We Know About the Way
They treat the chickens
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I’m wrapping up the end of what has been a furiously busy month. I disappeared into the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone in late May and don’t feel like I ever returned. The workshop there for Yellowstone Forever, then a visit to sit fireside with the Buffalo Field Campaign folks for a couple days on the way home; next a trip to Choteau for the Mitchif Heritage Keepers festival, then on to Bozeman for a Little Shell presentation on behalf of The Extreme History Project, then back to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for some important meetings followed immediately by a writers conference in Jackson, WY. All while also facilitating a weekly online poetry workshop.1 If it sounds like a lot, it has been. If this sounds like complaining, it isn’t. I am incredibly grateful for all of these opportunities and the people I get to share stories with along the way. Some of the experience has been rutted and rocky and heart jolting but I’m truly better for every bit of it. This is the work, and sometimes work is hard.
The downside is I’m way behind on correspondence and such, and I know a few folks reading this are waiting on responses from me. I will get to them … eventually. Newsletters and the like, which pile up so quickly, may go unread, but who knows. Miigwech for your patience. I am grateful that so many of you have chosen to support my efforts – this space is a big part of that. Which seems like a fitting time to remind everyone reading that a paid subscription2 really is what supports these efforts, and my gratitude for those of you who do so runs deep.
Last week at a ranch near Emigrant, Montana, I was sitting outside at a big wooden table having dinner with several other people. The conversation was informal and spirited and rich with hilarity. Next to me the delightful Alicia Murphy – not only the NPS historian in Yellowstone National Park but also one of my latest BFFs – was relating a story that I don’t recall, but it involved a friend she was trying to describe as being “comfortable.” The metaphor she used didn’t really sink in until another person – a young Spokane woman named Deviney who claimed to only be at the conference because she didn’t want her mom to make the drive all the way from their Washington reservation alone, yet whose perspective would prove invaluable to the upcoming conference discussions – remarked, “Wait, did you say, ‘if she was a piece of furniture she would be a couch’?!” Hearty guffaws all around.
You probably had to be there, but it was riotously funny. This dinner event, the entire evening, which concluded with a handful of us “closing the place”3 fireside under a magnificent, chilly, star-filled sky while a great horned owl mother and her three offspring practiced flying – and screeching and squawking! – all around us, was the best part of the entire gathering. We were members of several different tribes, all with our differences, sharing stories with white folks – YNP and YF people – representing their people and culture every bit as much as us Indians were, and we were all getting along wonderfully. It was the reason I wanted to be there in the first place, to build this kind of community.
The night ended when I heroically used an empty plastic 40-gallon-or-so garbage can to dip water from the nearby creek and deliver multiple dousings (accompanied by copious steam and hissing) to the coals of the fire. Any chance they had of bursting back into flame was ended. “Wow, I never would have thought to use the garbage can!” someone said. I puffed up my chest and said, “Leave it to a trash can Indian!”4
Before dinner we had an exercise that involved painting in watercolors. I have not painted like this in probably 40+ years but I have to say I enjoyed it. The organizers gave us all paper to paint on with numbers on the back. When they were placed together, they made the shape of Yellowstone Park. We were each to depict something meaningful to us about the park. I produced a rendering of a strawberry: a big red blotch shaped like a heart and speckled with black dots. Even now if you were to see it you might say, “That is a strawberry?” and I would beam with pride and say, “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“That night Creator had a profound dream of a brilliant red berry. It carried its seeds on the outside and was shaped like a heart. When ripe, this fruit brought great sweetness.”
– Asha Frost
The following afternoon I had some time to myself. There were other non-formal events scheduled but I skipped them. I had to do a little prep for the poetry workshop I would facilitate via laptop from my room later and I wanted to make sure it was all going to work. I was also a little overwhelmed with verbal human interaction and needed to take some time to reflect. After I assured myself everything would be ready for the workshop, I wandered around the ranch a little bit, then settled on a large rough-hewn bench near the edge of a small pond. There were aspens and cattails and swallows and red-winged blackbirds and willows to keep me company. Most happily I was able to spend a fair amount of time watching my little relative Wazhashk – muskrat – paddling around, munching reeds, living his best wazhashk life. It was quiet and peaceful and necessary.
I amused myself reflecting on Alicia’s couch comment. I decided that if I were a piece of furniture, I would like to be this bench: a little rough and weather-worn and mossy; serviceable for its purpose, but splintery enough to be cautious around. Not that pretty but reasonably comfortable, even if just for a short time, and a place to linger and then move on from, hopefully with a fond memory or two. In other words, not the kind of thing you drag indoors to design a bougie room around, you know?
It’s easy to think the current age we are living in is unique and unprecedented in its constant and frustrating level of strife. That somewhere in the past everybody got along all the time. If that point in time ever existed it was brief. Even in Anishinaabe culture we recognize that once we all did such a terrible job getting along that Kitchi Manitou delivered a great deluge onto the world just to flush out all the bullshit. That Creation story, which ends with the creation of Turtle Island, features little Wazhashk in the heroic, starring role, when he gives his life in a deep dive to bring back a paw-ful of soil from the bottom of the great water with which the land may be re-created. Even now, thinking of that sacrifice – who made it, and how and why – makes me a little verklempt. It reminds me no one is insignificant, that everyone matters, and that we are all capable of the greatest contributions to the world we all share.
Wazhashk is not one of our Grandfather Animals5. That is to say, he isn’t one of the seven animals associated with our 7 Grandfather Teachings. Those illustrious relatives who are include Ma’iingan, Makwa, Gaagaagi, Amik, Miskwaadesi, Bizhiki, and Migizi.6 I was thinking of all this when I was watching him, and reflecting on how cracks in the camaraderie of our little gathering were already beginning to appear by the time I dropped onto that bench. It got worse later that night, and more-so the next morning. Less than twenty-four hours later I think many of us would be wondering how to pick up the pieces, and whether we should even bother to try.
Yellowstone is a powerful, powerful place. I realized when I was there last May that it is one of the few places remaining where all seven of those Grandfather Animals, those mighty Grandfather Spirits, or Manitous, still exist in one place. This is awesome – an expression of awe – by the literal definition of the word: a mixed feeling of reverence, wonder, and fear. These spirits are not always gentle in the reminders they deliver as it relates to our need to be mindful of those seven requirements – Humility, Courage, Honesty, Wisdom, Truth, Respect, and Love – to living an Anishinaabe life. I was shaken up a bit back in May, an experience I’ve talked about a couple times but have yet to write about, and reminded again last week that those seven requirements are all reciprocal relationships. That is, they can’t be expected if they aren’t given, and to expect to merely receive is missing the point entirely.
When I painted my strawberry I surrounded the image of it with tiny representations of the Grandfather Animals. I wanted them to look like petroglyphs but they looked more like ink blotches left behind by dung beetles. I was trying to tell a story and the choice of the strawberry is key. Many of us know of the strawberry as the “Heart Berry.” We Anishinaabe certainly do, and there are many stories we tell of how the name came to be, how it is part of our culture, everything. We are remembering more every day! For example, the “Berry Fast” is making a comeback in some places, as noted by my Blackfeet/Métis relative Rosalyn LaPier. The rough story I would like to relate, and why I chose to paint the Heart Berry in the first place, is most beautifully rendered by Anishinaabe writer and healer Asha Frost, in her book, You Are the Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance. It goes a little like this:
In the early days of Their creation, before human People even, Kitchi Manitou created an abundant world of plants and trees that bore all manner of beautiful and delicious fruit. Everything you can imagine, and more! All was good. Before long, though, all of these relatives began to take notice of their differences. They judged, and compared, and squabbled, and were generally becoming more and more shitty to each other. What had started out as a joyful and diverse community was becoming suspicious and mean.
Kitchi Manitou was troubled and wondered what to do. As Asha Frost tells us:
That night Creator had a profound dream of a brilliant red berry. It carried its seeds on the outside and was shaped like a heart. When ripe, this fruit brought great sweetness. The name of it was the Strawberry – Ode’miin.
Kitchi Manitou planted Ode’miin everywhere. Birds spread the seeds even farther. This spread of deliciousness was also a spread of love, because who could possibly not love the strawberry? So great was the fruit’s influence that other relatives began rethinking their ways and sharing their fruit as well. They began to take care of each other in ways they’d forgotten how, despite their differences. And because of this, Ode’miin, Strawberry, became known as the Heart Berry, “the one that helps us move love into action.”
I was thinking of this story, how our gathering needed some of that Ode’miin energy. How so many parts of our lives, of our communities, need it.
The energy is with us, I think. The seeds have been planted. They are growing here and there. We just need to look, and, especially, listen. It isn’t too late. I’ve been thinking of that ever since I left that place. Sometimes I am mad about it all, but mostly I am hopeful. Starting anything reveals sore spots, especially when we begin in a painful place. It is through the reciprocal relationships that define everything we do, no matter what our cultures, that we heal them.
It is something to be hopeful about.
A Final Desperate Appeal
I’m pretty sure this is the last week to sign up for my July workshop on the Missouri River with the Freeflow Institute. I have no idea how many people are registered but probably not enough to make it happen, so a couple (or a few!) more would be awesome. I hope some of you can swing it, or have rich relatives or benefactors who can help you swing it. If you need a reminder, here is the trailer I made for it a couple weeks ago….
Register HERE, if you are able. It will be a truly amazing experience. This is a magnificent region of our magnificent planet.
And Finally….
Susan Marsh writes wonderfully for Mountain Journal, one of the best resources online covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. She was at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference I just attended and I got to spend some time with her. She is also a lovely poet. This one is from her book, This Earth Has Been Too Generous. It’s beautiful….
Miigwech, my friends, as always, for reading. Make some time for a mouthful or two of delicious ode’miin. You’ll be all the happier for it!
It wrapped up gloriously last night. I’ll be doing more of these under my own banner, perhaps as early as August/September. Announcements looming!
It’s also worth mentioning that a paid subscription doesn’t get you anything more than a free one does, content-wise. That’s just how it works here and if that doesn’t work for you, I can understand.
Alcohol free yet far from sober, I might add.
More hilarity, in my opinion … but only when a Little Shell says it in certain contexts. The subtlety is the genius. #IYKYK
My word for them, I guess, I think, and I don’t know what else to call them; I am often flailing along in ignorance
That is, Wolf (Humility); Bear (Courage); Raven (Honesty); Beaver (Wisdom); Turtle (Truth); Buffalo (Respect); and Eagle (Love).
Heart Berry, “the one that helps us move love into action.” My day is far better and my thoughts fuller after learning of this. 🍓
Bringing new or reviving old ways all has the painful work of birthing. The excitement is followed by pain, deeper and intense pain, discouragement, nearly giving up and then elation as emergence becomes part of life. Doulas and midwives have deep knowledge of how to guide these stages...I wonder if your group(s) might benefit from such an individual to help with the natural, but uncomfortsble parts of birthing a vision.
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be a kitchen table...bringing loved ones around to visit, be nourished, laugh, play games, share sorrows or just drink strong coffee with freshly baked scones.