One Native Life

by Richard Wagamese

  Every day we spoke with the elders and heard amazing traditional stories. Then we went to work. We brainstormed ideas, looking for a mix of the traditional and the contemporary, a symbiosis. We workshopped a number of things and one, a delightful theatre piece in which we built a talking human totem pole, was greeted with thunderous applause from the elders.

  I heard the Beedahbun teaching there. Every day I was up early, stepping out of the lodge to walk in the energy of morning. I looked for the joining, the blending the elders had told us of. It healed me when I found it, I was able to create spontaneously for the first time, and I walked away from that week-long retreat determined to become a storyteller.

  Others left determined to create too. Tomson Highway went on to write The Rez Sisters and other acclaimed plays. Billy Merasty became a successful actor. Shirley Cheechoo is now a fine film director and me, well, I’m a writer with many more stories yet to see the light of day.

  I still come to observe Beedahbun. Every morning, regardless of the season, I’m out early, walking in silence, opening myself to the mystery one more time. It never gets old. It never gets boring. It’s never the same way twice. The land works a subtle magic, and it’s in subtlety that the teaching comes. First light breaking. Shadow eased from the world. Spirit energy, in us, in the land, in the universe.

  Thunder Teachings

  . . .

  WHEN THE THUNDER rolls through these mountains, you feel it long before you hear it. We’re up high enough here that the air is a messenger. Standing on the deck, my skin a barometer, I feel the advance chill of a storm, then the dip in pressure like the lurch of an elevator.

  It’s not like the storms I remember as a kid. There’s no frightening clap to send you scurrying to your bed, the closet, the nearest adult. Instead, you feel a smug sense of satisfaction as you wait for it. It’s as if you’ve become a part of the mountains yourself. As the storm moves across the lake, birds fall silent and the dog raises her snout, scenting the cordite snap of lightning in the roar.

  Maybe it’s the Ojibway in me that is moved by this experience. Maybe there’s something in the traditional genes I carry that recalls the ancient teachings borne in the voice of the sky. Thunder Beings, spirit teachers flapping in on gigantic wings to illuminate, enlighten. Or maybe it’s simply the majestic, sonic beauty of it all.

  My people say the time of the first thunders is a sacred time. When thunder rumbles for the first time in spring, there are certain medicines to gather, sacred herbs that absorb the punch of it and become empowered for healing. Thunder is the sign of life force returning after the lethargy of winter. There are dances and ceremonies, prayer songs and rituals to celebrate it.

  When I was in my thirties I was invited to the opening of a Sacred Bundle, the Beaver Bundle of the Peigan people in southern Alberta. The bundle is opened after the first thunders are heard, and you must be invited in order to attend. Bundle keepers are particular about who is around when the sacred items in the bundle are exposed.

  I was working closely with a traditional elder then and moving in traditional tribal circles. I had a regular column in a native newspaper and produced a native newsmagazine program for a Calgary TV station. But when I was invited to the bundle opening, I felt more honoured than I had ever been.

  A Sacred Bundle is the medicine power of the people. Within it are objects valued for their spiritual integrity and their ability to transfer vital energy. The ancient prayers, songs and rituals performed at the opening are meant to re-energize the bundle and prepare us for the spiritual work we will do over the next four seasons. There are prayers at dawn and dusk. The sacred pipe is smoked, and there are rituals around each of the elements of the bundle that can’t be spoken of or written about.

  On the journey to the ceremony I was reflective and calm. The land seemed sharper in detail, and there was a solemnity to everything, so that a red-tailed hawk skimming over the front of the car took on an immense significance. I wondered at the appearance of coyotes and deer and crows. The land and its inhabitants seemed prepared for a time of union.

  The gathering was small. There were about twenty of us from a variety of backgrounds, traditional reserve-based people, urban Indians and a few non-native friends of the bundle keeper. What we shared was a deep respect for ceremony and its role in the health and well-being of our communities.

  When the ceremony began, a sense of sanctity was alive in the air. I can’t say much about the nature of that ceremony. I can say only that each element of the bundle was presented, prayed over, sung for and praised. I can say only that every one of those sacred objects was treated reverentially, and being in their presence was elevating. Their power presented itself as fully as thunder rolling over a mountain. I walked away filled with a sense of wonder.

  The opening of a Sacred Bundle is a returning. It cuts through the modern trappings of our lives and releases us into the elemental spiritual way. The truth is, we all have Sacred Bundles. They are our memories, our stories, our learning on this journey. They are everything we hold as special, as holy, as timeless. Each part is vital because it helps make us who we are. Opening up and sharing them is a ceremony in its purest sense. That’s true for all of us, Indian or not.

  Vanishing Points

  . . .

  MY PEOPLE SAY that there are seven hills to life. Each hill is a vantage point for looking back, though not everyone takes the time for reflection.

  There is a hill for youth and adolescence, a hill for adulthood and parenting. There are the hills of middle life, the teaching time, and on into the elder years, the giving-back time. The Ojibway say it is only in looking back that you discern the trail, identify the climb and rest contented in each stage of the journey. The final hill is the elevation of wisdom. From there you can look back on the vast panorama of your life and come to know who you are by virtue of who you’ve been.

  In the summer of 1987, I sat on a ledge of rock in the mountains of Montana with a young Blackfoot elder. We were part of a traditional gathering called Return to the Buffalo. We camped in a sacred meadow where people of many nations had gathered in pre-settlement times to share teachings and earth knowledge. Like then, the members of our group came from diverse cultures, and the time we shared there was built entirely on the true tribal way of life.

  The view from that ledge was amazing. The mountains around us formed a perfect bowl, a circle that seemed to contain everything. Across the gap of valley was a turquoise lake. The trees were a hundred shades of green, the sky a blue that pulled your gaze upwards and away and back again. The view itself was ceremony. I was crying. The experience of living the tribal way was what I had been searching out for years.

  We’d been separated into clans, and each of us had been given responsibility for parts of daily life. I was Beaver Clan, and we were responsible for firewood and watching over the children. There were traditional teachings about these responsibilities, and we’d gather under an arbour to hear them. I came to understand community there, came to know what unity looked like, how harmony could feel.

  Every night we sat in a round lodge and listened to the elders. We learned sacred songs on hand drums, heard stories, asked questions and were taught according to traditional protocol.

  The experience was moving and fulfilling. But it was time to go. Soon we’d head out, scattered across the Four Directions to wherever our homes were, and the likelihood of gathering together again in that way was slim. I was heartbroken. But it was time to go.

  We sat on that ledge for a long time as I told the young teacher how much this time had meant to me and how it hurt to see it end. He listened intently. When I had finished he looked across that sweep of valley. Then he told me about the seven hills, as it had been told to him by an Ojibway shaman.

  Nothing is ever truly lost, he said. Everything exists on energy, invisible and eternal. The highest form that energy takes is feeling. The heart has no questions, he said, and the head has no answers. Our heads tell u
s to believe in finalities, endings, but nothing is ever truly lost.

  The hills of life are resting spots, he told me. You only come to know that when you take the time to look back. Then you discover that everything you carry lives in you as feeling. We are in constant relationship with everything, he said, and relationships never end. They merely change.

  Take this place with you, he told me. Breathe it into you. Someday you’ll unwrap it and see it like it was, perfectly, truly. On that day, he said, you’ll see that there are no vanishing points. You can see forever from those hills, and you will never be lonely.

  I’ve forgotten his teaching from time to time, as we all allow the sublime things in life to fade. But when I remember it, during times that are tough or unclear, I realize yet again that the climb has been worth it. The view is spectacular from here.

  The Beetle Trees

  . . .

  AGAINST THE FLANK of mountain, red pine trees wither. As the pine beetles eat their way through the forest, the trees become incapable of moving water from their roots. You can hear them die in the relentless hurtling of needles to the ground. The cones drop heavily, roll sullenly to a stop. Even the wind has changed tone, keening as it passes through the branches.

  In our yard we’re losing five pine trees. We fought hard to save them. We’ve sprayed, applied Verbenone patches, watered and fed them. Those trees are all over a hundred years old, stately and refined. When they go we’ll be lessened, a clear-cut path through the soul.

  A pine tree gave me an important teaching once. It was the late 1980s, and I was in the forest with Jack Kakakaway. Jack was a veteran, a well-respected elder and powwow dancer. He’d survived a war and alcoholism and despair. He’d transcended racism and bigotry. He was rooted, settled, with a big laugh and a wild sense of humour.

  I’d come to Jack with questions, and he would point me in the right direction. He would never tell me something outright. He’d allow me to find my own path to the answer that was right for me. If I stumbled along the way, he was always there to encourage, affirm and validate my efforts. He was a great friend and a tremendous teacher.

  That day we were in the foothills gathering rocks for a sweat lodge ceremony. As we wandered through the trees, he talked about the Plant People and the teaching that trees are grandfathers and grandmothers with stories to tell if we learn to listen. He pointed to a large oak tree nearly clear of leaves. It stood on a hillside against the hard blue sky. Trees are more like us than we realize, he said. He pointed to the oak’s limbs and branches and shoots. They are like the network of veins and capillaries in our bodies, he said. Trees are alive, have a spirit, a history, and much to say to us.

  He told me to go for a walk. When I came across a big old tree that appealed to me, I was to sit under it, lean against the trunk and listen. There would be a teaching for me there if I was patient enough to hear it. So I left him and began to roam through that foothills forest.

  I found an old ponderosa pine that was tall and wide with thick roots that anchored it in the hardscrabble earth. There was a natural cleft in the spread of roots, and I settled in and leaned back. At first I stared upwards at the branches, watching the clouds through them. Then I closed my eyes and breathed, long and deep. I could feel the bark of the tree against my back and the slight sway of it in the wind.

  I leaned my head back and listened. It was the tail end of summer, and I could hear the rustle of leaves around me. Beyond that I heard the bawl of cattle on the rangeland a half mile below. There was traffic noise from the highway a long way off, and the sound of a jet somewhere to the south. In the trees I heard songbirds and, higher, the screech of a hawk.

  Then I listened for the sounds of the tree itself. There was a soughing of wind through the branches. A squirrel skittered along a limb. A bird twittered. A pine cone clattered branch to branch. Nearer the top I heard the claws of a porcupine or raccoon against the bark. But the harder I tried to focus, the more my mind wandered.

  Then, as I struggled to maintain my attention, I heard a voice. It said, very softly, “Shh.” That’s all. Shh. Grand-motherly, grandfatherly. Calming. Soothing. Settling. Shh. Be still.

  I must have sat under that tree for a few hours, with my eyes closed. When I opened them and went to find Jack I felt rested, filled with energy and a sense of peace. When I told Jack this and asked him what the teaching was, he only smiled and said that it would come to me.

  It did.

  Jack passed away nearly sixteen years ago. He was leading a sweat lodge ceremony for inmates at a federal prison when he had a fatal heart attack. Even at the end he was giving, teaching, leading. When I heard I went out and listened to the trees.

  It may have been only the wind I heard that day, the empty part of me reaching out for contact with my history, my people, my tribal self. But back then I needed to believe that there were voices in the trees, grandmothers and grandfathers with something vital to say. And the truth is that there are.

  The web of life is a fragile thing, and every strand is necessary. If we believe that the voices of our ancestors speak to us through the trees, we will fight to protect them. Standing here, watching my friends die, I know that it’s the struggle to protect life that saves us. The beetle trees will stand as a symbol of what we gained through the struggle, not what we lost. Shh. Be quiet. Be still.

  UFOs

  . . .

  IN THE MOUNTAINS the night sky is startlingly near. Darkness falls gradually here, and the first poke of stars over the southern ridge is cool as ice against the fading heat of the day. From our deck you feel pressed up against the sky as the rest of the stars emerge.

  I love the sky. I always have. Friends sometimes have wondered at my tendency to gaze up at it during gaps in our conversation. “Like you’re waiting for the words to fall,” someone said one time, and he was far more accurate than he realized.

  In the summer of 1989 I took a day trip with two friends into the foothills of southern Alberta. The drive out was wonderful. Van Morrison sang on the CD player, the windows were down and the coffee was hot and strong.

  We drove to an area where the Sheep River tumbles out of the mountains. There’s a small falls, and we picnicked on the flat rocks at the side of it. After a spell of reading, drawing or simply looking at the landscape, we hiked along a trail that meandered beside the river.

  Brian was a gifted fingerstyle guitar player who’d once lived in a tree house with a Cajun girl in Louisiana. During the Summer of Love he’d hitchhiked across the country with a cello. He’d been to Spain and France and Greece, and we had long conversations about everything from Dvořák and Son House to Marx and postmodern literature.

  Kathy was a Maritimer who’d grown up in Saint John, New Brunswick. She was a small-town girl at heart, old-fashioned and loyal, with an insatiable curiosity about the world. She was an artist, or working hard at becoming one. She was tall, brown-eyed and beautiful, worn down some by the moves of men. She and I had tried to be lovers, but we were better suited as friends.

  Each of us was in pursuit of a dream. For Brian it was a life of fulfillment through art and music. Kathy craved a home, a family, stability. Me, I was seeking definition as a native man and had vague hopes of writing, publishing, creating. It was our dreams that brought us together.

  When evening came we found a firepit in a campground and prepared supper. None of us wanted to leave. As darkness fell, we began to tell a shared story around the fire. Each of us would tell part of it, then pass the story on to another who continued the thread. The story, about a man who got lost in the jungle, was vivid and wonderful.

  It was late by the time we felt motivated to move. When the fire was doused, the darkness was complete, and we could feel the raw power of the land all around us. We walked wordlessly across the parking lot to the car. Driving out of the mountains, we kept the windows down so we could see the stars.

  We’d just slid out onto the gentle roll of the grasslands when Brian told me to s
top. After I pulled the car over he jumped out and ran a few steps into the field, gazing upwards at the sky. We joined him.

  What we saw in that night sky was unforgettable. They were lights, four, maybe five, orange and red and yellow. As they moved across the sky, you could tell that they were closer than the stars. They changed directions. They changed speeds. Their brightness altered, and when they came together suddenly in a tight formation, then disappeared at supersonic speed, we heaved a collective breath. The sky was stiller, emptier, than before.

  We sat there for a long time, wanting them to reappear. But they never did. Instead, the sky became a panorama of galaxies, planets and constellations. We watched it until our yawns signalled our need to be home. We didn’t speak for the rest of that drive. There were no words to describe what we’d seen.

  Brian eventually disappeared in the direction of Montreal, and Kathy found her man and home and permanence. We haven’t seen each other in years. But somewhere, I know, they both look at the stars and remember that night. We’re all Star People. We’re all part of the cosmos, and the air we share is the first breath of Creation. That means we can never be separate. We’re kin, and sometimes it takes magic to show us that.

  Two Skunks

  . . .

  WHEN I WAS in my late thirties I travelled to Temagami, Ontario, to attend a retreat for native men who had experienced cultural dislocation. We spent ten days reconnecting to traditional ways and teachings, guided by a team of elders and healers. Most of us were city dwellers, used to the pace of urban life. Most of us did not speak our language. None of us had ever directly faced the issues of our displacement.