'A Sharing with Those Who Know'

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The following article is excerpted from "A Sharing with Those Who Know", a book being written by former Windspeaker editor Dianne Meili to commemorate elders from ten different nations in Alberta. The collection of inter views ad poetry will accompanies by color photographs. Dianne Meili is the great-granddaughter of Victoria Calihoo, a well-known Cree elder born in 1860 in the Edmonton area. "A Sharing with Those Who Know" will be published in 1991.

Rose Auger scoops up a handful of black dirt and surveys the freshly tilled garden plot behind the Faust community hall. In her mind, she walks through imaginary rows of leafy vegetables. It's only spring and the garden has just been seeded, but she hopes it won't be long before she's picking red tomatoes and green peas.

Though her ancestors didn't grow food, Rose sees her garden as a necessary "tradition" for the coming years.

"It's not hard to figure out we have to create another way of sustaining ourselves. Indians especially have to keep our earth intact. If we have no more land, we cannot carry out our religion, our traditional ways. We cannot even pick medicine plants."

The Cree medicine woman's moccasins leave tiny imprints in the soft garden dirt as we head back to her two-story log house, passing by a sweatlodge and woodpile in her yard. Inside her large kitchen, Rose sets coffee cups steaming with strawberry-mint tea on the table and sits down. Her dark eyes are piercing and her expression intense as she continues talking about self-reliance - a must for the future.

"Many Indian people live on reservations. They have all kinds of land. They can sustain themselves by raising domestic animals and growing food. We have to find our own natural way of surviving and go back to our ceremonies.

"Now we have T.V., bingo halls and things like that. It's all out there and it deals with trying to be economically stable. Well, it's a fantasy, a dream, and it's destroying our children and our homes. We have to get back to our traditional life because then you become work, you're happy ....you're at peace. You can put in a garden, you can pick your own medicines, your own natural foods. There is so much you can do for yourself which keeps you healthy. You are outside doing these things. In the other world you sit and you say and you eat and eat and become very unhealthy."

With a feeble body, things just get worse, says Rose, suggesting the sweatlodge is a good place to become healthy again, a place where "your body, mind and spirit are all brought back into balance. It's a purifier of your self and it takes toxins out of your body. It cleans your soul, your spirit."

Rose laughs and refers to the sweatlodge as her people's "treatment center" because it was used to "put everything in place." She insists "what we had was far superior to anything in this new world to keep us healthy and happy and give us a clear vision of what life should be."

People today have forgotten how to live, Rose insists, and she knows many Native people who are not willing to sacrifice living the strict and powerful way according to the Creator's laws. She believes this unwillingness will eventually bring destruction.

"There is a prophecy. We know the time is coming. It's a time of purification. There will be floods, eruptions....many things. The earth is starting to rebel against what is going on - it's so unbalanced. The purification is going to happen and when it does we are going to have to start over. We are near to that time.

The medicine people and prophets Rose travels to meet with in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and the United States have said for many years that people need to prepare themselves for the purification.

Medicine bundles, sacred songs and ancient ceremonies, used by the first nations on this continent to survive long ago, are once again needed for survival. These sacred things kept the spirits of the people open to the Creator's guidance and love, and kept them firly connected to the great mystery, Manitou (the Great Spirit)

The word "disconnected" comes up often when Rose discusses the way most people are today. She suggests the first Europeans who landed in North American became disconnected from being "at one" with the land and their Creator because they left their important part of themselves, their spirit connection, she says.

"The emphasis was put on economic development instead of human development is the finding of your identity by looking at your history, your roots. It's a way of life that guides you and helps you to know the right thing to do."

Without this kind of human development, people disconnect from the guidance of the Creator and look to themselves alone for direction, Rose explains. With the spirit connection gone, the mind and body take over, and they "get stuck on themselves and nothing else matters." The mind and body are self-centered and want to find comfort with the least effort.

When people come to Rose to regain their lost spiritual connection, she helps them to realize the world does not revolve around them.

"We have to relate what's around us - be it a tree, a blade of grass or clear spring water," say says, stressing each person must understand he or she is not more important than the Creator's other miracles.

This realization does not come easily to most people who have learned to over-individualize and worry mostly about their own comfort, rendering life much more complicated than it was meant to be. They have grown up using their minds and not nurturing their spirits. A person must be totally sincere in wanting to know the truth about life, and willing to break down old, deep-seated ideas.

Most people, especially young people, want knowledge right away. "But it doesn't happen like that," says Rose. Peoples beliefs are layered around them, and the layers are hard to peel off because they're so tough from years of reinforcement. Just like an onion, the layers must be gently peeled away ntil the soft heart at the center is exposed.

Rose's house is often home to young people who want to find their identity and re-establish their connection with the Creator. They pray and in the sweatlodge, work in the garden and, Rose hopes, begin to become more aware of the beauty of the land around them.

Their training begins with a give-away - an offering to the teacher. "When you work with an elder, the elder is gifted in a certain way and he uses the gift to help you. So for me, you must bring four colors (of cloth), three packs of tobacco and a gift. It should be something that makes you feel good to give away or something that hurts you to give away."

Once the offering is made, the giver receives his or her Indian name in a ceremony. This is an important rite because it gives the seeker an identity, it reflects their true nature. It is who they are.

"You have a helper in the spirit world who is with you all the time. It's like your double in the spirit world. That's who you are. That's your Indian name, your real name.

"You begin to understand yourself, why you are the way you are, because your name teaches you that."