Blessing sets Elder's course

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At the age of 15, Ojibway Elder Alex Skead received a blessing from an elderly Aboriginal woman that was to mark the course of his life.

"I hope that one day you will have white hair like mine," she told him, " and that you will spend your life helping others."

The old woman blessed him because he offered to haul a sleigh carrying her frail husband and a canoe which she was struggling to pull on her own. The 15-year-old was already pulling his own sleigh, transporting a canoe, and his father, who was ill. He hitched one sleigh behind the other and began to pull the four adults, the child and two canoes.

"It was hard at first," he says, " but I soon got into the rhythm. "When the group stopped to camp for the night, the elderly lady presented him with a bowl of wild rice topped with dried blueberries and bestowed her blessing.

A resident of the Rat Portage Reserve in Northern Ontario, Elder Skead has worked on the street patrol in Kenora, helping Aboriginal people who were living in rough circumstances because of problems with alcohol.

These days, he visits Aboriginal inmates in Kingston and Stoney Mountain Penitentiaries, assisting them with sweat lodge purification ceremonies. He is an active participant in sweat lodges himself, given the negative energies he must absorb in his counselling of troubled people across the country.

"I need a lot of purifying," he said.

He counsels people to be understanding about others' problems. Punishment is certainly not the answer, he maintains. To illustrate, he tells of a coffee shop owner in Kenora who was owed $90 by a customer. She wanted to get the law involved to recover the debt, but Elder Skead suggested that she simply try inviting the customer into the cafe for a free cup of coffee to pass the time of day. This gentle handling of the situation worked, and the customer eventually paid back the money.

Overcoming our bad habits can take quite some time, the Elder reminds us. He took a feather from its place above his ceremonial drum and pushed the barbs on one side backwards, making a gap in the plume. It took him three or four tries before he was able to smooth the feather back into its natural shape.

"That's how long it can take us to correct our mistakes," he said. Persistence and patience are the keys.

"We all make mistakes," he said. "This is how we learn."

Elder Skead is as generous sharing the content of his dreams, as he is with advice based on his own life experience. He tells how he dreamed of a talking turtle that instructed him to cut a tamarack pole. This pole then turned into an Aboriginal man with long braids. The man's message was the Elder must preserve and treasure four things ? his language, songs, dances and ceremonies."

"I am my language," Elder Skead affirms.

"I don't go by the clock," the Elder said of his own lifestyle. "You have to slow down and look at either side of the road. If you're on a galloping horse, what do you see?"

And the Elder's other essential advice?

"Exercise the brain," he said. "And be aware that the creator is watching us."