The season of reawakening

Page 5

Tansi, ahnee and hello. Sometimes these days you think you're ready to settle down. This might be the season for it. This season of reawakening when everything around you is in

the motion of coming alive again. You face the cast. The world becomes itself again, shaking off the sleeping robes of winter.

The land has fingers. They reach down deep inside of you and nudge that certain something which has always connected you with it. Home. You begin to realize that these days

you're becoming more and more aware that when you think of setting down you no longer tend to think of it as a place.

When you think of settling down you tend to think of it as becoming comfortable again with the land. Closing your eyes you can see that feeling of being comfortable reflected in the

memories of your grandfather. Tending nets and rolling bannock. From all of the stories of the old days you get a picture of a man moving through his life with the land. Going face to face with survival and performing all the necessary chores and duties with something you've come to recognize as love.

And that's what connects you with it. Love. And that more than anything is what our white brothers misunderstand. Politics. They tend to relate our connection with the land to politics. They tend to believe that for the most part, we are a politically motivated group of people. Perhaps it's the truth that the media creates misconceptions which gets them thinking this way. The media focuses very closely on the land claim battles currently underway all across North America. They outline very carefully Native people's claims to the land. They present a very political view. And thus we are political.

But we are more. We are a people whose ethics, values, principles and spiritual identities are tied directly to the land. Politics has simply become a necessary vehicle towards continuing those traditions.

There is an old story which outlines where our beliefs are really at. It seems an old man was being pressured by land developers to sell off the property which he and his family had lived on for generations. They were offering large sums of money. The old man put them off and put them off until in desperation they paid him a visit. "Why," they asked him," do you refuse to take our generous offer? This land is unfarmable. You are old and could be very comfortable in a modern home with all we're offering. Why do you not take our money?"

The old one sat and quietly smoked his pipe awhile. Finally he looked up at this visitors and said, "Come with me. I have something to show you."

"You see that corral over there? Well, me and a very good friend put up that corral one hot summer a long, long time ago. My friend has been gone a few years now but every time I walk around this yard and see that corral, my fried is with me again."

"And if you look up in that tree there you'll see the nails from where I built a big tree house for my kids to play around in. My wife and I would look out our window and watch the kids playing and we'd be happy that our family was happy and together. My kids all live in the city now and I don't see them lots but every time I walk around this yard and see that tree

my kids are with me again.

"And over here by the fence you can see that old rose bush. Well, every year that old bush blooms with two of the most beautiful red roses you've ever seen. We planted that rose bush the day after my mother and sister were killed I a car crash. Every time I walk around this yard when that rose bush is blooming my mother and my sister are with me again."

"And inside this old house are rooms filled right up with the things that my wife and I put together over many many years. All of those things have their story. My wife is gone now but every time I walk around that house and see all of those things my wife is walking beside me again."

"So knowing all that, how could you possibly offer enough money to take away all of this from me?"

All that weare as a people is tied to the land. Everything that we have ever been and everything we ever hope to be, is with the land. Our bodies and our eyes are the deep brown

of the land. Within our collective heartbeats is echoed the heartbeat of the land itself. When the land cries and suffers, the people cry and suffer. The land, our mother, our home.

The legal battles are not for ownership because no one can own the land. The battles are not for guardianship because the land is more than capable of healing an nurturing itself. The battle is rather for the right to remain connected to that which keeps us vital and alive as a people. That which reflects us as much as we reflect it.

Sometimes these days you think you're ready to settle down. And you're beginning to see that all the maps in the world will never help you find that place. It's a geography of spirit. It's already inside of you and it always was. Until next week, may you walk tall upon the land, Meegwetch.