The Year of Reclaiming

I have spent the last year learning to be/think/see from a Metis viewpoint.  The last piece of my puzzle were the Elders I met when I went to the Kumik.  Some government departments bring in Elders and have a special place where aboriginal employees can come together and speak to someone/smudge.  The Elders I met listened to my whole story.  Just saying it all out loud was pretty powerful .  For all the good and the bad, it is my story. 

I got the distinct sense that my story was not a new one and rather than focusing on my question about whether I could call myself Metis, they asked me questions about how I was coping in life overall given the stresses with Joel being sick and S being challenging to manage at times.  Their response was far more powerful than any words would have been.  I was as I was and there was not a lot to talk about there.

They answered my other specific questions about how to manage those older people in our lives who are being problematic without being rude to elders.  They said "sometimes you need to live in different teepees."  I asked about my feeling that I should be doing more to fufill my potential and they focused me back to what I was dealing with at home.  Those pressures need to be the focus for me now.

From that meeting I took the courage to "come out".  We went to our first Pow Wow.  We started doing circle times every week and putting down tobbacco every morning.  I tried to talk and read more to my children about their heritage.  I started learning Cree.  I learned to bead.  I have been reading a lot.  Thinking deeply.  We lost our cats and used the teachings of the ancestors to work through that with our girls.  We wrote their names into the middle of our circle with the other departed ancestors.  That was helpful to the girls to have that ceremony.  Every circle time we remember them and the others that have passed.  They are still in our lives.

I am going back tommorrow to meet with those Elders again.  That meeting is what really go me started with this blog, thinking about how much had changed over the past year, how much I have learnt and how much some focused listening by strangers opened a space for me to be brave enought to call myself truly... I am Metis (Ojibway).  I claim that.  I still need to learn so much about what that means, but that is the journey of life and I am trying not to rush that part of it.   Don't be afraid to reclaim your truth.