Giving Names

Rought-Faced Girl

Last night we read the Rought-Faced Girl, the Algonquin Cinderella tale.  The girls really liked this story and the pictures were inspiring.  I really liked how the character was self sufficient and looked after herself and the comparison of the importance of internal beauty compared to external beauty.  It was a great book and I would highly reccomend it.  My girls, in the modern world of sequels, wanted to know what happend after the story so we agreed to write one this weekend.  I will try and post the pictures.  This book really inspired them. 

It also lead to a good dicussion about why that would be a girl's name and the idea of name giving in indian communities.  S wanted to know what name we would give her.  I will admit that the first thing that came to mind was something like "squirrel mind".  With her anxiety it seems like her thoughts just run wild from thing to thing.  But I thought about it some more and the need to recognize that she is a lot more that just her worries.  This morning I said I would call her "Deep Water" because while water can run wild over everything it can also form landscapes and carry heavy burdens from one place to another.  We also need the deep thinkers.  They see things that others do not.  I also told her of the strong connection her grandfather had to the water.  She still thought it was stupid.

For R I said I would call her "Strong Wind".  She has very strong feelings.  When she is happy she is so happy and when she is mad it is very clear to all.  She is like the wind that can be gentle and bring a Chinook or melt snows in the spring, but she can also be like the windchill  that makes an already cold day seem unbearable.  She is also my wind child, like me she loves to feel the wind on her skin.  She is also like the wind in that while you can't see it work directly you can see the results.  She is a bit like that.  I find little puddles around the house.  Bits of expiriments.  You can see her thoughts and actions clearly played out accross our home.  She moves heavy furniture and gets into hight things.  She finds a way to get into everything.  R liked that name a lot.  She is quite physically strong for her age so she liked the strong part too.

They gave me the name "Strong mother stone".  I had said I am thinking about rocks right now (I will do a seperate post on that) and R choose the strong and S the mother stone.  We had to run for the bus then, but I want to ask them why they choose that name.  It fascinates me to see how they think.

So for all my personal sadness about being the one who has to keep carrying on in the family, picking up that book, even though I was tired, and it was hard to get the computer off and focused was worth it.  We had a good moment of connection to our culture and as a family.  Those little steps matter.  Keep picking up the books and reading the blogs.  Keep looking at the art and listning.