The Gifts of the Ancestors

 

I wrote this story to tell at a storytelling circle in April 2023.  The guest storyteller, Lori Oschefski told the story of the British Home Children.  Between 1869 and 1948, 100,000 poor children were forced to emigrate to Canada because they were orphans or their parents were too poor to keep them.

My parents emigrated from England to Canada in the 1950’s and I was, as far as I can tell, the first person in our family to be born on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.  My parents and their parents before them were born in the Northwest of England, in Greater Manchester, specifically, the town of Oldham.  There is evidence of people living on that land for the past seven to ten thousand years.  Neolithic, Roman, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon people lived there but it was the Danes or Vikings that established a permanent hamlet there from 865 and called it Aldehulme which means a “high place”. 

Indeed, Oldham as the hamlet later became known, in the historic county of Lancashire, is situated on the west side of the Pennine Hills which form the “backbone of England”.  Since the land is rocky and hilly, it wasn’t very good for growing crops.  However, it was excellent for raising sheep and the area became known for wool spinning and weaving.  That was, until the Industrial Revolution.  It turned out that Oldham also had coal deep beneath it that was good for running the machines of the Industrial Revolution and the wet climate was excellent for working with textiles.  Oldham went from being a small hamlet to an urban centre with 400 cotton mills over the period of one hundred years.

In the 1800’s people were being forced off of the land by rich landlords and into the industrial towns.  Some of my great grandparents and many of my great great grandparents moved to Oldham from Ireland, Yorkshire and the south of England around that time no doubt as part of that rural to urban migration. In Oldham, the new spinning and weaving machines put the people who had worked in cottage industries out of work.  At first, the mills hired only women and children over the age of 4 to work in the mills.  They could pay them less than men and the increased productivity led to even larger profits. They began importing cotton from India and cotton that was grown by enslaved people in America.  During times of economic recession, there was huge urban unemployment and poverty.

In medieval times, the poor were taken care of by the monasteries but after 1536 when Henry VIII destroyed them there was a gap.  By the end of his daughter Queen Elizabeth I’s life in 1601 there was a huge problem and the government enacted the Poor Law under which aid was given at the parish level. This worked for about two hundred years.  However, with the influx of people into the towns and cities during the Industrial Revolution this system broke down.  And so, in 1834, the Poor Law was amended but not for the betterment of the poor.  Instead, poor houses were constructed that were so horrible that only the more destitute of people would accept that fate.  This attitude towards the poor was probably part of the decision to send poor children to Canada and elsewhere as “Home Children”.

During the Industrial Revolution, Lancashire was known for revolts, trade unions and people fighting for more equity.  They didn’t just accept that this was their lot in life.  My great uncle Stirling Marron was a counsellor, alderman and for a time, mayor of Oldham. Once the National Health Service was established in 1948, he fought to have the mentally ill taken care of under the NHS instead of under the Poor Law.  By 1959 this was achieved.

When I think of the strengths that my ancestors have passed down to me, one of them is this working towards a more equitable society.  That runs very strongly in me.  As I learn about what my ancestors had to live through, I can see that they have also passed resiliency down to me.  I also connect to the work of spinning and weaving through my love of working with textiles and the through the metaphor of weaving together people in community, or the weaving of ideas.  I also learned that I come from a line of Lancashire storytellers and that form of expression feels very natural to me.

 I recently decided to listen to an audio book on the History of Britain by Simon Schama.  The combined three volumes took 55 hours of listening. The history of Britain is a history of power-over hierarchy in which the monarchy, the churches and the governments battle endlessly for power and fund these battles through sucking wealth up from those at the bottom of the pyramid. It is a history of systematically creating poverty.   And that story didn’t change when they came to North America.  It was the same old, same old.  Take the land you want, kill or starve those who were already there and force assimilation on them.  The story is at least two thousand years old.  And so, my ancestors couldn’t teach me how to live here on Turtle Island in a good way.  They had no idea how to do that.

Instead, it has been the ancestors of the people Indigenous to Turtle Island who are teaching me how to live in a good way, on this land.  I hear their voices in the Elders and Knowledge Keepers, in the voices of Indigenous authors and in the voices of the children who are being found in unmarked graves on the sites of former Residential Schools.  They are sharing their worldview and ways of knowing and they are my teachers. They remind me that the earth and the water and all of life is sacred.  They teach me about a worldview in which all of life is interconnected and valuable without a hierarchy.

And so, it seems that only by putting together the gifts that my ancestors from the UK have passed down to me with the gifts of the Indigenous ancestors on this land can I learn to live here in a good way, working for more equity, weaving a worldview that has room for everyone and telling a new story.

 

Two-Eyed Seeing: The Best of Both Worldviews

 

Two-Eyed Seeing developed from the teachings of Chief Charles Labrador of Acadia First Nation.  Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall (Eskasoni First Nation) was the first to apply the concept of Two-Eyed Seeing in a Western setting. According to authors C. Bartlett, M. Marshall and A. Marshall, two-eyed seeing “refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together for the benefit of all.”  They go on to explain that Elder Albert Marshall stresses that Two-Eyed Seeing requires groups to weave through both ways of knowing as one might be more applicable in certain situations.

The Institute for Integrative Science and Health  had Two-Eyed Seeing or Etuaptmumk in the Mi’kmaw language as it’s Guiding Principle since Elder Albert Marshall introduced it there in 2004. In a video on the institute website, founder, Dr. Cheryl Bartlett explains that Western science pulls patterns apart to understand them and find the mechanisms by which they work.  Indigenous science, rather than picking things apart, looks at patterns within patterns and a weaving of yourself and your understanding into the world in which you live.

I have been hearing more people talk about Two-Eyed Seeing and I thought that I’d share some of those examples from my experience.  The first one comes from the land where I now live on the edge of Georgian Bay in the community of Wauabuashene.  The first reserve set up by the government in what is now known as Canada was the Coldwater Narrows Reserve. Part of this reserve was in Waubaushene.  It was created to gather the Anishinaabeg in what is now known as Simcoe County onto a reserve to allegedly keep them safe from the influx of European settlers into the area.  The Anishinaabeg who were traditionally hunters, fishers and gatherers who moved from region to region during the seasons to access the food they needed, were told by the government that they had to clear the land of trees, farm in a European way and stay on this reserve.  The Anishinaabeg learned how to do this with very little help from the government.  In fact they got so good at it that the government forced them off of the land after six years to give it to the settlers.  I recently heard a local Anishinaabeg Elder, John Rice, explain that this was an early example of Two-Eyed Seeing.  The Anishinaabeg learned how to farm in the Western way while maintaining their own Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing.

The second example comes from the CBC Ideas Massey Lectures 2022, in which Cree author and musician Tomson Highway explained that when the Cree moved off of the reserves into Western society, they had to go from a circular worldview to a linear worldview.  This would be another example of Two-Eyed Seeing that Indigenous Peoples have had to adopt in order to survive the dominant Western culture.

A third example is our Community Garden in which we are using both Indigenous and Western ways of gardening.  The garden is circular as opposed to the rectangular shape of Western garden with long straight rows. The shape is symbolic of a circular worldview.  It also allows us to use some of the principles of permaculture which has been developed by non-Indigenous people who are influenced by carefully observing nature.  In the Community Garden, we have the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) in the centre of the garden.  This is based on a traditional Indigenous way of growing these three vegetables together.  The corn provides a stalk to support the pole beans and the squash covers the ground with prickly leaves that keeps away predators.  Together, these three vegetables provide complete proteins, carbohydrates and vitamins and can sustain people for long periods of time.  The story of the Three Sisters can be heardhere. 

Western scientific knowledge tells us that the beans have nodules on their roots that contain a bacteria that can absorb nitrogen from the air.  In this symbiotic relationship, the beans provide the bacteria with carbohydrates and once the plant dies, the nodules open and release the nitrogen into the soil.  Corn is a high protein plant that needs lots of nitrogen to grow well.  While corn provides a stalk for beans to grow on, the beans through their relationship with the bacteria, provide the nitrogen that the corn needs.  The squash’s leafy cover, prevents evaporation of moisture from the soil, thus helping all three plants to have enough water.

Understanding from a relational point of view as well as the Western view of pulling things apart gives us a fuller understanding of the Three Sisters.  It has been found that when planted together, there is a 30% increase in yield as opposed to planting them separately.  In the Western way of knowing we call this companion planting. In the Indigenous way of knowing, we have a teaching story about sisters.  These two ways of knowing are a good example of Two-Eyed Seeing.

With Two-Eyed Seeing, a person doesn’t have to give up their own worldview. Instead, they just have to realize that there are many points of view and make space within themselves to entertain another point of view.  It is the best of both worlds kind of approach that just seems to make sense especially when we are facing so many challenges in the world today.

Another example of Two-Eyed Seeing from the Community Garden is how we share the food.  In a traditional Western community garden, each person has their own little plot.  They can grow whatever they want and the food is all theirs.  I know that people in these kinds of gardens do share what they don’t need with each other and sometimes help each other with watering.  In a traditional Indigenous way of knowing, all the food is shared with everyone in the community. And so, at our Community Garden, we decided to take that approach and share the food with whoever wanted it or needed it.  People were encouraged to stop by and pick something for their supper. At times we took ripe produce to various people in the community and it was shared through the library as well.  Some was used for food at community events.  Visitors to the park were invited to come and pick something for their lunch.  Kids were really excited to do that.  This worldview took some people by surprise but almost everyone was happy to take part.

I have been studying Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) for the past four years.  It is challenging to learn but also intriguing as the culture is embedded in the language.  Speaking the language requires using my mouth and throat in a different way and so I am embodying the culture as I do so. It is a softer language than English and does not use inflection to add meaning.  It is also highly descriptive and based on observation.  From an Indigenous way of knowing, this is the language that emerged from the land where I live.  When I speak it, I feel an added closeness to the land, water and other life forms that I share this space with.

If Indigenous Peoples who moved from reserves into cities had to go from a circular worldview, to a linear one, then perhaps I can learn to understand a circular one.  I have been experimenting with this for a number of years and it is challenging.  The old “time-line” in which birth is at one end and death at the other, is firmly embedded and embodied in me.  However, I keep on trying.  One way to do this is to think of the seasons as going around a circle so that there is no beginning and no end.  That is fairly easy.  What about the life-line of events from birth to death?  In this case, the past can seem very far away and impossible to access and heal traumas from that time.  If I think of time in a circular or cyclical way, then, the past is never too far away.  In fact, I may bump into the traumas from that past from time to time.  I can access them more easily and perhaps digest and heal from them as well.

My parents were immigrants to Canada from England and although they spoke the same language as Canadians, they had a different accent, used different words and phrases and had different customs and foods.  As a child, I was sent out to discover what Canadians did for certain holidays, to understand customs.  So, from an early age, I knew that there was more than one way of doing things.  I wove between English and Canadian culture quite easily.  Working in health care in the cosmopolitan city of Toronto, I met people from many countries and cultures.  I learned how to weave there as well.  And so, I suppose, for me, Two-Eyed Seeing seems natural and obvious.  I just can’t believe that other non-Indigenous Peoples aren’t up for the task of learning to weave these two knowledges as well. In fact, I believe that we can do what it takes to solve all the problems we are facing through collaboration.

My vision of Canada in the future is one in which Two-Eyed Seeing is applied in schools, in medicine, in government, in land management and in communities. I believe that seeing through the lens of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing can open up a wealth of sustainable practices and ways of renewing our relationship with the land, waters, animals, insects, fish, birds, rocks, trees and plants.

  References

Bartlett C, Marshall M, Marshall A. Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together Indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. J Environ Stud Sci 2012;2:331-340.

 

Of Crows and Men: A Spring Story

 

The crows had already gathered on the disintegrating lake ice of early April.  There must have been at least two dozen of them all together.  Enough to be called a murder. They seemed to just be standing around.  Occasionally, one would dip its beak down to the ice, maybe having a drink of cool refreshing water – a kind of crow water cooler event perhaps – sharing news, telling stories.

 We could see them from our perch on the hill above the beach sitting on a sun-warmed park bench, our legs outstretched on an ottoman of hard drift-packed snow.  In Anishinaabemowin, a crow is called aandeg.  Aan refers to a change that has occurred and dekaa refers to the cold.  According to Joseph Pitawanakwat, when crows play together in springtime, it is a sign that the season has changed. 

In English, the crows are plotting a murder while in Anishinaabemowin, they are enjoying the joys of spring. The presence of the crows gathered out on the early spring ice could have been understood either way if one was paying attention. As we watched the crows, it occurred to me that their presence would provide a wonderful foreshadowing image for the start of a story.

There was little wind and the early evening sun still cast some rays of warmth that our dark clothes soaked up.  From our vantage point we could see some open water close to the mouth of Duck Bay where there was a current going into the larger body of water called Sturgeon Bay.  My partner commented on how peaceful it was sitting there with none of the machines that are frequently heard here in Waubaushene.  Machines such as snowmobiles, snowblowers, leafblowers, chainsaws, wood chippers, lawnmowers, dirt bikes and motorized boats to say nothing of the sound from the major highway that passes by the edge of the village on its way to Toronto.

As soon as he finished speaking, as if by way of foreshadowing, we heard the distant whine of an engine from the shoreline to the south.  The engine sound got louder and we both realized that it was the sound of a snowmobile – on the ice.  Every year, snowmobilers go through the ice around this time of the year and so it is hard to understand why people would continue this practice.  Alcohol may have had something to do with these decisions or so it is said.

Two snowmobiles came into view from the south as they headed straight for the beach along the shoreline. I held my breath even though the ice seemed to be holding up the two machines.  Once they got to the beach, one of the men made a ninety degree turn away from the shore so that he was heading towards the deeper part of the bay.  He gunned the engine repeatedly and travelled about a hundred feet.  Once again, I held my breath and searched for my phone.

“He’s in,” said my partner as we watched the snowmobile break through the thin ice and sink into the water.  I got my phone out, prepared to call for help but the driver stood up and the water was only to his chest.  The snowmobile was vertical and sticking out of the ice.  The other driver stopped his machine and walked over to the hole as the downed driver, soaking wet by now, clambered onto the ice.  The two men talked for a bit and then tried to pull the vertical snowmobile onto the ice.  Predictably, they both broke through and ended up in the frigid lake water once again.  I still had my phone in my hand but other people had gathered at the top of the hill at that point and one woman called 911 for help.  A pair of crows flew overhead surveying the scene.

Then the two men got on the still functioning snowmobile and drove away back down the shoreline in the direction from which they had come.  The people who had gathered on the land, left as well.  We could see the crows still out on the ice safely enjoying their gathering.  If the men on the snowmobiles had understood that the crows’ behaviour was signalling a change of season, they could have avoided this unfortunate event.  No need for the crows to plot a murder with humans acting in ways that could result in disaster.

Once again, we were alone at the beach.  We waited for the rescuers so that they would know that there was no one in the water.  Two firetrucks with six volunteer firefighters, two police officers in separate cars, a rescue truck with two divers in dry suits and a drone operator plus one ambulance filled the parking lot with flashing lights and sirens.  I’ll bet that got the attention of the crows who like such shiny things.  Perhaps they thought we were having a spring celebration as they were.

We spoke to the first firefighter and told him the story.  We walked him along the long concrete pier so that he could see where the snowmobile had broken through the ice.  The rescuers were happy that no one had lost their life and they good naturedly went along with the business of having two divers verify that there was no body and that there was indeed a snowmobile under the water.

After a while, one of the snowmobilers came back.  He spoke rudely to the rescuers and when asked to speak to the police officer, he sped back down the bay.  The rescuers didn’t seem bothered by this.  Instead, they sent a drone up to follow his tracks and make sure that he hadn’t broken through the ice anywhere else.  This was not their first experience of drunken snowmobilers getting into trouble or so they said.

More villagers gathered at the pier, telling stories of near misses on the lake on snowmobiles, of calling for an ambulance and only getting a cop because the dispatcher thought it was a prank call.  It was spring after all and many of us hadn’t seen each other in months.  We heard the news of a neighbour in a care facility, of a trip to Florida, and of a new baby in the village whose father coincidentally was one of the volunteer firefighters at the scene.  Every now and then a big laugh would erupt from the group of rescuers at the end of the pier.  “What would a group of rescuers be called?” I wondered.  A relief of rescuers, a response of rescuers?

Eventually, one of the police officers came and took our details as we were witnesses to the event.  We told our story one more time. Some of the villagers made sure to thank the rescuers for their service.  And then, the rescuers walked back to their respective rescue vehicles and made their way back up the hill and out of town.  A few villagers lingered on the park benches and we told the story one more time.

The crows were still out on the ice doing whatever it was that they were doing.  Did they wonder what all the flashing lights, people in funny gear and laughter was about.  Perhaps we are as much a mystery to them as they are to us.  Being a light bird who can fly makes standing on the early spring ice quite safe.  They know what they are doing.  Driving a heavy machine onto the same ice while probably under the influence of some substance is not safe.  Those men did not know what they were doing. 

But as one police officer said, “No one died,” despite the murder of crows and the choices of the men.  The machine will get pulled out of the lake by more rescuers.  People got something to watch and so did the crows.  Relationships were renewed and the feeling of spring buoyed everyone’s spirits. Perhaps some lessons were learned by the men on the snowmobiles, perhaps not. It was not a new story for the village but a seasonal one that was nevertheless told and retold for days to come. Perhaps even the crows told one another about the excitement out on the spring ice.

 

 

The Humility of Coming Down to Earth

 

I recently attended an art exhibition with the theme of Humility.  Anishinaabeg artist Paul Shilling working with the Orillia District Arts Council and three other artists from diverse cultural backgrounds has created seven events on each of the Seven Grandfather Teachings of the Anishinaabeg called A Visual Reconciliation.   These teachings are (in no particular order) Courage, Humility, Truth, Wisdom, Love, Honesty and Respect. 

At the event, the four artists, Ted Fullerton, Julie Tian, Xavier Fernandes and Paul Shilling each spoke about the pieces of art they had created just for this event which focused on Humility.  Then there was space for questions and later a time to mingle and have discussions.  I have older ears and the sound system wasn’t as good as it could be in the gallery space so I missed some of what was said.  However, I did hear some of the questions from the audience and that is what stuck out for me.

Some non-Indigenous participants seemed to be having difficulty with the word humility.  A few spoke about not wanting to “lower themselves” and some explained that they had a strong connection between the words “humility” and “humiliation” and so they had trouble embracing this Grandfather teaching.  Artist Xavier Fernandes said that humility is “not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.”  Some members of the audience hoped that the word humility in Anishinaabemowin wouldn’t mean to lower oneself. 

I came home and did some research.  In the Nishnaabemwin on-line dictionary https://dictionary.nishnaabemwin.atlas-ling.ca/#/help the verb dbasebdiza is defined as “to be humble, think lowly of oneself. From this root comes the word Dabasendizowin or Humility.  On the program for the event, Humility was described in this way: “This teaching brings home that you are a sacred part of creation and allows you to carry your pride with your people and praise the accomplishments of all.  Humility will teach you to find a balance within yourself for all creation.”

I looked up the English word humility in several on-line dictionaries and found the definition “to be humble”.  So I looked up humble and found that it is derived from the Latin word humus meaning ground which later became humilis  which meant low or lowly.  This became humble in Middle English.

The word humiliation is defined as “to make someone feel ashamed or lose respect for himself or herself.”  Perhaps this is an enforced humbling at the hands of another.  No wonder people have an aversion to the word humiliation, I thought.

I pondered these words looking for a way to reconcile these varied points of view that emerged from our shared space.  I frequently describe the dominant worldview of competition and hierarchy by making the shape of a pyramid with my hands.  In this worldview, one is supposed to climb to the top of the pyramid through hard work and seemingly any means available including pushing others down to find space at the tiny top.  In this worldview, “lowering oneself” is a kind of social suicide.  You’ll never get ahead this way in this paradigm.

However, in an Indigenous worldview the interconnectedness of all of life requires a different set of actions.  The Anishinaabeg definition on the event program speaks of “praising the accomplishments of all.”  Instead of climbing on top of people, you are lifting them up.

In the worldview of the pyramid, one gets farther and farther away from the Earth and other life forms, the higher one climbs.  One is less guided by all our other relations that we share Earth with.  So, humility could mean coming back to Earth in order to achieve balance.  Being knocked off the top could be humiliating.  Choosing to lower oneself back to the ground would be humility.

The monotheistic religions speak of God giving man dominion over the Earth and everything on it.  This creates an automatic pyramid.  This basic worldview was then extended to humans in which some humans are higher than others.  Colonization was born from this worldview.  And we all know how this worldview of “dominion over” is threatening life itself.  It is a kind of suicide.

Realizing that we come from the Earth, we are a part of the Earth and coming back to Earth is an act of humility.  Working from our place within the vast interconnectedness of life and sharing our gifts there is also humility.  The predominant pyramid worldview is not sustainable.  We are waking up to that.  The generous sharing of the Grandfather Teachings is a lifeline to us.  It is a model of sustainability that leads to life.

At the event, I observed people engaging and wrestling with worldviews.  I came home and did the same.  Perhaps this is what turning from death to life looks like.

Cosmic Ash Bridges the Circles of Existence

 

Once upon a time, the Ash trees used to tower over the Oaks in the lands of the Celts. They were Fraxinus excelsior or European Ash.  In many European cultures, the Cosmic Ash was a World Tree.  The Norse legends talked about Yggdrasil, the tree of Odin which spans the Universe.  The roots of Yggdrasil were in the underworld, the trunk was in the Earthly realm and the branches supported the heavens. Ash was the bridge that connected them.

 For the Celts, Ash was a Chieftain tree and in the Ogham script, it represented Nuin or the letter N and was the tree of what we now think of as the month of March.   “In Celtic cosmology in particular, Ash connects the three circles of existence – Abred, Gwynedd and Ceugant … or past, present and future.” (Liz and Colin Murray, p. 32)   Once again, Ash provides a bridge or a pathway that connects what appears to be separate.

The Teutons had great reverence for the Ash tree and after the Germanic tribes entered Britain, the Ash replaced the Birch as the maypole and became a symbol of the sun and the phallus of the god round which the “sacred dance of life takes place.” (Jaqueline Memory Paterson, p. 158)

Ash wood is strong and flexible.  Both the words Ash and Fraxinus come from words meaning spear as Ash wood was used for this purpose. Ash wood is also good for making tools, handles, furniture, sports equipment, walking sticks, oars, gates and wheel rims. I’ve seen it used for the gunwales of canoes.  Ash was known as a tree that provided protection and so in Wales and Ireland, all oars and coracle slats were made of Ash to protect those who used them from drowning.  The Vikings made their ships from Oak except for the magical, protective parts which were made of Ash.  The wassail bowl which the Druids used to toast apple trees and the traditional Yule log at the Winter Solstice were both from the wood of the Ash.

Each Ash tree has both the male stamens and female seed vessels.  Once fertilized by wind or insects, the seed vessels form long “keys” that eventually flutter to the ground.  They are called keys because they hang in clumps that resemble key chains.  I like to imagine what these keys may unlock as Ash supports the continuous flow of energy and information between various levels of existence.  As Ash allows us to access these levels within ourselves perhaps the keys unlock hidden rooms and treasure chests.

I was recently listening to Thomas Hubl (https://thomashuebl.com/ ) speak in the Ancestral Healing Journey course that I am taking on-line.  His words made me think of the Cosmic Ash.  Hubl spoke about resourcing ourselves from below, from the Earth and from our ancestors.  He also spoke about resourcing ourselves all around us from the people around us and from the ”we space” of groups that gather for collective healing.  And he spoke of resourcing ourselves from the inspiration and energy that comes from above that seemingly lands in us. 

Beaded Cosmic Ash with the Ogham script for Nuin and three keys

I could picture the Cosmic Ash while he spoke.  I could imagine Ash providing the bridge that I can travel on when I move into the territory of my ancestors to feel into their stories and the trauma that they couldn’t integrate as well as feeling into their resilience.  Ash can provide a pathway for me to bring this information, this wisdom into the present.  Ash can support me as I feel the emotions that were too much for my ancestors and as I digest and integrate this information.  The branches of Ash can act like antennae for inspiration that lands and travels into my body where I can add it to the wisdom from below and take the story further.

Can the Cosmic Ash also help me to understand the Ash Dieback and Emerald Ash Borer insect that is currently resulting in the death of Ash trees?  Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) is a fungus from Asia that was introduced to Britain about 30 years ago.  Since the European Ash did not evolve alongside this fungus, it is resulting in the death of about 80% of the Ash trees in Britain.  The fungus doesn’t cause much damage to the Manchurian Ash and the Chinese Ash which evolved alongside it.  The Emerald Ash Borer is an insect native to northeastern Asia.  It was introduced to North America and Europe.  The females lay their eggs in the deep crevices of Ash bark and the larvae feed underneath the bark which eventually kills the trees.

Dead White Ash trees are being cut down at the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre

In Southern Ontario where I live, I have been noticing large stands of White Ash that are dead.  In managed forests, these dead trees have been cut down before they fall down and potentially injure humans.  I wasn’t aware of how much of the forest was Ash until I saw them all lying on the forest floor like broken bones.  Our modern ways of travelling, importing plants and climate change, just to give a few examples are being felt by the Ash trees.  Ash used to be thought of as an axis mundi, a stable point around which the world revolved.  Perhaps, we have lost the connection to nature which acts as our plumb line, our axis and things are flying out of control.  Perhaps the Ash are pointing the way still, as they lie scattered across the forest floors.  The compass needle is spinning as we try to find our way.

I didn't realize how much of the forest was made up of Ash trees until they were cut down.

In believing that we are separate from nature instead of being nature, we have made catastrophic decisions based on the idea of unlimited growth.  The Ash lying around us say that this is not the road to wellbeing.  As I listen to scientists plead for us to wake up, I notice that they get very close to using the word sacred.  But, there is the church/state divide yawning before them like a deep gully.  Scientists are supposed to use only the language of science, not the language of spirituality.  How can they find a bridge across this gap?

This is where, I believe, the ancient wisdom of the Indigenous Peoples of these lands can provide the bridge.  This wisdom remembers that the Earth is sacred and that it should be treated as such.  There is no divide between Indigenous science and spirituality.  They haven’t lost the bridge that non-Indigenous peoples have.  Perhaps for those of us of Celtic ancestry, Ash can provide a bridge between the wisdom of our ancestors and the present moment. Perhaps, honouring those Ash trees that are still living, is a way to connect science and spirituality within ourselves. 

I am imagining the fallen Ash trees that I see, reconfiguring to create bridges over the gullies and gaps, providing us a pathway to find our way back to balance.  I am imagining the Cosmic Ash as a teacher and guide in the work of ancestral healing.  And I am imagining the healing of these ancient traumas and the renewal of the forests.  I am can almost see the Ash trees towering once again.

 Bibliography:

Diana Beresford-Kroeger (2019) To Speak for the Trees. Random House: Canada.

Danu Forest (2014) Celtic Tree Magic: Ogham Lore and Druid Mysteries. Llewellyn Worldwide: Woodbury, Minnesota.

Glennie Kindred, (1997) The Tree Ogham. Glennie Kindred: UK.

Liz and Colin Murray (1988) The Celtic Tree Oracle. Connections Book Publishing: London, UK.

Jacqueline Memory Peterson (1996) Tree Wisdom: The definitive guidebook to the myth, folklore and healing power of Trees. Thorsons: London.

Elen Sentier (2014) Trees of the Goddess. Moon Books: Winchester, UK.

 

The First Day of March

 

My friend offered to drop off some food that she had been given but couldn’t use.  I gratefully accepted but didn’t want her to have to negotiate our difficult driveway and turn around spot.  We agreed that once she was setting off she would call me and I would go out to meet her at the road.

Today is sunny and the temperature is hovering around freezing. It is a gentle day with little wind.  And, it is the first day of March.  It is the kind of day when I believe that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of winter.  I have tried to appreciate each day of winter for what it is and there have been times when I was content with the dark cloudy days and early nights.  But, now it is March.

As I headed out to the road, I noticed tracks in the snow going from our driveway into the park next door.  They had a the kind of tire tread look of  porcupine tracks but they weren’t wide enough.  They probably were made by the groundhog that lives under our shed, I reasoned, out for an amble in the park.  There is still lots of snow but it is collapsing with the warm temperatures.

As I stood on the sidewalk waiting for my friend I gazed at the structure of our Community Garden.  The volunteers had our first zoom meeting this week and the enthusiasm is high.  Lots of ideas were shared and quickly turned into concrete plans for a Seed Swap, Plant Starting Activity for kids at the local library and the Planting Party in May.  As I stood by the garden today, it occurred to me that I should take down the red bows that we put up in December for Christmas.  I should take down the red hearts that I put up for Valentine’s Day.  The snow groundhog that we made has already melted and returned to the snowpack.  The solar coloured lights can probably stay up for a little bit longer.  We kept the garden seasonally decorated during the winter so that it still felt present to the community.

In another month, the snow will likely be gone and our group can meet outside to continue our dreaming and planning.  Earth Day is on a Saturday this year so we plan to have a Digging Day to turn over the manure, compost and straw that was piled on top of the soil in October.  Digging in the Earth for Earth Day seems like a perfect activity.

I have already started some seeds that are slow growers.  I check on the delicate little plants each morning as a gentle entry into gardening season. Other members have plans to start Kale, Pumpkin, Beans and Squash when we get closer to May.  It’s like we are stretching our gardening muscles as we come out of a kind of hibernation.

We got a bit of Maple sap from a few trees two weeks ago when we had a warm spell. I drank a bit of it each day as a spring tonic until it was gone. Soon we will tap the other three trees and make maple syrup once the sap starts to flow again.

Although it could still snow and it will, there is a kind of relief from making it through another winter that seems to come from an ancestral sort of memory.  I was under no threat from cold or starvation and yet I feel grateful to have made it through.

I stood and let the sun shine on my face as I waited for my friend.  It felt good.  I felt at peace as I waited.  I felt grateful for the wonderful experiences we had at the community garden last year and I felt excited about all that we can create together in this coming year. I felt content in that moment.  My friend arrived and we stood and talked for a while.  I thanked her for the food that she was sharing.  This is what we do at the Community Garden, we grow and share food.  This feels ancestral to me, the sharing of food, looking out for one another and nurturing community.  While we seem to be hurtling into an uncertain future I also feel deeply connected to Earth and to the ancestral resiliency that is within me.  And from these places, creativity and new life grow and thrive.  This is what came to me as I stood on the sidewalk waiting, on this, the first day of March.

Untangling Knotted Threads

 

I have been quilting the blue fabric of the piece that I described last week – all the hearts cracking open to let medicinal plants grow from them.  I tend to cut fairly long threads to do such quilting as it’s just a running stitch that goes on and on.  Sometimes, I get little tangles with such a long thread and I patiently pull threads this way and that, using the needle tip to loosen knots that have mysteriously appeared.  I have lots of time and I tend to work away at these knots so that I don’t waste thread.

The other night, I cut an especially long thread.  I was pushing the boundaries I know, but if you never explore the edges, the liminal spaces, you never really know where they are.  After the first stitch, the long thread got really tangled.  I pulled threads this way and that.  I used the tip of the needle to try to pull apart the knots that had once again mysteriously appeared.  I brought the tangle under the light that I can adjust to shine right above my work.  As I get older, good lighting is essential.  But, even in that light, the knots resisted my efforts.  After a few minutes, I decided to cut my losses literally and I snipped off the knotted section.  The remaining piece was not very long and I quickly sewed it into the quilt.  You might say that this was an example of less haste more speed.  You might say that I had pushed the boundaries too far and should have stayed in the safe comfort zone.

But, that is not me.  I often find myself outside of my comfort zone spending time in liminal spaces.  Some call these zones, the learning zones.  If one keeps going then come the danger zones.  I try to stay out of the danger zones (on a good day) because they are hard on my nervous system and this is not a place where learning or creativity thrive.  However, in the learning zone, outside of the comfort zone is the place where learning and creativity do thrive.  What I did learned on this particular crossing out of the comfort zone was that it is not necessarily more efficient to have a too long thread.  It’s likelihood of tangling and the time spent untangling or in this case cutting it off result in less efficiency.  At least I know that now.

As I sew this piece which is meant to invite non-Indigenous people to open their hearts in relationship with Indigenous people so that healing can happen, I am learning from the piece.  For me, this is how creativity works.  An image or concept seemingly drops into my head as inspiration.  Then I start working out how to represent this in the 3D world.  I work in various media and so I never get to be an expert at any of them.  I often have to invent ways of physically creating the image that dropped in.  I don’t plan too far ahead.  Instead, I find a starting point and then figure it out as I go along.  In relationship with the piece and the inspiration, there are often surprises along the way.  For example, I am quilting the edge of the big green heart in repeating waves to the edge of the circle.  Originally, I thought that I would do waves that were one inch apart and make it very geometric.  Instead, what happened was that the waves got closer and closer together  as I got further away from the green heart.  The piece demanded this.  It was very insistent.  I had imagined the waves emanating from the big green heart.  Instead, it appeared that the waves were coming from outside of the circle, moving towards the heart as if love was coming from the universe to Earth, to us, to our hearts.  I can’t really explain this, it is what the piece is showing me. It could be the continuation of the original inspiration.  It is one of the surprises of working in this way – the piece, the relationship, this conversation, is informing me as it unfolds.

But, back to the knotted thread.  I have been reflecting on the idea of decolonizing – decolonizing my thinking, my actions, our collective actions, the actions of our governments, as I sew.  The image of the knots reminded me of the frozen, stuck energy that is running the show much of the time.  When the thread is tied up in knots, one can’t use it for anything else.  If the knots can be loosened and the thread untangled, then it can be used to create something new.  Sometimes, decolonizing our thinking is like picking away at knotted thread.  The “way things are” seems frozen, solid, and fixed.  Thomas Hubl would say that this frozen past is trauma and that only by liquifying the frozen past can we begin to digest and integrate it.  The image of untying knotted thread seems to describe this process as well.  Sometimes, one only gets one knot untied at any particular time.  And then that freed up thread is integrated into our collective life.

As I learn more about the history of my ancestors in the UK, I am met time and again with stories of scarcity, scarcity of food, land, money, clean air and water, opportunity, education and the list goes on.  I am beginning to see that many of the ancestors that came to Turtle Island brought these stories.  And we have inherited these traumas and buried them deep.  You could say that the threads of these stories are all knotted and solid.  It takes the slightest trigger for this fear of scarcity to go viral.  Think of the run on toilet paper in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.  I think we see this ancestral trauma of scarcity raise its head when it comes to the government spending money to meet its basic treaty obligations to Indigenous people in Canada.  Even as one of the most wealthy countries in the world, somehow, we “cannot afford” this extension of privilege to everyone.  That is a pretty solid knot.  It takes time and effort and good light to work at untangling the threads. Indigenous people are shining a bright light on these traumas.

We’ve tried just cutting off these knots, “the past” and “moving on” but it doesn’t seem to work as well as my sewing experience did.  Any unintegrated trauma will just keep going.  It will keep us spreading that trauma to the next generation and to everyone around us and we will not even be conscious that we are doing it.  However, more of us are becoming conscious of these traumas.  We are becoming conscious that there are so many of us carrying the same trauma.  Perhaps, if we shine a light on this and work together, we can collectively untie our collective trauma knots.  That would release a great deal of creative energy and those threads could be sewn into something new. That is part of the work ahead of us and it is work that only we can do.  There are more possibilities than just “the way that things are”.  We can sew these threads into a new story.