kids for Turtles nest protector

We have seen quite a number of these cages along the trail all summer.  But a few weeks ago, we noticed that there was a baby snapping turtle sitting on top of one of these cages.  Then we spied another and another emerging from the earth.  They climbed up the side of the cage, scrambled over the top and went down the other side on their way to the water.  It was pretty exciting to see them hatching and setting off on their lives.  And the line of turtles was just like the bracelet. 

Detail of bracelet

Brenda gave me the bracelet because we like turtles so much and of course we showed her pictures on our camera of the baby hatchlings.  I hung the bracelet on the kitchen wall to remind us of the hatching that we witnessed.  It will help us to remember the gift of being there just at the right moment to witness the miraculous event.

As I looked at the bracelet, it also reminded me of Thomas King’s 2003 CBC Massey Lecture entitled The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative.  He begins the five lecture series this way: “There is a story I know.  It’s about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle.”  Once, he says, a storyteller telling this story was asked by a young girl what was beneath the turtle.  The storyteller replied, well, another turtle.  The girl wanted to know how many turtles there were. “No one knows for sure, he told her, but it’s turtles all the way down.”  As I look at the eight turtles hanging on my kitchen wall, I hear Thomas King’s deep voice, “It’s turtles all the way down.”

You can read the story or listen to it on the youtube link above.  Thomas King is a wonderful storyteller.  He tells the creation story involving Sky Woman being helped by the animals to make her home on the back of a turtle which is why North America is also called Turtle Island.  King compares this creation story to the one found in Genesis in which God creates everything in the world and at the end of all of this, God creates a man and then a woman.  He then gives them “dominion” over everything else.  In the story of Sky Woman, the animals make it possible for her to exist.  The relationship of dependency is clear.  In the Genesis story, the relationship is interpreted to be a hierarchical one with the people at the top.

Well, my ancestors have certainly taken the “dominion over” idea to the extreme.  The creation story that underlies how business is done here in North America has led to taking as much as is possible from the Earth and giving back very little.  If this was a relationship between two humans, we would call this an abusive relationship and we would advise the victim to leave.  King explains that the creation story of Sky Woman and the turtle is one in which the humans remember that they are dependent on all the other life forms.  After all, that Turtle could just swim away.

Ancient Wisdom by Paul Shilling

Anishinaabeg artist Paul Shilling

painted a beautiful picture of a turtle which he called Ancient Wisdom.  We have a print of it in both of our offices and one at home as well.  It is beautiful and hopeful as the turtle swims up to the surface of the water, or perhaps the turtle is hatching from the earth, or floating in space.  See what you think.  The ancient wisdom of the First Peoples on Turtle Island, this land that we now call North America is one based on a creation story in which people are part of life, not dominate over it.  And that ancient Wisdom is rising.

This past Sunday, while riding our bicycles on the trail, my partner suddenly screeched to a dusty stop.  There near his front tire was a tiny newly hatched snapping turtle walking along the trail.  It needed to get to water soon, so my partner picked it up and put it in the grass pointing to Matchedash Bay.  A brand new turtle starting it’s life here on Turtle Island.  We wished it well. 

A little further down the trail, we found the nest.  It was obvious because egg shells littered the disturbed gravel.  One little egg shell had a dead turtle inside that hadn’t managed to find it’s way out.  It’s not easy being a turtle.  They are preyed on by all sorts of animals and we humans don’t make it any easier with our roads and boats.  However, people seem to be catching on to their importance.  More turtles than ever before were brought to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre in Peterborough for medical help this year.

I wonder how much further this experiment in domination has to go before we listen to the ancient wisdom of this land.   Perhaps we are already remembering our relatives the turtles and are renewing that ancient relationship.  Perhaps deep within us, in our DNA, we are remembering who we are and our place in the world.  Remember the creation story about the turtle and the wisdom embedded in the story.  Let it work in you.   Let it grow, just like the little turtles will.  See what it grows into. We can change the story we are telling.  Thomas King's famous words remind us of that:  "The truth about stories is that's all we are."

Kissing the Earth with Your Feet

Re-envisioning What it Means to be Canadian

Daniel Heath Justice

“We have to re-envision what it is to be Canadian,” said Daniel Heath Justice.  This Indigenous author and UBC professor of First Nations and Indigenous Literature was participating at the 3^rd Gathering: Festival of First Nations Stories.  The Festival was organized by the Orillia Centre for Arts and Culture in the town of Midland.  The Festival included Indigenous authors visiting and presenting at local schools, the Midland Native Friendship Centre, the Midland Cultural Centre, Public Library and Huronia Museum.  Playwright and musician Tomson Highway performed his music with two other artists, Songs in the Key of Cree on the Friday night.  

And on the Saturday, six authors and two artists shared their work, held dialogues and answered questions.

I had read Daniel Heath Justice’s book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter which taught me a great deal and so I was listening carefully to what he had to say.   Justice explained that Indigenous authors give context to the individual stories that we hear.  This context explains how people got to where they are.  If you don’t know the context, he explained, then problems appear to be a “problem of being”, not a problem that emerged from within a context.  That then, skews the solutions offered.

Daniel Heath Justice and Alicia Elliott at Gathering in the Midland Cultural Centre theatre (from OCAC facebook page)

Alongside him was author Alicia Elliott.  I had read her book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground earlier this year and found that this young writer has a courageous voice as she tells her story.  She weaves her own story with well thought out and clear contexts for how Indigenous people got to where they are now and the part that the Canadian governments and non-Indigenous people play in that context.  In her dialogue with Justice, she commented that although so many of the problems that are experienced today by Indigenous people were caused by colonialism, the solutions offered up by non-Indigenous people are often also colonial.  She gave the example of the problems experienced on reserves such as the absence of clean drinking water.  The solution offered up by some is simply for Indigenous people to move to the city which comes from a colonial mind set. This is instead of addressing the inequity of communities on either side of her reserve in Southern Ontario having clean drinking water while her community which has a water treatment facility, lacks the infrastructure to deliver this water to people's homes.

Cherie Dimaline holding The Marrow Thieves

Later in the day, Cherie Dimaline author of The Marrow Thieves which has won many prestigious awards spoke of her connection to the land near Midland.  Her Métis  family ended up in this area after being evicted from their land in the Red River Valley and then Drummond Island.  

Dimaline told the audience that she wrote The Marrow Thieves as a love letter to Two Spirit Indigenous Youth who are dying by suicide at an alarming rate.  I read this book last summer and couldn’t put it down.  During her presentation, Dimaline told the story of working with Indigenous communities whose land would be used for a cross Canada pipeline (that never got built).  Her job was to collect the stories of these communities and present them to the people who give permission for such projects.  She found that the communities that had become more "Christianized" were more likely to agree to having a pipeline than communities that retained traditional ways and connection to the land.  The traditional communities had sacred areas on the land whereas the more Christianized ones had churches.  Just as Daniel Heath Justice had said earlier, this Indigenous author was adding context for the audience.

Listening carefully to these and the other authors, I learned so much about the context of Indigenous lives as well as the connections to colonial thinking.  Chair of the Orillia Cente for Arts and Culture, Fred Larsen, thanked the authors for their work many times.  He stated that these and other Indigenous authors have been “doing the heavy lifting,” explaining our own history to us and telling their stories.  “It’s time for us to do more of that heavy lifting,” he said to the non-Indigenous people in the audience.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard an older white man say that to an audience before and I was heartened by his words.

Returning to the words of Daniel Heath Justice, “We have to re-envision what it is to be Canadian,” I looked up the word envision. The Cambridge on-line dictionary defines envision as “to imagine or expect that something is a likely or desirable possibility in the future.”  So perhaps re-envision is to let go of what we were imagining or expecting the future will look like and imagine something else.  Justice said that this re-envisioning includes how we relate to the land, our histories and our shared experiences.  He went on to explain that when Indigenous communities flourish, it’s good for everyone.  Justice cited the example of a Cherokee community in the US that is doing well and is providing health care for themselves as well as for the non-Indigenous people in the area.  However, when corporations do well, it isn’t necessarily true that it is good for everyone, especially when they relocate to make higher profits.

Justice explained that Indigenous futurist writing is important because those authors are imagining a world in which Indigenous people not only do well, but also lead the way in survival.  Quite a few of the authors I listened to at the festival explained that Indigenous people in Canada have already survived an apocalypse, in which their land, homes, language, culture, children, and health were taken away.  Who better to teach us about resilience and survival?  In a world which is in trouble due to a lack of respect for the land and the climate, Indigenous writers offer a worldview that holds part of the solution.  Einstein is often quoted as saying that problems can’t be solved with the same mindset that created them. 

In re-envisioning what it is to be Canadian, we have this profound resource of thoughtful Indigenous writers with diverse voices.  They are giving us the context and more of the history than we have been taught, to understand how we all got here.  They are telling the stories of what their lives are like now within that context and they are giving us a different idea of what the future could look like. Cherie Dimaline told us that The Marrow Thieves has replaced To Kill a Mockingbird in many Canadian classrooms.  It is also in production as a NetFlix series. These stories will help our youth to envision a different future.

There is a reason that conquerors and dictators kill the artists and destroy their work right at the beginning of a take over. Art has a power to convey meaning, give us courage and help us imagine a future that is different from the one that the usurpers seek.  That’s what makes it dangerous to dictators.  That’s what makes it critical for us.  It is fairly easy to buy or borrow a book by an Indigenous author and read it.  It is a little harder to open up your worldview to allow another story to enter into it.  I believe that it is a sign of intelligence to be able to take that new information and find a place for it within you, let that story work with you, become a part of that story, and imagine a new one.

Politics on TV is not the only story.  It is just a loud and repetitive one that celebrates bad behaviour with extreme attention.  There are so many other stories out there waiting to be heard, waiting to do their work and helping us all to imagine a better future.  

After absorbing the voices of the authors and artists all day, my partner and I went for a walk in the late evening, down by the lake, under the stars.  We stopped to look at all of the constellations in their magnificence.  They were so beautiful and their groupings created for us constellations that all have stories from thousands of years ago.  I felt humbled and immensely grateful in their presence.  And then I realized something.  This was the exact same feeling that I felt at the Gathering.