Native American Birth Totems

Sponsored and Written by Native American Jewelry

Illustration by Laurie Prindle

Native American culture has always been heavily influenced by nature. Most tribes hold nature as a sacred part of life. People, who are familiar with the Western Zodiac, often want to know if Native Americans have a similar concept. The short answer is yes. Although, the animals and meanings are vastly different from the Zodiac most people are familiar with, the Native American Zodiac describes the nature of a person's personality based on the hemisphere and date they were born.

The core philosophy of Native American birth totems is connectivity. People are connected to the universe, the stars, and nature as a whole. What Native American astrology seeks to illustrate is this connection, which can be hard to see as we go about our daily lives in the modern era.

Some of the key differences between the Western Zodiac and Native astrology is its multifaceted nature. The Native American Zodiac takes into account numerous pieces of astronomical data to provide people with a deeper understanding of the animal that represents who they are.

The following is a list of spirit animals and the stone that channels that spirit and connects you to the nature from which you are both made:

Otter: Jan 20 - Feb 18

Birthstone: Turquoise

Creative and unconventional, the Otter animal totem is set apart by its unique method of problem-solving. People born during this time of the year are seen as independent and seek to better the world around them through their unique methods.

Wolf: Feb 19 – Mar 20

Birthstone: Jade

People that have the Wolf birth totem are seen as passionate and deeply emotional. The Wolf is unique because it seeks compassion and understanding but also prefers independence.

Falcon: Mar 21 – Apr 19

Birthstone: Opal

The Falcon is a symbol of wisdom and inspiration. People that have the Falcon as their totem share this passion for truth and knowledge. People born during this time are natural-born leaders who should be sought after for their judgment and wisdom.

Beaver: Apr 20 – May 20

Birthstone: Jasper

A master strategist and a force to be reckoned with for completing any goal, people with the beaver birth totem take charge and can easily adapt to new environments. People associated with the Beaver are known to have razor sharp wit.

Deer:  May 21 – Jun 20

Birthstone: Agate

Gentle-natured peacemakers, the Deer birth totem signifies people that are passionate and empathetic. People born in this timeframe find it easy to connect with new people and are usually the life of the party.

Woodpecker: Jun 21 – Jul 21

Birthstone: Rose Quartz

Known for their sense of community and nurturing instinct, people with the Woodpecker birth totem are empathetic and good at listening to others.

Salmon: Jul 22 – Aug 21

Birthstone: Carnelian

Some of the most creative and focused people have the Salmon as their birth totem. This sign embodies generosity, brilliance, and gifted intuition.

Bear: Aug 22 – Sep 21

Birthstone: Amethyst

The Bear birth totem is often associated with level-headed thinking and a capacity to see the bigger picture. People with this sign are generous and have big hearts.

Raven: Sep 22 – Oct 22

Birthstone: Azurite

Gifted with deep clairvoyance and foresight, the Raven is a symbol of intelligence and charm. People that were born in the time of the Raven share similar attributes.

Snake: Oct 23 – Nov 22

Birthstone: Copper

The Snake is connected to the spiritual world more deeply than any other animal totem. People born in this timeframe possess great supernatural power and are often associated with enhanced healing and leadership skills.

Owl: Nov 23 – Dec 21

Birthstone: Obsidian

A messenger to the Great Spirit and a seeker of truth and wisdom, the Owl is an adventurous spirit with a light-hearted nature. People born in the time of the Owl are often artistic, reckless, and versatilely gifted.

Goose: Dec 22 – Jan 19

Birthstone: Quartz

People that have the Goose as their birth totem seek spiritual enlightenment and tend to have a stoic nature. The Goose is a persevering spirit that’s ambitious and driven.

About Native American Jewelry

Native American Jewelry offers an impressive selection of Native jewelry with designs inspired by Southwestern tribes, as well as Kachina Dolls, Pottery, and other Crafts from the Zuni, Navajo, and Hopi Tribes. The staff at Native American Jewelry works to bring all of these elements together and offer a vast selection of stunning Native jewelry for all tastes and preferences.

Navajo Woman Becomes Sensation with Skateboarding Videos

By Brady Wakayama

(Photo Credit: Tomás Karmelo Amaya)

A Navajo woman has become a viral internet sensation, showcasing her
skateboarding skills on the reservation.

Naiomi Glasses hopes that with her growing platform a new skate park can be built and will inspire others to pursue their passions.

The 25-year-old is from Rock Point, a Navajo community in northeastern Arizona. She has gained tens of thousands of followers over the year on social media who can't get enough of her skateboarding. She also raises sheep and uses the wool to weave rugs and purses.

``I would see these sandstones and I was like `I wonder if I could skate that,''' Glasses told Albuquerque television station KRQE in an interview. ``So then one day I was just like `You know what, let me just try it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.`''

(Photo Credit: Tomás Karmelo Amaya)

She learned how to skate when she was just 5 years old from her older brother and hasn't gotten off the board since.

``I'm not a professional at all, by any means, I just like to ride around,'' Glasses said. ``But it's very freeing for me.''

She said skateboarding is very popular on the Navajo Nation despite the lack of pavement and just five skate parks
throughout the reservation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Glasses said she is teaming up with a Navajo-inspired clothing company that is planning to build a new skate park in the Two Grey Hills area, which is in western New Mexico about two hours away from Glasses' community.

(Photo Credit: Naiomi Glasses)

``I love skateboarding so much and I would just love to bring that joy and love of it to other communities,'' she said.

Glasses hopes with her newly discovered platform she can properly represent and share the Indigenous culture with the world and show young Navajo children that they can do anything while living on the reservation.

Her favorite Navajo saying is ``T'aa hwo' aji t'eego t'eya.'' It means ``Life is what you make it.''

Naiomi Glasses, Diné skateboarder, became an Internet
sensation after posting a video of her skating down a red sandstone slope. (Photo Credit: Sharon Chischilly | Navajo Times)

``Go out there and be strong, be bold and be confident. Be true to who you are,'' she said.

Work on the skate park project is expected to start this fall. A second phase will include a community garden focused on traditional agriculture and harvesting.

About the Author

Brady Wakayama joined the KRQE News team in September 2019 as a Multimedia Reporter. Born and raised in Seattle, Brady graduated from Washington State University in May 2016, where he majored in Broadcast Journalism. Not only is Brady proud to be a COUG, but also a proud member of the Asian American Journalists Association. Brady loves meeting new people, laughing, and trying new food.

Podcast Explores Creation of US Parks with Indigenous Voices

By Matt Dahlseid
Santa Fe New Mexican

Bison crossing a river in Yellowstone National Park. Image courtesy of Wyoming Office of Tourism

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) _ In the first minutes of the first episode of a new podcast called Parks, Shane Doyle speaks of being largely unaware of his family's sprawling roots in the area known today as Yellowstone National Park while he was growing up in the small town of Crow Agency, Montana.

A member of the Crow Nation, Doyle's ancestors were forcibly removed from the land that was eventually established as the world's first national park in 1872. His family had been detached from this land for generations, and the park known internationally for its remarkable geothermal features and stunning wildlife was relatively foreign to him as a youth.

Dr. Shane Doyle

While obtaining his master's degree in Native American studies, Doyle became well-versed in the onslaught of obstacles that confronted his and nearly 30 other tribes associated with the Yellowstone area.

The tribes contended with diseases like smallpox brought to the continent by European colonizers, broken land rights treaties by the United States government, the killing off of their primary food source _ bison _ and a forced assimilation into mainstream European American culture through Native American boarding schools.

``Quite frankly, there was an ethnic cleansing on this ground,'' Doyle says in the 28-minute debut episode of Parks titled ``Yellowstone,'' which was released June 22. ``And the cleansing was not just the people and the culture, but it was also the memory, it was the history, it was the way of life that existed for thousands of years that all of the sudden vanished.''

As the popularity of America's national parks continues to surge, Parks co-creators and Santa Fe-based multimedia journalists Mary Mathis and Cody Nelson urge visitors to educate themselves about and acknowledge the Indigenous tribes whose ties to these sacred spaces span millennia.

The aim of the documentary podcast is to explore the history of tribes on these lands, the ways in which the lands were dispossessed, issues the Indigenous communities face today, and how they've kept their culture and traditions alive, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

``There's so much that was written, but when it was written, it was from the point of view of Eastern colonizers,'' said Mathis, 25, a former photo editor at National Public Radio and Outside magazine who serves as the host of Parks. ``It wasn't every story, it was just one story _ the quote, unquote `winner's' story. We see that a lot in our education system and I think that was where the idea (for Parks) kind of came from.''

Mary Mathis

The first episode follows a format the Parks team plans to replicate throughout the project, one where Indigenous guests are closely involved in each step of the editing process so as to maintain complete ownership of their stories.

The guests' feedback is considered at every point in the editing of an episode, creating a collaborative environment of storytelling.

``For a long time, Native people have not had ownership of the narrative about what the wider general public knows about Indigenous people, so it's really critical that the guests have complete ownership of the process because that's the most important part,'' said Taylor Hensel, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who serves as a story editor for the podcast. ``That's the only way to tell authentic stories.''

Taylor Hensel

Mathis and Nelson began research for Parks last summer. The couple, who moved to Santa Fe from the Midwest last year, had to conduct all of their interviews via phone or video call because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Nelson, 28, said the obstacle ended up shaping the show in a positive way.

``It forced us to get creative, which I think wound up being a good thing because the format we've taken is using the voices of our guests rather than the voices of me and Mary,'' said Nelson, a former reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. ``We've aimed to go really light on the narration and really heavy on our guests' voices.''

Cody Nelson

Hensel was one of the consultants Mathis and Nelson reached out to early on while contemplating the path of the podcast. She works full-time as a producer for Nia Tero, a nonprofit based in Seattle that works globally with Indigenous people, specifically when it comes to land rights and the environment.

The Parks project excited Hensel, and she accepted an offer to join the small team as its third member.

Hensel said her view of national parks is tied to the history of dispossession and broken treaties that took the lands away from their original inhabitants.

``As a Native person, I live every single day knowing that this is stolen land, and this land doesn't belong to the people who claim to own it. National parks are no exception,'' Hensel said. ``When I enter those spaces, I carry that weight with me, knowing that land was stolen from Indigenous peoples. It certainly is heavy and I personally believe that that land should be given back. I hope to see that one day.''

Hensel is also passionate about the words used when speaking about natural spaces such as national parks.

It's common to hear language that discounts the history of Indigenous tribes on these lands, such as referring to the environments as ``pristine'' and ``untouched.'' Hensel works with Mathis and Nelson to be intentional and thoughtful about the words being used in the narration.

``Taylor is someone who is working with us consistently to decolonize the language that we use in the script,'' Mathis said. ``There have been rewrites and rewrites and rewrites of sentences where we maybe used a word that had some sort of power dynamic to it, and she's really opening our eyes to the ways in which we really do need to decolonize our language, especially in journalism.''

Another unique aspect of the podcast's production is the compensation of guests who share their stories.

The not-for-profit project is funded by donations and out of the pockets of Mathis and Nelson, who both freelance to earn a living. Nelson said they offer a small honorarium, sometimes around $50 or so, to guests for their contributions.

The Parks team plans on releasing an episode each month during the summer, then seeing where things go from there. They've already conducted all the interviews for the second episode, which will focus on Native tribes living in and around the Grand Canyon, and hope to release the episode in July.

Grand Canyon (Photo Credit: Lennart Sikkema)

Mathis and Nelson said their perspective on national parks has changed considerably while working on the project and speaking with Indigenous people whose lives have been impacted by land dispossession.

``It's a far more complicated picture, I'd say, from what I've learned,'' Nelson said. ``It makes you think about everything a lot differently.

``I will still go to national parks; I'm not going to boycott the system, but I am going to live in a way that doesn't become a party to this awful commodification of nature and the erasure of the people whose lands this is.''

About the Author

Matt Dahlseid is a digital enterprise producer and outdoors writer for the Santa Fe New Mexican.

NCAI Calls for Accountability Trauma Caused by Native American Boarding

The discovery of the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada is a sorrowful reminder that the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has repeatedly called for transparency and accountability for the historical and generational trauma caused by Native American boarding schools in the United States. In 2016 and 2017, NCAI called upon the United States government and organizations that operated residential boarding schools to fully account for their treatment of Native children and be fully transparent in providing records related to enrollment and living conditions.

“The discovery of unmarked graves of Native children at Kamloops, dating back possibly a century or more, is beyond horrific. By law, our ancestors were systematically forced into boarding schools where they were beaten, starved, sexually abused and, as we see now, died from neglect or even worse. Their families were never told the truth about what happened, and the perpetrators, individually or institutionally, were never held responsible,” said Fawn Sharp, president of NCAI. “These were lawful actions for nearly 100 years by both the United States and Canada. A new era of accountability starts with a genuine commitment to truth and reconciliation with tribal nations, and with the formation of a formal Commission to study the impacts of the Indian Boarding School Policy. We call on the federal government to finally answer for these transgressions against Native children and families.”

Fawn Sharp, President of National Congress of American Indians

Historically, the Boarding School Policy of 1869 required American Indian and Alaska Native children to attend boarding schools to assimilate the children into a Westernized identity and way of life.

Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act Fund of March 3, 1819, and the Peace Policy of 1869, the United States, in concert with and at the urging of several denominations of the Christian Church, adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska Native children to accomplish the systematic destruction of Native cultures and communities. The stated purpose of this policy was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”

Federal boarding school policies required AI/AN children to be taken from their families and stripped of their culture, language, and tribal identity and placed in the ‘care’ of federally run schools. Children could face severe punishment in the form of physical, mental, and emotional trauma, in addition to neglect, inadequate nutrition, disease, and succumbing to illness either as a result of either non-compliance to the assimilationist rules or as a byproduct of attending such an institution. Some students forced into these institutions between 1869 and 1972 are unaccounted for, and their fates and whereabouts remain unknown.

Three Lakota Boys forced to be “white”, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1900

Thomas Indian School, girls' basketball team (www.calie.org)

American Indian Girls in Uniform (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

In 2016, NCAI passed a resolution to address our lost relatives and formally call upon the United States government to provide a full accounting of the total number of students removed to the custody of boarding schools or churches operating with federal funding and to account for the fate and final resting place of each child who did not survive.

In 2017, NCAI passed another resolution (https://www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/call-to-collect-testimony-about-the-american-indian-and-alaska-native-children-who-went-missing-under-u-s-boarding-school-policy) to call upon our membership to gather testimony and share information about our loved ones who attended boarding schools but who remain unaccounted for. NCAI will continue to work to ensure that none of our American Indian and Alaska Native children are ever forgotten and to right the wrongs imposed upon both past and present generations.

Cigna Grant Combines Prenatal Care, Drug Education with Traditions

Kassie Runsabove, a community health worker at St. Vincent’s Hospital, reviews Native-themed books for the unique program. 

The Cigna Foundation announced it will provide a $100,000 grant to the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation in Billings, Montana to help improve the health outcomes of Native American women and babies through increased access to early prenatal care, drug education and intervention when needed.

“Addiction is a national crisis, and tribes are experiencing its impact along with the rest of the country. St. Vincent’s is a mission-driven health care facility dedicated to serving the Native American community, and Cigna Foundation is helping us develop a sustainable maternity care delivery model,” said Vicki Birkeland, St. Vincent Healthcare Director of Women’s Services. “This is important work and we look forward to seeing improved health outcomes for the moms and babies we serve.”

 

Baby moccasins made in classes at the hospital for families with babies. Other traditional activities have included prayer, smudging, signage and building a teepee during Native American Heritage Month.

Previously, the Cigna Foundation provided grant funding to St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation to support an American Indian Health Disparities Coordinator who serves as a community health worker. St. Vincent’s chose Kassie Runsabove for this role to work as an advocate and cultural liaison, and to be responsible for implementing projects to identify and reduce health disparities.

 

Runsabove (center) with two hospital staffers at a healthcare event. 

 

Chantielle (center), a midwife from St. Vincent's attending a baby fair at the Northern Cheyenne Lame Deer Reservation.

The new Cigna Foundation grant provides an additional year of funding to help St. Vincent’s further its mission to improve the cultural competency skills of maternal health care providers, and to work with tribal community partners to provide prenatal education on healthy nutrition, stress management, and other healthy lifestyle topics. The program is expected to result in measurable outcomes, including:

• Earlier access to prenatal care with the goal of improving birth weights
• Increased participation at designated prenatal clinics, including St. Vincent's Midwifery & Women’s Health Center, the midwifery clinic on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and at the health care facilities of community partners including Indian Health Services (IHS)
• Decreased numbers of NICU admissions
• Decreased numbers of babies born prematurely
• Increased participation in substance abuse recovery programs

 

Cigna Foundation's Executive Director, Mary Engvall.

“We are focused on improving health equity and are working with organizations such as St. Vincent’s to eliminate disparities that create barriers to health care,” said Mary Engvall, executive director of the Cigna Foundation. “St. Vincent’s community health worker is integral to effectively coordinating care between the rural reservations and an urban hospital setting in a culturally sensitive manner, while building a safe environment of trust for patients.”

About the Cigna Foundation

The Cigna Foundation, founded in 1962, is a private foundation funded by contributions from Cigna Corporation and its subsidiaries. It supports organizations sharing its commitment to enhancing the health of individuals and families, and the well-being of their communities, with a special focus on those communities where Cigna employees live and work.

For more information on the Foundation’s partnership with St. Vincent’s, see the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-RT9qlLQCA&feature=youtu.be

Lead and article photos courtesy of Cigna Foundation. 

Opinion: Native Languages Preserve Our Way of Thinking and Knowing

By Richard B. Williams (Oglala Lakota)

Last month, I had an exceptional opportunity to facilitate a convening of several “Native Language Doyens.” A “Native Language Doyen” is a leading figure who works tirelessly in language programs and activities in our Native communities. It was very stirring to see the spiritual essence that comes from our cultural language guardians who are reintroducing and saving our precious languages. The “Doyens” are – through their diligent hard work – producing fluent Native speakers throughout Indian Country.

During my lifetime, I’ve heard elders and medicine people eloquently and profoundly say that our languages are sacred. I never really understood what that meant until I had the opportunity to spend time thoroughly immersed in the Lakota language. The experience left me in awe of what it meant to learn a language. My first experience of understanding that the language was sacred came when, in a dream, I was speaking Lakota. The second experience was when I was cognitively processing the world around me in Lakota first and not English. I remember looking at this “sunka” and I realized that, in my mind, I used that term instead of dog. After that profound experience I would naturally and without dual cognitive processing see objects in Lakota and not in English.

The mysterious part of understanding that a language is sacred had nothing to do with the way we were learning the language. We weren't meditating nor were we praying constantly. We weren’t asking the Creator to help us learn the language. We were just simply immersed and totally focused on learning and experiencing the language. There was never really an “ah-ha moment” where I felt that somehow the experience was a sacred experience. It was an inner sense of knowing our people and the speaking of the language allowed our people to live in harmony and in a sacred way. The profound nature of the experience has changed me and heightened my path to learning more of the language. And even more importantly to understand the inviolability of visions and dreams. The unconscious act of dreaming in Lakota was a significant spiritual experience. One of the sacred ceremonies of Lakota is the hanblecha or vision quest, and dreams have always been a very important connection to the spirit world and Creator. There is no English word to express this feeling. In Lakota, we understand it as “Wakan” – a great mystery.

 

Tracey Moore is a member of the Osage, Otoe-Missouria, Pawnee and Sac & Fox tribes who aims to help keep their disappearing languages alive by learning, speaking and teaching them. (Photo Credit: Steve Sisney, The Oklahoman)

The opportunity to spend time with the language doyens was inspirational. Their knowledge of the language and its acquisition was complex, and each person had different ways to accomplish the goal of creating fluency among their people, especially in the children. The lifetime commitment made by each of the participants is notable.  We had participants who were relatively young, as well as seasoned language veterans.  An important message from each participant was that Native language acquisition and Western methodological educational practices are not symbiotic. Contemporary education practices that exist in schools today do not work well, and there is wealth of American Indian experts and current teachers who are very critical of the Western methodology and pedagogy.  The message was clear: do not malign language immersion by force fitting it into existing education practices.

Language acquisition is important because, in practice, it has been demonstrated by many studies and testimony by practitioners that it improves and enhances a child’s confidence and self-image. It is well-documented that increasing a child’s self-worth is one of the most important aspects to their future success. The research also indicates that when the educational experience is culturally- and language-based, it produces a greater sense of well-being in a child. This knowledge is so compelling that it should behoove and compel all educational practitioners to alter their work to include language and cultural activities into their daily practices. The caution here is the reminder that the contemporary education system is failing our students, and we will only be successful if we make a complete change to the existing archaic way our children are being taught.

The second compelling reason for language in our schools has to do with enhanced cognitive development. Second-language speakers become better students because they are learning to process information in different parts of their brains. The cognition of language acquisition enhances critical thinking and improved learning intelligence. Recently it has been reported that it is good for the old folks. Learning a second language as an adult can help avoid cognitive decline, and it is reported that bilinguals come down with dementia and Alzheimer’s more than four years later than monolinguals. Although I regretfully inform you that age limits the ability to learn the language even if you were a child who spoke the language fluently.

Other advantages inherent in speaking a Native language is it introduces new words, concepts, metaphors and time frames. People who speak multiple languages tend to score higher on standardized tests in subjects such as math, reading and vocabulary.

We are living in a world that is foreign to us and would not be recognized by our ancestors. As we continue to adjust to the challenges of this changing world, it is comforting to know that to hold on to our languages means that we will continue to preserve our way of thinking and knowing. It is that sacred language and our good ways that will help us secure a place in this world, forever!

•  •  •

This article was originally published by First Nations Development Institute as part of its “Native American Stories” series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard B. Williams is the retired President & CEO of the American Indian College Fund. He now works as a consultant to First Nations Development Institute and other Native American organizations.

Lead Story Photo: The CUNY Graduate Center

The Children of Attawapiskat Have Potential

From News From Indian Country

Photos and story by Danny Beaton (www.dannybeaton.ca)

Brian Martin a Mohawk from Tyendinaga told me to call this elder who was a doctor working up north with people from Attawapiskat and gave me her card, which was the best news I had all last summer while I was researching the events at Attawapiskat that have been unfolding for several years now.

So when I called Dr A.A. Dunlop who was both positive and friendly I asked her if she knew any Natives in Attawapiskat who were using traditional native culture to heal and were there any people who she thought I could connect with after telling her my back ground with Native Child and Family Services, 6 Saint Josephs and Queen West Health Center.

Dr Dunlop gave me the phone number of the Mental Health unit in Attawapiskat and told me to said ask for Jane or Peggy and tell them I was a Mohawk elder who wants to help by bringing native ceremonies to the community for healing and unity with Cree elders who were healing, using traditional Native ceremonies.

When I called the Attawapiskat hospital and asked for Peggy or Jane the person I spoke to said it sounded like I needed to talk to Joe Tipp the head of Health Canada in Attawapiskat because Peggy and Jane were not there that day.

I immediately called Joe Tipp or Joe Tippeneskum, Cree elder and explained that I was being funded to assist in culture and ceremonies and my back ground of organizing healing activities to assist the elders and youth who were suffering in their community was my desire.

Joe Tipp was more than positive for me to connect with and he explained the youth were taking a lead in trying to bring back traditional Cree culture but could use my skills in organizing events that would unite the elders and youth in Attawapiskat. Joe said there were several youth organizing the sacred sweat lodge ceremony and if I was free at night it would be good to join them.

Joe mentioned we could work together in the Secondary School presenting traditional Native culture to the youth in grades nine to thirteen and anyone interested in hearing our message. As it turned out, Joe and I did present at Vezina Secondary for one morning last October.

Afterwards I  gave the Traditional Iroquois Thanksgiving Address, a prayer like poem honoring creation by giving great thanks to the plant life, waters, and relatives, addressing creation and everything that moves on Mother earth, in the sky and all that is invisible.

My understanding of our Thanksgiving ceremony is it is equivalent to smoking the pipe for the Lakota or any Indigenous way of giving thanks or respecting the gifts of the universe and Mother Earth.

We answered questions that the students had later and I shared several songs on my native flutes which I play for healing and meditating the spirit and mind.

The students I could see were glad to see a Mohawk and Cree elder working together for the protection of Mother Earth and the future of seven generations to come. We explained that we were working for the benefit of all children not just our own and that every child deserved to be treated with respect and dignity.

Then I explained how our Mohawk spiritual leader Tom Porter viewed all men as brothers and all women as sisters in our way of life in our country and that it was no different in Attawapiskat. I explained that in the Indigenous way of life in North America, the first law of the land for Indigenous people alike, is respect and that respect was the first law of the land.

We talked about art and the sacredness of healing through communicating through all forms of the arts writing, drawing, singing, photography, film making even talking.

When my partner and I go to the bush down south we rent a car and leave Friday night or Saturday mornings just to get to the forest, but in Attawapiskat you are surrounded by forest and bush.

Down south when we leave Toronto for Georgian Bay there are one hundred thousand people with us leaving the city.

In Attawapiskat there are only two thousand Cree, no one else except non-native teachers and nurses who are also care givers trying to help the community in every capacity.

 

You have the cleanest and freshest air in the world right here in Attawapiskat I love it there. It is so quiet I can fall asleep any time you lay down to rest.

We are living in a concrete jungle back home. People have forgotten how to live simply down south in Toronto and my wife was the best person I ever met who tried to live like a Zen monk. But you can still live a good life right there in Attawapiskat.

Once you finish high school in Attawapiskat you can travel down south to get a college or university degree if that is what you want, then you will have the education and freedom to earn a good living.

But you need the tools to earn a living or express yourself and to communicate for yourself or community. In Attawapiskat you are surrounded by animals, water, forest, birds and natural life. Sometimes it is hard to see what you have when it is right in front of you. I love Attawapiskat and I love the Cree people because they too are pure in their own community, but here only drugs, alcohol and trauma hurt you.

When my mother was put into residential school and she lost her culture and my uncles and my aunt too all Indian people in Canada lost their culture when it started. Mohawks, Ojibway, Cree, Inuit, Haida, Algonquin, etc... Indigenous people down south recovered in a big way and many indigenous people healed from residential school down south, but I see the Cree are still suffering from Culture Shock and residential school trauma.

Our elders say when you take away the ceremonies and way of life for natives you are taking away their wisdom and connection to Mother Earth Once a person has been traumatized they need help or healing by therapist or native ceremonies.

Personally when I see how happy our people are, it usually is when they were raised with ceremonial parents. There is something beautiful in every culture once you take out the alcohol and drugs, so in that way, we all have been wounded a little.

In Six Nations, our ceremonies are still going and there are may social events that bring our people together for honoring Mother Earth and Creation. Today I see many young people and adults looking for their native roots and culture because they see how broken and lost society has become.

If the Cree people can get their ceremonies and cultural roots back, then they will not be hurt or broken.

People have to be reminded just like our elders had to remind us here over and over again until we started learning and healing, we are all learning till our last breath but we have no right to take our own life, only our Great Creator can take a life when our time is up.

Life is so sacred every minute, when times get tough we need to seek help to work out difficulties and what seems too hard to bear. If we had the positive teachers and healers in our life things would not get so bleak. We all need positive energy positive thoughts and beauty, love, respect, companionship, creativity and peace without this in our world, negativity gets in and destroys our health.

The residential school system did not take care of native youth or people and it broke the culture and our way of life.

This has to be said in the case of Attawapiskat because I heard it from the people, community and nurses and teachers too! Many northern communities need healing and resources fast!

When I look the faces of the children I worked with I am ecstatic from the Cree beauty! The idiosyncrasy of the children come from the earth, wetlands, marsh, moose, bear, wolf, deer and wounded parents.  When I study trauma this is what I see in Attawapiskat!

Many aspects of a child’s health physical and mental development rely on this primary source of safety and stability. Drug and alcohol abuse are a symptom of the pain never healed from residential school and it creates all forms of mental trauma for Indigenous people everywhere.

We need our native values and culture more than ever to fill our mind, body and spirit with that kind of medicine.

Like my uncle said, “Danny the kids need to see us laughing and having fun. They need to see us working together singing, starting a sacred fire, loading our pipes, eating together, praying, doing our Sacred Ceremonies in unity the way it was before residential school at the beginning.

In Memory of Alicja Rozanska