The effervescence of rootedness and longing.
Stills from Indigenous Canada – A Story to Tell (2019) | (CANADA Explore | Explorez, 2019)
Dear Patient Reader,
For Glowing Hearts
I
The effervescence of rootedness and longing.
With momentous ebbing within mythological and ancestral currents, First Nations, Métis, or Inuit living in Canada, on their own settlements or in urban centres [1] write poetry of their own. Verses and word formations that correlate with lived and living experiences.
They are linked and connected to their lines of ancestry. Allied with the lines and living roots that sprint for miles, which connect them to sacred earth. Billowing smoke that one is consumed into and at the same time consumes, shafts of which float and rise up above. Or the afterlife, where spirits of dead men hunt dead animals [2]. And thus a natural world blasting with spirit life that rests and wrestles in bounty’s lap.
There is no acquaintance to the privileging of their voices. Their screams of pain and leaps of joy remain embodied in the stumps of trees. Glowing hearts tightened and tethered to the trees of boundaries set and taken away. And thus consciousness subdued to the scriptures of our modern age.
The Reserve Went Silent [3]
Louise Bernice Halfe (excerpts)
The playground went silent.
A lone robin hopped in the expanse of the yard
where once children scraped their elbows and knees
drew lines in the dirt for hopscotch
or designated the imaginary rooms of a house
and lined the cupboards with mud pies.
The yard now empty…
….
Mound of scraped up dirt and scraggly grass.
I see this now.
I never saw the searing pain
on my mother’s face, nor experienced
my father’s eyes squeezed to dam his flood.
Their world went mute ….
….
My parents never spoke ….
Of the gash that tore….
and gutted….
From Burning in this Midnight Dream (2016) by Louise Bernice Halfe
world shapers[4]
Joanne Arnott (excerpts) …. they remind us of all the ways & means that worlds can be born & humans come to be …. worldmakers worldshakers worldbreakers there is no end to the doing & the undoing …. they have imagined us over & over & over recreating us & recreating our world on a whim
there is no end to us, humans, either
we keep re-inventing the cosmos and fighting
….
& yet we are not powerless, we adults, we humans
we reinvent … and reshape the world, every
…. day
From W’daub Awae = Speaking True (2010) by Joanne Arnott
“N’shaytkin: Those that came before us”[5]
Book by Chris Bose
It was a small place. Nkemei’n, in Chris’ language, means where the waters meet. Where the Nicola River empties its brackish brown water into the clear Thompson River, which then flowed near silently past the neighbouring community of Spencers Bridge, sxānxanmux, or Shawnikenkinemuh, (Mount Shawniken or Arthur’s Seat to the shamuts, or colonialists), loomed over the tiny valley like some kind of monolith. A stone-faced god. The massive cliff face of the mountain smashing skyward had many stories to tell, if anyone could hear them.
In time Chris learned from Isaac that somewhere at the top of the mountain was a giant dugout canoe still tied to trees. It got up there from a great flood event maybe thousands of years ago. Isaac said that sometime around the eighteen nineties it stopped being seen from the valley, and now no one remembered where exactly it was. People said when the canoe couldn’t be found anymore, that’s when the spirit had left the place. The giant canoe and its disappearance was just a story, a story called Nukwanika.
Excerpt from Chapter 10, p. 29
References
[1] Government of Canada. (2018, October 15). Indigenous peoples and cultures. Retrieved from Government of Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/canadian-identity-society/indigenous-peoples-cultures.html
[2] Naidanac. (n.d.). Afterlife. Retrieved from Naidanac: https://naidanac.weebly.com/afterlife.html#:~:text=The%20Algonquin%20tribes%20of%20the,%2C%20abounded%20in%20spirit%20life'.
[3] Halfe, L. B. (2016). Residential School Poems (Page 1). Retrieved from Line: https://line.17qq.com/articles/suturtacqx.html
[4] Arnott, J. (2020, April 10). world shapers: life of a poem. Retrieved from Joanne Arnott too: https://josarnott.blogspot.com/2020/04/world-shapers-life-of-poem.html
[5] Bose, C. (2019, September 18). re: 1135. Retrieved from Urban Coyote TeeVee: https://findingshelter.blogspot.com/2019/09/
Image Source
Explorez. (2019, June 21). Indigenous Canada - A Story to Tell. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzpKdPEBLfQ
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