Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh is waiting at the front doors of Robarts Library at the University of Toronto and the sign says it opens at 8:30 a.m. The grass is burnt, the sky is grey and it is on its way to feels-like-38-degrees-Celsius, so Mindimooyenh is using Robarts as their cooling station. They are dressed like a white lady in navy blue slacks, a white blouse and sensible beige sandals. They have their fake U of T student ID so they can access floors one through three of the stacks and use the computer. Mindimooyenh doesn’t expect to be in Robarts very long. They expect to be sent to the medical library, because it wouldn’t be research if it wasn’t a goddamn wild goose chase.
Mindimooyenh’s current research topic is neuroplasticity. It has only been in the last part of the twentieth century that zhaganash have learned that brains can change over the course of an individual’s life. Of course Mindimooyenh has always known that the brain is a relational organ, that it is constantly building and rebuilding networked pathways, constantly removing or reconnecting synaptic pathways. Brain as ecosystem. Repetitive thoughts and actions wiring and rewiring the brain.
You are what you do, as Akiwenzii says.
Mindimooyenh believes this is the function of ceremony. Ceremony strengthens the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and empathy. Ceremony is not just one big dumping ground of sharing circle. It is not a performance. It is not even necessarily designed to make you feel better.
It is exercise. The repetitive meditative nature. The long hours. Continually bringing wandering distracted minds back into the presence strengthens the prefrontal cortex, releases neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and melatonin, killing anxiety, depression, addictions and insomnia.
Exercise that widens the network and tightens the connection. Exercise that produces and reproduces love.
Mindimooyenh is writing all of this down in tiny notebooks that open vertically and fit into the palm of their hand. They are using ballpoint pens they stole from hotel lobbies and banks.
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh writes in the middle of their yellow notebook on the light blue lines:
“Ceremony is not about Creator.”
Lucy
Lucy is in the bush sleeping and dreaming and this is when Mindimooyenh comes back to read their research notebooks out loud as if Lucy weren’t there. Mindimooyenh uses the first names of researchers whose papers they have sort of read parts of like they know them personally. Mixed in with the science, Mindimooyenh also has meticulous notes about the weather, the prices of the things they purchased that day and what they ate.
Lucy finds the research both interesting and irritating. Irritating because there is a quality to it that seems appropriative, like white-people mindfulness and yoga. Interesting because it seems like the key to everything. Irritating because it’s never that easy, it couldn’t possibly work that well and hardly anyone goes into ceremony with an open heart anymore anyway.
Mindimooyenh shows up for the four nights at dusk and reads their notes anyway. On days they don’t go into the city or on the computer, it is just a list of things they ate.
Lucy
Lucy is having a dream about Ninaatig walking around downtown Toronto on their roots. In the dream, it is easier than one might think, because no one but kids and birds really pays attention to where trees are and no one believes kids or birds. Still, Ninaatig is stealthy, and moves quickly and then rests for a long while. Lucy would like it if Ninaatig could follow them. Ninaatig mostly hangs out in the Don Valley on the right side of Rosedale Valley Road where the Nishnaabeg and their friends have their tents. They also live in the sky and the earth and the present, so Ninaatig feels less lonely.
Ninaatig
The city is not Ninaatig’s favourite, but that’s where the work is, and so that’s where Ninaatig is, at least during the warm weather. They spend most of their nights on the right side of Rosedale Valley Road with Adik and sometimes Sabe, but lately, they have been heading down to the lake to Tommy Thompson Park. There is a kid there that needs them too. The kid just doesn’t know it yet.
Ninaatig
The kid has a red glow to them like when rock gets heated up in the sweat. They spend all their time thinking about birds but not in the usual way humans think about birds, more in the way birds think of themselves, Ninaatig notes. This kid is a bit too fearless, in that they are spending more and more nights in the park, lying amongst the shrubs and trees as if they were part of the landscape, sometimes lighting the tiniest of fires, almost theoretical. Ninaatig worries the most about Asin, they sure do. This kid gets barely enough REM sleep to function and is always down here talking with the birds all night, writing weird poems in an overpriced notebook.
Ninaatig doesn’t get it. But they rub Asin’s back beside the tiny fire anyway. Maybe Akiwenzii can straighten this little nutbar out, they think.
To be honest, if anyone is going to get Asin, it should be Ninaatig. It’s just that you certainly do not know what you’ve lost until it’s gone and Ninaatig still has the birds. They still visit hourly. They still come for tea and to catch up. They still build their homes in Ninaatig’s branches. They still say goodbye before their long trips. They still tell Ninaatig all the stories, and gift the world with their young in Ninaatig’s canopy. They still sing all the songs. This is so normal for Ninaatig that it is Ninaatig, and so they can’t imagine a reality without it.
Unlike Asin. Asin lives with the hole and is driven to fill it.
Asin
Asin is interested in the behaviour of birds, but not in the way that behavioral ecologists are interested, not within the enclosure of Western science or evolution, so when Asin is birdwatching in Tommy Thompson Park, every single day of the year at dusk, they are watching something quite different than everyone else.
Asin is watching for bird ethics. They are watching for how birds interact and communicate with each other. They are watching for how bird communities understand consent, care, self-determination, sovereignty. They are watching for queerness.
When Asin is not at work at the community radio station, and not at Tommy Thompson Park, they are watching the birds at their feeder, which is located on their fire escape. They are reading about birds. They are taking online courses from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They are checking various birdwatching apps for the locations of rare species, and they are watching. They are always watching.
Asin is careful with the birding books, the websites and the apps and they treat the knowledge in them as suspect. The base for Asin is the things Akiwenzii has told them. The stories of the Bineshiinyag of when the earth was just being built. Bineshiinyag as carries and movers and spreaders and processes of knowledge through their relationship with seeds. This is the sole reason Asin watches, and they don’t watch with their eyes and their brain, they watch with their heart and their muscles.
Asin
There are lots of people interested in Asin for reasons that baffle Asin. They are always the last one to know. They also think it’s just friends and nothing else, even though that’s almost never the case. There is a string of disappointed hearts, some of them even broken, trailing Asin because their needs have not been met. Asin barely notices. Asin is often challenged by love and humans. It is only within Asin’s capacity to practice those kinds of relations with birds. Particularly the boreal owl they have been watching for four winters now.
Asin
Asin knows the word for owl is kookooko’oo. But they don’t know the word for boreal owl. Akiwenzii is trying to remember but so far they can only remember gaakaabishiinh, which is a screech owl. Akiwenzii doesn’t get why Asin is so obsessed with this damn owl, anyway. The old people didn’t even like owls. They thought they were bad omens, a warning to start paying better attention.
Lucy
Asin gets frustrated with Lucy’s radio silence. It has been three
days and they don’t understand what Lucy could possibly be doing that means they cannot type three words into the phone and press send. Particularly when they know Asin’s mental health depends upon it. It’s hard for Asin to believe this is not deliberate. Lucy is smart. Asin has used their words repeatedly. It cannot be this difficult to learn how to love Asin. Asin has set the terms out fairly clearly.
Asin also knows the pattern. Late on the fourth day, Lucy’s text will show up dripping with missing and loving and Asin won’t buy it, not one little bit. Lucy will persist. Asin will break down and by day seven it’s back to normal. Every time.
It isn’t exactly a secret that Lucy takes off every month for four days to fast. As in, Lucy has never set out to hide it. They just didn’t tell anyone the first time, or the second time. Then it became part of the routine. Part of how they gathered courage. Lucy has no idea how Mindimooyenh found out. They just showed up with their big purse full of lists one day. Lists and baggies.
Lucy’s lodge is at the back of Akiwenzii’s property and beside the dump. The saplings they used to build it are not exactly saplings. They are wire frames from the election signs when Sean Conway ran for the NDP. Lucy didn’t feel right about killing saplings to make the lodge when there was a big stack of useless signs on the ground, so they fashioned the ribs out of their lodge with the wire. It worked fine. It felt good.
Asin
A book Asin does spend a considerable amount of time with in a less suspicious way is Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl, Ph.D. Asin is particularly drawn to the section on Canada geese. They read pages 483 and 484 over and over until it is paraphrased into their brain with a particular rhythm. Two Canada geese of the same sex sometimes pair-bond. Sometimes they even form triads, usually two females and a male. Sometimes, one of the females will mount another female. Some lesbian pairs raise a family. Then an example of two lesbians is relayed in which one partner built a nest and laid eggs while the other stood guard, and then the other partner built her own nest next to the first and also laid eggs. None of the eggs hatched, though, because they constantly rolled the eggs (which may or may not have been fertile) between the two nests and broke them all.
Asin sees only the purest form of love.
The passage then goes on to explain how snow geese are better lesbian parents than Canada geese, because they build only one nest and lay twice the eggs of the heterosexual couples.
Asin
Asin never finds it easy to read the words “mount” and “copulate.” Nor are they happy with the assumptions that Bruce makes about Canada goose lesbians. Nor are they happy about the trauma porn Bruce has created out of the tragedy this young lesbian couple faced. Nor are they happy these are the two paragraphs in the book they are drawn to. Nor are they happy that snow geese are always the higher-end geese.
Asin eventually gets to page 485 and, after reading the part about snow geese there, they reconsider their take on the snow goose, and then rip the page out of the book, because anthropologists, even bird anthropologists, generally get most things wrong and anthropology is always more about your own bias than the thing you are studying.
Asin tries to remember this in Tommy Thompson Park.
Lucy
There are things Lucy wants to add to their life and they think about these things one time a month during the fast in the bush beside the dump. They want to hunt. They do hunt deer, but they’ve never killed one. They want to hunt one, kill it, skin it, and tan the hide with the brain. There are some problems, though. No one on the reserve remembers how to tan hides with brains. This is not an overwhelming obstacle, though, because the Dene know how and they are experts. They can even do it in the city in front of tourists and protect those hides from every bad zhaganash thought that tries to penetrate them. The biggest problem is that Akiwenzii can’t move around in the bush like they used to, so Lucy and Akiwenzii hunt from the truck and on short walks in a farmer’s field — the one farmer that will give them permission. The real problem, though, is that Lucy is a bad shot. A real bad shot. They need more practice.
Lucy
Lucy thinks: Things unfold in good time.
Lucy thinks: Sometimes you have to make things happen.
Lucy thinks: There is a tension between unfolding and making.
Asin
Asin can only sleep for more than two hours at a time if there is a fire. Summer in the city presents a huge problem, because although Asin was able to find an apartment with a fireplace, they cannot find an outside location in the city where they can build a fire and so sleep deprivation is their current norm.
Open air burning includes bonfires, fire pits, sky lanterns and the use of various types of outdoor fireplaces (also known as a “Chiminea”). Although outdoor fireplaces can be purchased at retail outlets throughout the city, it does not mean open air burning is permitted for their use.
Open air burning is not permitted within the City of Toronto and is enforceable under Ontario Fire Code Article 2.4.4.4.
Asin has tried a candle.
Asin has tried YouTube videos of fire.
Asin has tried renting the campfire pits at Dufferin Grove Park.
Asin has tried lighting a fire in their backyard fire pit, but on day three the Fire Department showed up because the zhaganash neighbour lady called “out of concern.”
Asin has tried lighting the fire in the fireplace and using the air conditioner at the same time to keep the temperature reasonable but the fire was too strong a force.
Asin has tried to make a campfire smell out of a concoction of essential oils but what they created was more like Pine-Sol.
The bottom line is, if Asin wants to sleep for more than two hours in a row, they need to get out of this city.
Which was exactly Akiwenzii’s plan all along.
FOUR
PLASTICISM
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says: “Tarps are made out of polyethylene.”
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says (quoting Wikipedia): “As of 2017, over 100 million tonnes of polyethylene resins are produced annually, accounting for 34% of the total plastics market.”
Mindimooyenh
Their heart sinks.
Mindimooyenh
Their heart sinks.
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii says: “one tonne = one thousand kilograms.”
Akiwenzii
Every morning Akiwenzii gets up at biidaaban. Biidaaban comes at a slightly different time every day so Akiwenzii gets up at a slightly different time every day. They walk down to the lake at the end of their property. They put tobacco. They pray. They sing four songs to the water, and then most mornings, tears leak, because with water there is affinity.
Akiwenzii
Every night since June 21, Akiwenzii drives to Kinomagewapkong at 11 p.m. to sleep on the rocks. It’s the only place they can sleep for more than two hours in a row, so in the summer they sneak back here at night as much as possible. Their Elder status gives them the key and as long as they are gone by 4:45 a.m., before the first dog-walkers show up in the park, they can get in and out undetected. Plus it is cool there in the summer and there are no mosquitoes.
Akiwenzii parks the truck in the closed parking lot, goes through the chain-link fence, locking it behind them, and opens the door of the building Ontario Parks has built over the site. They slip off their moccasins, put down their pipe and drum and roll out onto the rock after they put some semaa down and speak to the rock.
They turn off all the power and the security cameras because they are allowed to if ceremony. Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at 11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Akiwenzii
The next night, Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at
11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Akiwenzii
The next night, Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at 11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Akiwenzii
The next night, Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at 11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Akiwenzii
The next night, Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at 11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Akiwenzii
The next night, Akiwenzii lies down with their head on one of the deep crevices. They wake up at 11:55 p.m., hardly enough sleep, but just enough time to carve.
Ninaatig
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