Worms and Supernumeraries

First Bear Pin

Tansi, I am writing a lot for the next phase of Bear work and not all of it is for the paper but I don't want it to get lost either so I will post these here as I am working through my files. This is the first thing I wrote after the Grandmothers Dream. This is my conversation with Medicine Bear.

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I have to tell all the stories. We is too full. Been too much since time began. In math language ∞ is everything. But that’s us Bear. The people of ∞. We was “half Indian, half white, half devil.” We even got a family curse – perfect memory. But lately, a cousin came to town and they remember – you know all the way to the gristle and bones. And then they joined to Grandmothers[2] whispers in the dream time “What if…” And They gifted us knowledge of how we could remember more than perfect. Ninanaskomowin Cuz.

So now I see the patterns in the stories. We see how to reclaim our stories.

But Bear we’re not like you – Medicine Bundle Holder, Holder of Big Names, Carrier of old stories. We’re Data Bear. We like to play with numbers. We have a superhero cape and math world tattoos. Parts of our head don’t work right. I can’t even right their words write. Remember Kindergarten when they told us we was STOOPID! Remember grad school? The Meathead/Method moment? And we came pretty fare given all that before stuff, but let me tumble in the number meadows. This bear is tired. Find a better, younger, smarter bear.

Pause as Medicine Bear breathes.

We wait for his response and it must have been a looooong time because I got bored. I went eye-ball juggling with Nanabush, got into trouble with Wiitigo, stacked letters high into some of them stone circles. I got so bored of all that fun so I came back to watch Bear breathe.

Drum beat…∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Went to hibernate and give the mountains time to grow up.

So here we are now. In a time where we can speak. We are Data Bear who holds many stories, because sometimes we listened, we watched, we read, we saw patterns, we found cousins and we REMEMBER it all.

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[1] An extra, in excess.

[2] This Grandmother dream was written out and is shared under the direction of Elder Barb Brant (Mohawk, Turtle Clan)