The North-South Project

by Noah Richler

  Back inside the cabin, I can hear everyone rousing. I kneel down to light the heater and think about my dream again. The story of Sassuma Arnaa — or Sedna, as she is sometimes called — tells of the creation of the goddess of the sea. Sassuma Arnaa is a fearsome woman who controls human access to all the bounty of the deep. After she refuses to take a husband her father has chosen for her, she becomes pregnant with a dog. She gives birth to a litter of children that are half human and half dog and soon her offspring leave their mother to travel the world. In the many times I have told this story, I have never thought much about the nature of those dog children, beyond believing that they are a metaphor for diversity. The children are travelers that come back to the Arctic to make contact with their sea goddess mother again. That is the point of a story that passes no judgement about the inter-special nature of the children, even if the woman’s father is so angry because his daughter is pregnant with a dog, and the froth of emotions and violence so intense, that at the moment of her murder she is transformed into a supernatural being and her dismembered fingers into all the non-human animals of the sea.

  I think about my dream of travelling to a bountiful place and remember the pain of my cold and cracking feet. I think about the crossover the dream made from its own disquiet to the trauma of a bad memory of mine — and then to my assessment of the day’s weather.

  It becomes clear to me that I am a dog child, that my mother is a dog child, my children are dog children, my husband is a dog child, that my camping neighbours are dog children — that we are all dog children. We are travelers forever returning to the Arctic; forever connected to that cold ocean full of food and beauty, peril and death. We may well have a spiritual ancestor that dwells at the bottom of the sea, but she does not ensure our safety. In her haughtiness, she dares us to use our intellects to survive. If we want to exist, we must think.

  We are only lost for a time, frightened because we are disorientated, and only for as long as it takes for some other way of estimating our position in the universe to take the distress out of our condition. Language does this, navigating us through a world that might otherwise seem alien. It provides through the vessel of words that have been imbued with centuries of meaning; words that pass a torch, a guiding light, from one generation to the next. Words give us our bearings of existential longitude and latitude and the stories they communicate are a set of maps that in their entirety we call a culture, an encyclopedia of ways that explain how the world has come into being — and how we should conduct ourselves in it.

  AKIDEN BOREAL

  LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON

  Anishinaabeg First Nation, Canada

  The brochure for Akiden Boreal is cluttered with words, a pamphlet of the kind that has too much information, and in a font demanding a reader’s commitment. But we all read the brochure anyway, and saved it, and passed it around to our friends that get what it’s pushing, acting nonchalant for those that don’t. We hovered over while it passed from sweaty hand to sweaty hand, babysitting it until we are able to get it safely taped back onto the fridge behind the magneted pile of shit we can’t lose and have nowhere else to put.

  Akiden means vagina. Literally, I think it means “earth place,” or “land place,” though I’m not completely confident about the meaning of the ‘den’ part of the word and there is no one left to ask. I think about that word a lot because I approach my vagina as a decolonizing project and because metaphors are excellent hiding places. The brochure says that you can’t take any expectations into the Akiden. That whatever happens, happens. That this could be your first and only time in the natural world and you just have to accept whatever experience you have. For some it’s profoundly spiritual. For others it’s just full on traumatic. Still others feel nothing. The brochure says that learning takes place anyway. That the teacher, the Akinomaaget, will teach whatever way it goes.

  The confirmation number for my reservation at Boreal Akiden is written on a slip of paper, scotch-taped to the fridge behind the brochure that is also taped to the fridge so that it is hidden in plain sight. The reservation is for three hours on June 21st. I memorized the confirmation number because I was confident I’d lose the slip, so much so that on the same day I scratched it into the right front bumper of my car in case of early onset dementia. I’m not good at looking after important pieces of paper so I also wrote it on the eaves trough on the left side of the house, because houses are harder to lose than paper and no one will think to look there. The number is ten years old now, booked on the blind faith of youth, in the hopes that I’d have enough of a credit rating to borrow the money to pay for the three hours. Blind faith rarely pays off but this time it did, and I do. But barely. The bank says it will take me the rest of my life to pay off the loan, but it doesn’t matter. No one gives a shit about owing money anymore.

  I’ve read and re-read the Boreal Akiden brochure every night for the past six months and so has Migizi. A combination of fear and horror mixes with fleeting placidity when I get to the “Tips For a Great Visit” section. I’m worried that I’ll have a panic attack, or some sort of a meltdown, and fuck up my only chance in the place. The brochure warns in stilted legalese that a “sizeable” percentage of people visits the Akiden network and never recovers. They spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in. But this kind of desperation is a friend of mine, and I know myself well enough by now to know that perhaps it is better not to play Russian roulette like this with myself and Migizi. I also know myself well enough to know that I shall.

  When, last year, I asked Migizi to go with me he said yes, seemingly without taking the time to feel the weight of “yes” on the decaying cartilage that barely holds life together. People do all kinds of shit in the Akiden network, and in the tiny moment he said yes, it was unclear what he was saying yes to, exactly. The network was initially set up for ceremony, but when people thought about it, there are all kinds of things we can’t do anymore and all kinds of those things can be thought of as ceremony — having a fire, sharing food, making love, even just sitting with things for a few hours.

  I decided, ahead of time, not to ask Migizi, “Bald Eagle,” questions that I didn’t want answers to — about our visit to the network, or about anything else. And you should know that I’m not sorry. We are born of people that have been forced to give up everything, we have this one opportunity to give something to ourselves and we’re going to take it. We are fucking taking it. Even though the anxiety of occupation has worn our sense of worth down to frayed wires, even though there is risk — after all, everything we are afraid of has already happened.

  I arrived at Akiden Boreal a day early in accordance with the anxiety management plan I’d made, as suggested in the brochure. I booked a massage at the hotel, spent some time in the sauna and steam room, ate leafy green vegetables, did yoga and cardio, just like a white lady. Still I’m carrying a lot of fright that the two of us will just be caught up in our awkwardness and unable to relax. The brochure suggested taking anxiety meds, and most people do because it is a more controlled strategy then self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. I want to be the kind of person that can melt into the experience and feel fully present — I want to be that kind of person, but know in my core I’m not. I’m the kind of person that actually needs to self-medicate in order to not fuck up important things.

  Migizi and I had met at the hotel bar last night for a few drinks to reconnect before the visit. It was graceless at first for sure. But after the first bottle of wine I could see him breathing more easily. He stretched out his legs under the table and let them touch mine. My eye contact was less jolted and he seemed more confident as the night went on. The silently voiced you’re not good enough that marinates in the bones of my inner ear, and pricks at my edges, was a little quieter.

  Now, it’s ten a.m. and we’ve each had two cups of coffee, one at the hotel and one in the waiting room at the security check in for Akiden Boreal. You have t
o arrive a couple of hours before your scheduled appointment to make sure there is ample time for the scanning process. Last year some activists burnt down the Cerrado, a habitat of tropical savannah in Brazil, by sneaking in an old-style flint. They wanted open access, as I want too, but in the process, they disappeared the last members of the tropical savannah choir.

  I’m watching to see if Migizi is having the same reaction as I am, but he is good at holding his cards close to his chest. He drank three shots of whisky from a silver flask outside the door before we came in and I had two because I’m desperate to be able to feel this place. I tell myself our Ancestors would be okay with that because, after all, we’re going to be someone else’s Ancestors someday and I’d want my own grandchildren to do whatever they needed to do to experience this. Compassion and empathy have to win out at some point.

  We clear security and wait in the holding room until the Watcher comes in to unlock the door to the site. She does so at exactly noon. I walk inside and am immediately hit with the smell of cedar. It’s real cedar, not synthetic and, according to the brochure, that means it comes with a feeling, not just a smell. The brochure says to be prepared for feelings and to let them wash over you like the warm waves of the ocean. Here lies the key to a good visit, the brochure insists.

  I feel my body relaxing in spite of myself. The space seems immense even though I know my Ancestors would think it ridiculous, us figuring out the smallest amount of habitat that could sustain itself and then putting it in a big glass jar without a lid.

  I feel like crying. Actually, I’m starting to cry and I know Migizi hates that and I hate that too so I’m biting my lip but silent tears are falling all over my face anyway.

  Migizi licks the tears off my checks and takes my hand. We walk to the centre of Boreal Akiden, where there is a circle of woven cedar just as would have been laid by our Ancestors on the floor of a lodge. Migizi opens his hand and there are two tiny, red, dried berries in it. I ask. He says they are from his Kobade, his great grandmother, and that they are called “raspberries.” He says that they are medicine and his family saved them for nearly a hundred years in case one of them ever made it into Boreal Akiden. I ask him if they are hallucinogens. He says he thinks so. I’m becoming overwhelmed in the way the brochure warned us would happen and so I decide to eat one. We both do and, within minutes, I’m more relaxed and happier than I’ve ever felt. I’m drowning in peacefulness and calm and there is a deep knife of sadness being forcefully pulled out of me.

  Migizi reaches over and touches the skin on my lower back with just his fingertips. It feels like he’s moving around the air that is the very closest to my skin. I’m losing track of my body, the edges are letting go, and I’m a fugitive in a fragile vessel of feelings and smells and senses. My lungs draw moist air into deeper reaches, my back is arching, my heart feels like it is floating out of my chest.

  Then Migizi lies down on the cedar bows, on his side, facing me. He puts his right hand on my cheek and kisses my lips. He’s kissing my lips and in doing so he is touching a part of me that I’ve never shared with anyone because I didn’t know it was there. There is a yellow light around his body and I can feel it mixing with my own. Part of me is a pool of want, and part of me is a waterfall filling up that want almost faster than I can desire. At one point Migizi stops and takes his clothes off, which he’s never done before because he’s afraid I will see his self-hatred, the self-hatred we both share and that we pretend does not exist. And we’re there, in the middle of Boreal Akiden. Naked. Embraced. Enmeshed. Crying. Convinced that being an Akiden addict for the rest of our lives is important; convinced that living as an addict, that dying as an addict, is unconditionally worth it. Convinced that breaking all of our healthy connections to the city, the concrete and even the movement — for the chance to be here one more time before we die — is worth it.

  Because this is how our Ancestors would have wanted it.

  Said the wise traveler, “Everything happens all the time, it’s just up to you to notice it.” So it follows that the past is never lost. What happened ‘once’ continues to happen, and many times — in the Arctic, in Akiden Boreal. In Louisiana.

  IKO IKO INDIAN

  Joseph Boyden

  Ontario, Canada and Louisiana, USA.

  Mardi Gras Indian tribes have a hallowed place in New Orleans’s history. Many of the men and women in these tribes claim heritage to runaway slaves adopted into local Indian ones in that most shameful episode of American history. Many refer to themselves as ‘Redbones’, people of mixed African-American and Native blood. The lore tells us that during Reconstruction, when carpetbaggers were descending into the south, neighborhood gangs formed in different pockets of New Orleans with names like ‘Creole Wild West’ and ‘Yellow Pocahontas’. Turf wars were common then, and many people died violently.

  Americans prefer their Indians to be safely a species of the past. Whether as a fleeting memory of proud Sioux dashing across the plains on horseback or of natives brutally slaughtering the settler hero General Custer and his Seventh Cavalry; of Tonto speaking in monosyllables, or Sacagawea bravely leading her white explorer-cum-lover across the Eden of the New World, Americans would rather not be bothered by the reality, not possibility, that these strange, frightening, confusing, and confounding beings actually still exist — and in large numbers — across not only the rural, but also urban landscapes of the United States. After all, one of the supposed benefits of Manifest Destiny and the westward expansion it entailed was for America to be rid of these vicious pests.

  Certainly most Americans would rather not have to reflect upon the black and white photo of Spotted Elk lying dead in the snow, forever frozen in a pose in which it seems that he’s trying to sit up. The battle at Wounded Knee marked the end of the Indian resistance and the end of Wild West America, too. Three hundred Indians were slaughtered at Wounded Knee by a vengeful Seventh Cavalry, most of the victims women and children. Twenty Medals of Honor were handed out to the men who so bravely cut them down and that was that. The Indian problem was solved.

  Of course, New Orleans isn’t so much a part of America as a banana republic existing in the southern reaches of the United States. And yet it’s not a place that whitewashes its history. New Orleans is a city where history continues to breathe, continues to ooze from the cracks in the brick walls of old mansions, continues to peek out from the branches of 400-year-old live oaks, continues to express itself in ever-evolving customs from Mardi Gras to second lines. The city may not be a place in which, should you think of it, immediately Native Americans come to mind, for there’s no doubting that this city, northernmost port of the Caribbean, is a roiling pot of many races and cultures: African-American, Creole, Cajun, Spanish, French, Irish, Italian, and Vietnamese. But, in its strange and purely New Orleans way, there also exists a Native American culture here that is unlike any other.

  Before the arrival of the Europeans, and then well into its occupation, South Louisiana and especially the area in and around the present day city of New Orleans was a teeming landscape of numerous, distinct tribes — Atakapa, Houma and Natchez, Chitimacha, Choctaw and Chickisaw, Coushata and Tunica to name just a few. When the French came looking for a place to settle, the natives were those that graciously pointed out the relatively small square of land along the Mississippi that didn’t flood — the place that would become the Vieux Carré. The natives did also warn that the temptation to build beyond what is now better known as the French Quarter was a bad idea. The beast that can take the form of flooding sometimes does not visit for many seasons, though visit the beast certainly would. But of course the French, and then the Spanish that followed, appear to have forgotten that warning, or never listened, extending the borders of New Orleans not just along the Esplanade Ridge — another strip of safe ground pointed out by the original locals — but far beyond.

  As it always does, the excitement of constructing a new city was acco
mpanied by great hubris. In this instance, the hubris lay in believing that we could stem the waters with levees. Even the most cursory review of New Orleans history points out the sheer folly of the levees, it being true that even those Americans who desperately try to pretend there is little history in this country beyond a few glorious wars, are hard put to claim not to know what happened to New Orleans, the city that care forgot, in late August of 2005.

  Suffice it to say the Indians were right, as they have been all along — at least when it comes to knowing what the land can sustain and what it can’t.

  But, today, where exactly are these first peoples I speak of? As much as I might wish that New Orleans were a magical place where Indians somehow managed to avoid the horrors imposed upon their brethren in the rest of the United States, this is not the case. Just like everywhere else across North America, huge swaths of these original peoples fell to European diseases, while others were forced onto the Trail of Tears or into slavery or banished from their lands and compelled to live on tiny reservations that, more often than not far, were far away from their traditional homes. Long story short, of all the tribes that once flourished here, not many remain.

  But history in New Orleans cannot be forgotten because those who live here are surrounded by it. We live in shotgun homes that, once narrow Mississippi River barges, were re-purposed for dockworker families, or in camelback homes so-called for families that grew and were able to afford to build a second story out back. Here, history is not some blurry image of the past; on the contrary, the city’s history is a present, surrounding force. History blossoms right before our very eyes.