The Yin-Yang of Life

You could see the hunger in the eyes of the Cree family, as they tried to muster dignity in welcoming me and (the late) Metis photographer Murray McKenzie into their home. They knew Murray, renowned regionally for his portraits of the elders in northern Manitoba’s First Nations and Metis communities.

The kitchen cupboards were visibly bare and, despite Murray’s joking overtures to make everyone feel comfortable, doing so was a challenge. I felt such deep shame about their circumstances that I wanted to crawl into one of the numerous cracks in the walls of the run down, fragile dwelling.

On a previous day, Murray had dropped me off at another home, similarly run down, with one exception, an old TV among its furnishings. Here, I found a Cree elder babysitting his pre-school grandson, both of them watching American pop singer Tina Turner hollering her heart out, on morning television.

The elder was highly respected for his politically active role as a chief of his community through many years, a role in which he did his best to protect the well being of his people. Now aged, he still was very articulate about health-threatening issues.

He quietly raised the question, for example, why the provincial government ever said the water from the river was safe to use. At the same time, he added, the government promised to deliver water, which never arrived. The construction of a large hydro project had flooded out the region, drowning thousands of animals upon which these Aboriginal people had depended, self-sufficient and healthy, to meet basic human needs. For that they felt gratitude and joy, celebrating life that included ‘all our relations’ through their cycles of ceremonies.

This elder then described the health problems among his people, who had no other choice but to drink, cook with, and bath in water contaminated by mercury. The children even broke out in sores after being bathed. The large hydro project in that region was one among several built across the Canadian north, to make life comfortable for southern Canadians.

In my northern travels 25 years ago from the Yukon to Nunavut (formerly Baffin Island), and most regions in between, similar scenarios of disrupted Aboriginal life on the land were happening as the results of various types of large-scale industrial projects that included uranium mining. Repeatedly, the lives of the Aboriginal people have been treated as dispensable.

Canada’s shame has been, and remains, the overlooked reality and human rights of our first peoples, particularly in the north, who still live in appalling circumstances – and reduced to them by collective, systemic neglect. (The name that I give it is cultural racism, which I will define more fully in my next blog.)

Our latest shame is Attawapiskat. Once again, as in occasional stories through decades, Aboriginal people make the headlines when a chronic, life-threatening situation dives to yet another unconscionable low point that garners the news media’s attention. The fur really flew – metaphorically speaking – in news coverage throughout December 2011 focused on the latest housing crisis in Attawapiskat, one of Ontario’s remote northern First Nation communities.

The news focus typically swung from First Nations as victims to First Nations as irresponsible in how they spend money in the classic ‘blaming the victim’ posture by Canada’s federal government. Yes, no human society is perfect, and some individuals in some communities have been known to misuse funds. That fact, however, does not reasonably, nor fairly, address the deeper issue of a seriously flawed colonial system.

Where do we find in depth information, from mainstream and Aboriginal perspectives, to try and understand what is a long-term, complex human drama? Regarding Attawapiskat per se, one well-researched background history up to this current crisis can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attawapiskat_First_Nation, with excellent references.

A very impressive piece of investigative journalism is a special comment feature reprinted in Canada’s National Post, titled “The real math behind Attawapiskat’s $90 million.” It is a real eye-opener, on how government spokespeople misrepresent financial facts. This excellent piece, unfortunately, was wrongly credited to Brett Hodnett. It actually was researched and written by Chelsea Vowel, a Plains Cree-speaking Metis woman in Montreal, on her blog at http://apihtawikosisan.wordpress.com – and the article went viral.

Becoming more accurately informed about Indigenous issues, therefore, whether in our own backyard or worldwide, requires an effort by each of us. The choice is ours. Today, the younger generations of Indigenous people on every continent – particularly who have chosen to be witnesses and the storytellers of their own time – have much to tell us, if only we open our hearts to listen.

The human treasure houses of knowledge, however, are the surviving elders who experientially have learned, practiced and lived ‘Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK),’ the carriers of oral history and also those who are the keepers of spiritual traditions. This holds true, again, among all Indigenous peoples on every continent.

One resource for insights about TEK is an essay, interestingly, that uses the example of a mining project near Attawapiskat, published in The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, XXIII, 2(2003):361-390, co-authored by Norbert Witt and Jackie Hookimaw-Witt. They explain the differences between TEK and the Euro-Western perspective on ‘natural resource’ use. Go to: www2.brandonu.ca/library/cjns/23.2/cjnsv23no2_pg361-390.pdf.

The dead caribou lay beside me on the floor. Throwing myself across the cot, I cried my heart out, but not for the caribou’s fate. Instead, I was feeling the full impact of culture shock, and a sense of powerlessness. The last bus, so to speak, had left town, and I felt stranded in Canada’s Northwest Territories, hundreds of miles from the airport where I needed to catch a flight to my next destination.

The location actually was not a town, but rather `Indian country’ as it still was called 25 years ago, before ‘First Nation’ communities entered mainstream Canadian discourse. More specifically, the community was Rae Lakes, a Dogrib settement in the bush, where the community still relied on the healthy `country food’ of the animal and marine life – that is, where food sources had not yet been contaminated, or otherwise destroyed, by industrial projects.

The `last bus’ was not a bus, but rather a pickup truck in which I had accompanied Dorothy Chocolate, a talented Dogrib photographic journalist and her Metis apprentice, who both worked at a Yellowknife newspaper then called The Native Press. Our drive from Yellowknife to Dorothy’s home community was like driving on the face of the moon across the frozen lakes that linked the single road threading its way northward, the deciduous trees becoming more lean and sparse as we drove.

Arriving 10 hours later, long after midnight, we were presented with caribou ribs kept hot on the wood stove, to warm our bellies before rolling up in our sleeping bags. Forget being a vegetarian, which I am, in the far north. For no one could survive living in the bush, through months of sub-zero weather, without the meat and the fat to fortify a body’s life-sustaining inner layer of insulation.

What most impressed me was Dorothy’s hard-working mother taking the time to describe to me in Dogrib, with Dorothy as translator, how every part of that caribou would be used and nothing go to waste. Dorothy added, to my dismay, the fact that an increasing number of younger people no longer were learning the self-sufficient practices to survive on the land. The reasons were non-Aboriginal influences that ranged from mandatory schooling, which removed youth from the land at crucial times to learn traditional skills through experiential practice, to modern technologies such as television.

That reminds me of one of my favourite northern anecdotes, hearing about the moxy of two women elders. The youth were spending much less time to learn the traditional teachings because of being enchanted by television. These two old ladies were so pissed off by this misguided enchantment that they took their rifles and blew out the community satellite dish. I say, kudos! The traditional Aboriginal people are nobody’s fools.

While staying in the cabin of Dorothy’s parents, I was treated like everyone else. In other words, I contributed groceries and helped to clean up after meals. The young Metis woman, however, had different priorities during her brief stay, more concerned about how to glue on her artificial fingernails than helping out. I thought it was hilarious until she departed, unannounced, taking her boyfriend’s truck back to Yellowknife.

No one in the settlement wanted to drive me anywhere. Finally, an enterprising young chap offered to transport me in a conveyance attached behind his snowmobile, for a fee. I had visions of being whisked across the snow, wrapped in furs on a sleigh, Doctor Zhivago-style. But, upon stepping outdoors, my heart dropped. The conveyance looked like a coffin. Indeed, it was a bare wooden box, in which several blankets were placed under and over me. The worst was when the lights went out.

A tarpaulin had been pulled over the entire box, and stayed there for a trip of several hours, in order to protect me from wind chill. The single interlude of open air allowed the eating of some gruel at a cabin en route and a speedy `nature calling’ episode behind a snow bank. Otherwise, the harrowing trip inspired me to pray, seriously, for probably the first time in my life, feeling as if my vertebrae were being relocated. A few, in fact, were dislocated – permanently – as the intrepid driver sped over every log and rock under the snow to Fort Rae. There, one of Dorothy’s brothers drove me, blessedly in a car, to the Yellowknife airport.

The point is, I could regale you with stories for hours about many impressive Aboriginal people whom I was fortunate enough to meet through many years as a journalist reporting on their issues. The reasons why you seldom hear stories that can offer a fuller, and more accurate, reality of life on the land are several.

For the traditional first peoples are Canada’s treasure, yet sadly under-recognized, under-valued, marginalized from cross-cultural understanding and steadily disappearing. What really pisses me off, in fact, is how the mainstream media overlook their voices, through the focus directed on real life struggles that characterize Aboriginal people as helpless and incapable of managing their lives. Stay tuned for my next blog on that messy subject.

As I heave logs into my farmhouse wood furnace on a chilly winter day after Christmas celebrations with my Irish Canadian family relatives in Ontario, I recall a holiday visit to Dublin, Ireland, 40 winters ago. The vision that comes to mind is me, snuggled up with a blanket in a fireside armchair as close to the fire as safely possible.

Central heating was not common ‘across the pond’ in those days. Excursions to the bathroom were as rare as I could make them, given the phenomenon of feeling like a human icicle by the time I could skedaddle out. The compassionate warmth of my delightful host and hostess, parents of an art college friend, more than compensated for their fondness for fresh air and open bathroom windows all seasons.

What distinguished the Tomlin family, indeed, was that their circle of friends and colleagues were inclusive of Protestant and Catholic faiths who, for centuries, have exchanged so much animosity in that divided land called Ireland. The Tomlins, nevertheless, chose to practice authentically the Christmas blessings of peace on earth and good will towards all humanity, and do so throughout the year.

Also noteworthy during that holiday visit was the unexpected expansion of my experience of the Celtic arts. The custom at this season’s gatherings was for each and every person to step forward and offer a song spontaneously. There was I, bug-eyed with panic, declaring vociferously that I could not carry a tune to save my life. The festive folk were most forgiving.

The years multiply and unfold, however, until holiday celebrations become bittersweet, when those whom you loved the most are no longer present. Their remembrance, regardless, need not fade. Being Celtic, on both sides of my family, what I culturally am blessed with is the importance of story and passing on stories through generations.

Storytelling, of course, is a universal and timeless tradition. Stories provide continuity between past, present and future. They facilitate understanding, and render the events in our lives more meaningful – from family histories to diverse and evolving cultural histories, as well as ecological histories locally and planetary.

In this season of reflection, we could be asking, what will our own stories say about our life choices and directions? Were they planned or caused by disruptive forces, personal or global? What stories will others tell about us? What stories are we gathering as we witness the world around us? Are they judgmental stories, or are they compassionate?

Do we limit ourselves only to the popular media or also seek out other sources and voices? The stories that we choose embody the qualities that we care about, and influence human consciousness and actions. Stories also provide perspective.

My late father was a wonderful storyteller. He also had a gift as a visual artist. This Christmas I gave one of his beautiful pastel drawings to his baby sister, my Aunt Ruth, the family matriarch. In the circle of her children and grandchildren, my cousins, I related how my father’s dream to be a commercial artist was thwarted by The Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II, as were the dreams of many people of his generation.

Every generation, in fact, sooner or later is challenged by circumstances unforeseen or, for some of us, inevitable because the signs of what was coming were ignored.

Do not succumb to media stories that pit the older and younger generations against each other. The news media thrives on dramatic conflict. Nor be mesmerized by unrealistic expectations based upon the double whammy of a consumer and celebrity-driven popular media that depicts what life should give us.

Rather we need to ask, what can we give to nurture life for the larger good? From young adults to boomers, our challenge in this historic moment is to find ways to collaborate across generations. Doing so includes honouring the wisdom of our elders and considering a vision for a safer and healthier future for children everywhere.

Let us put our talents together to create life-affirming ways of functioning as societies and human cultures in this time of environmental and economic transition. By walking into the future together, awakened to possibility, we then will have good stories to tell.

The audience looked up expectantly to the stage in the auditorium dining room. I stood there, knees knocking, stage fright making me close to speechless (a rare occurrence as my friends can affirm). Regardless, this was my debut public speaking engagement more than 20 years ago, and I was introduced as a first-time storyteller.

I somehow squeeked, sputtered and hiccupped entry into my oration of The Littlest Angel, a classic Christmas children’s book. This delightful story continues to live in several book versions enhanced by various illustrators and, through the years, also performed on stage as well as retold in animated movies.

Speaking from the heart – advisedly the most powerful approach in communicating – I related the essence of this heartwarming tale about a very small child’s attempts to adapt to his untimely arrival in the world of Spirit, and being called upon to offer a gift for the newborn Christ Child.

Regardless of one’s religious faith or lack thereof, this story – trust me – is magical in conveying what is important about giving instead of trying to impress by the choice of gifts. In doing so, The Littlest Angel conveys the tenderness of humility, generosity, love, and appreciation.

For the gift from the littlest Angel was not expensive nor gift wrapped, indeed, not even store bought at all. Nor was it based upon the wee Angel feeling obliged to perform yet unkindled artistic talents. He bequeathed, instead, his treasures from the earthly realm of Nature, collected in a rather inelegant tiny wooden box. The specialness of the gift-giving is two-fold – the littlest Angel gives away his most precious possessions, and the “Hand of God” selects that particular gift because of the qualities expressed in the giving.

Indeed, the joy in knowing a gift is well-received is a bonus of the joy in giving and, more so, because it ought not to be anticipated. What humbled me, for example, following the completion of relating The Littlest Angel, was not only the enthusiastic applause. Yet, moreover, a lovely voice flew to me on wings of clarity and grace from one of the listeners, saying: “I think you did a very good job.” That remains the most memorable moment of receiving acknowledgment through my entire life.

The audience were residents of L”Arche Daybreak, in Richmond Hill, Ontario, the first L’Arche community established in Canada, founded by Jean Vanier in the mid-1960s. Vanier, a Canadian philosopher/theologian, was at the forefront of de-institutionalizing people who had developmental disabilities. Today, 137 L’Arche communities exist in 40 countries.

The following excerpt from the L’Arche Charter, online in Wikipedia, expresses what I suggest is the core message of Christmas and other spiritual traditions. This message is timeless, universal, and definitely speaks to the cross-cultural healing needed today:

     “In a divided world, L’Arche wants to be a sign of hope. Its communities, founded on   covenant relationships between people of differing intellectual capacity, social origin, religion and culture, seek to be signs of unity, faithfulness and reconciliation.”

For more information about the transformative philosophy and practices in L’Arche communities, go to http://www.larche.ca/en/jean_vanier/the_story_of_larche.

Blessings to everyone, for peace, joy and, most of all, love, through this holiday season.

A place of belonging is where the soul finds comfort. I refer to the belonging that is characterized by our connection to the earth, and our willingness to accept and negotiate everything that Nature offers, and teaches, in its full embrace of raw reality. John O’Donohue, the late Irish philosophical theologian expresses it eloquently in his book ETERNAL ECHOES, Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong:

“The more attentive you are, and the longer you remain in a landscape, the more you will be embraced by its presence. Though you may be completely alone there, you know that you are not on your own. In our relentless quest for human contact, we have forgotten the solace and friendship of Nature. It is interesting in the Irish language how the word for the elements and the word for desire is the same word: duil…Duil also holds the sense of expectation and hope.” [O’Donohue, 2000, p.52]

Poignantly obvious is the shattering of spirit wherever natural disasters, large scale industrial devastation, and also wars, have torn asunder the places of belonging of not just individual homes but – existentially worse – entire communities and land-based cultures of people, places that embodied their past, present and future.

I sometimes wonder whether it is the absence of a soulful connection to the world of Nature among the materially affluent, most particularly the economic power-holders, that results in so much lack of reverence, contamination of, and destruction to, the life-giving sources of the planet? For such deeds to be allowed, however, requires compliance.

The related questions, therefore, include: How does widespread compliance happen? Is it the consequence of urban lifestyles among large numbers of people, for whom the experience of a place of belonging is fleeting, if it exists at all? I refer both to those people who experience a visibly comfortable life, yet whose jobs and career paths uproot them frequently. Also included are immigrants, hardworking, often under-recognized and under-paid, struggling to survive and adapt to a new home, while grieving for the loss of a former place of belonging that may no longer exist.

Indeed, I recall the shock that reverberated through my body when a friend informed me that the family home where I grew up, and where my parents lived up to their final days, had been demolished soon after the sale. A ‘monster home’ had replaced it, indicative of the spreading phenomenon of monster homes in suburbs where neighbours no longer know each other, and the natural spaces of large backyards are disregarded and destroyed.

All I can say is that I give thanks every day for being able to experience the natural world directly, living immersed in it. I just have to open my door, and some days immediately am greeted by a rabbit or chipmunk scampering away, as well as unusual insects such as a praying mantis exploring my door frame.

Every day brings a new adventure of discovery of “all my relations” as Indigenous people significantly refer to our human interconnections with all other life forms on Earth.

All my relations, inevitably, include the raw and the messy. I soon discovered the necessity to negotiate co-existence with less desirable animals and insects, and do a lot of outdoor work, such as the chopping of noxious plants to make my farming neighbours happy. Being a good neighbour is essential for survival in the countryside.

A most important revelation, in fact, happened this past year. By working with my hands doing hard physical tasks, I have come to know my land base intimately. I now have a glimmer of the traditional Indigenous sacred compact with the land, based upon a profound sense of caring and responsibility.

The essence of a place of belonging, to sum up then, is to experientially come to understand and practice reciprocal caring and responsibility. Such knowing happens by taking care of our own plot of earth, with affection, once awakened to the appreciation that the earth and other elements, and all planetary species, take care of us, unconditionally, in so many ways.