The Audience Rumble
Sounded like the ocean
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. Things have been quiet around here and I apologize. That will all change soon enough. Trust that I have been thinking of all of you quite a bit, and I deeply appreciate your support. It has been a whirlwind lately.
A few nights ago as dusk was falling I ventured off trail at Council Grove to a spot beside a large ponderosa pine and, amid a cloud of sage smoke and earnest, if awkward, prayers, buried a gookooko’oo. That is owl, in Anishinaabemowen. This one was a great horned owl who came to me as a gift, delivered wrapped in a soft pillow case featuring a nature motif and placed inside a box that bore the Blick Art Supplies logo, and handed over to me during a solemn moment in the parking lot next to Lincoln Public Schools in Lincoln, Montana. I had spent the day talking to elementary and high school students there and was now about to speak to a surprising number of adults who were gathering in the school library.
The woman who passed this owl relative along told me she believes the owl was killed when they struck one of the windows of her lodge and, finding them in the aftermath, she didn’t know what to do. She considered taking them out and laying them to rest in the forest but feared her dogs would bring them back. She knew I was coming to do the presentation, and knew I am Indigenous. She contacted the school, who contacted me, to see if I would be willing to take the remains. She thought I might like the feathers, surmising that as a white woman she couldn’t keep them but as an Indigenous person I could. I learned most of this during our brief meeting in the parking lot. When I arrived at the school that evening I thought I was being brought feathers. I didn’t expect to receive an entire owl.
The gookooko’oo was beautiful with sleek, downy-soft feathers, and I was grateful their eyes were closed, as if they were merely taking a long nap. I considered attempting to take a few feathers but it felt wrong. I didn’t have a need for them and to take them just because I wanted them seemed disrespectful. Still, as I sat in the growing-dark speaking to the owl, wishing them a good journey, praying their spirit to find safe passage to the other side as gookooko’oo does for us, I asked permission for a couple feathers. A tug or two revealed it wasn’t granted and I accepted the decision. I shook the sage ashes from my abalone shell into the hole I’d dug then set the owl into it. I piled the earth I’d removed back on top of it, then sprinkled tobacco over the spot as I muttered a couple final prayers. I had no idea if any of what I was doing was suitable but it was the best I could do. Nor was I alone the entire time in the physical world either. I hope all the spirits involved recognized my efforts too.
I hadn’t originally intended to write about this story with the gookooko’oo but I did because I am thinking of gifts. Gifts from the world and the literal gifts we share with one another. I’m thinking of all the gifts my community handed to Robin Wall Kimmerer the other night in the University Center Ballroom on campus at the University of Montana, such an abundance of which I wondered how she would manage to haul it all onto the plane with her the next morning. I’m also thinking of the gift her words and her presence were to all of us. I’m thinking of the Giveaway Song that Northern Cheyenne singer/drummer Benji Headswift shared with the huge crowd to begin the event.
“Huge crowd” is no overstatement. I knew Missoula would turn out for Robin if we were able to get the word out and we did. The ballroom holds 1000 people and I’m told they crammed upwards of 1300 in before they started turning folks away at the door: more than 200. Several hundred more joined via zoom. When our escort came to get Robin and me from the second floor green room, we – Robin, me, Benji, UM president Seth Bodnar, and my friend Heather Cahoon – ascended via a freight elevator to the ballroom level. As we walked along the hallway on the backside of the ballroom the audience rumble from the other side of the wall sounded like the ocean. I wasn’t nervous. I was something else entirely.
I don’t know how much I really even want to say about the event. I haven’t entirely let go of the grip I have on my emotions. The entire day was everything I hoped it would be and more, and I fear that when I finally do take a breath and let it go I’m going to be a mess. I spent several hours alone with Robin, which was more than I expected to. From the moment her eyes lit up when I said, “Boozhoo, Robin,” when I picked her up at her hotel earlier in the day, and she smiled wide and said, “Boozhoo, you must be Chris!” it was one of those situations where spending time with someone feels like a return to a long-existing relationship that renews itself in complete comfort. That wasn’t something I really expected either.
I will say the most powerful thing to me about Tuesday was that it felt like a celebration of Anishinaabe thought and culture the likes of which I’ve never heard articulated before in my presence and I felt on the verge of tears the entire time. Not just during the main lecture but also during the Q&A that afternoon, and especially in the one-on-one time I had with Robin; in the car, walking on campus, and sitting in the green room before the event sharing a salad, just the two of us. So many of the ideas I’ve kicked around in my head and at times struggled to say out loud – ideas I’ve wondered about where they were coming from and if they weren’t just some white lighty bullshit I’ve inadvertently absorbed from somewhere else – were then coming out of HER mouth and it was … profound, though that word fails to really capture it.
Most importantly, I felt she respected me and treated me as a peer. I didn’t feel like a token at all, someone to bring into a situation and listen to and smile and then forget about, which is how I often feel when I am out and about on this business of speaking to where I come from.
When I took to the stage to introduce Robin, and then throughout her magnificent presentation, I have never felt more proud in my Anishinaabeness, or more mighty. I’m sure there were others there, but it didn’t matter. It was one of the most important moments in my life to stand beside and a step or two behind and in support of Robin Wall Kimmerer, showing those people what it means to be Anishinaabe, and have them go away, hopefully, with their hearts perhaps a little rewired.
I don’t know if my private ceremony with the gookooko’oo was the “correct” way to usher the little relative into the spirit world or not. But I think it was close enough. If there is one thing I am certain of it’s that, in lieu of having elders or any other kind of Anishinaabe community to live among here, my practice of going out into the world and trying to listen to the land for guidance is the right one. Robin Wall Kimmerer said so.
Even way towards the back of that huge crowd we could feel the power and energy and meaningfulness of it all. I am so happy to think of the two of you finding each other in the world. And I firmly believe innumerable hearts left the room rewired that night.
This is an exquisite way to start a Saturday. I’m so happy you got to experience this, to hold it, and now to have these words here to return to.