An Onkwehonwe in Kanata

When I was about 12, my dad took me and my brother and my little sister on a historical tour of Ontario. We visited Fort George then up to Kingston to Fort Henry and the landing where Molly Brant came after fleeing the Haudenosaunee homelands in New York State. My dad is an amateur historian, and his focus is on Haudenosaunee/European relations in the 17 th  and 18 th  centuries. You’ve not lived until you’ve seen him at one of those funky re-enactment gatherings they have in upstate New York – but I digress. Then we travelled north to Midland, to visit Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Huron. I remember it was a beautiful early summer day, with the sky so blue. I ignored the carefully rebuilt European houses and chapel and instead spent all my time wandering through the reconstructed longhouses. I have long been fascinated with our ancestors and the way they lived their lives before contact. I remember my dad had to coax me away from the longhouses so we could go on the tour. We ...

This last month has been for me one of the most hectic and incredible times in my life. I have been blessed to be able to stand as witness as indigenous people across the occupied lands of Canada have started to awaken and stretch, galvanized into action. The first week of December I was in the wintry centre of the nation, Winnipeg, and had the honour and blessings of receiving some very good teachings from the APTN elders, Jules and Margaret Lavallee. They talked about the Seven Sacred Teaching of the Pipe and the Seven Natural Healing Ways. Both of these things I needed, having always known them but hearing them from the Ojibwe elders reactivated something deep inside my core. They talked at length about things that I needed to hear, having been wallowing in the despair of Jewel’s suicide, subsequent tragedies on my Rez, all of my health issues, and feeling completely hopeless watching the casual racism and arrogant erasure that I see every day in Canadian culture. And ...