That wonderful square box

Moose come in these colors right?

I want to get back to learning Cree so I am going to work on adding a few words a day to my vocabulary.  I am starting using this the Tansitv site as the have sound bites of the vocabulary.

Tansi - Hello, how are you?

M'on ana'ntaw - Good thanks?

Kiya maka - How about you?

So, I love tv.  Usually only had to two channels, one of which was fuzzy or full of hockey for part of the year but it was magical.  It showed people in other places living exciting and shiny lives.  I learned about gay people and men who dress as ladies from tv.  For some reason, these shows were allowed even when most things weren't in my family/religion.  It was a refuge as I moved between parents for the weekend visits.

Now it is a way to see worlds that are different to mine.  It is an opportunity to share stories with the family when we don't read the same books.  I really liked this Buzzfeed article about why these parents let their children watch "inappropriate" tv.  It is a good articulation to the issues of managing tv (or online content really).  We have had so many excellent conversations after watching things together.  We have talked about history, being cis females, sex, good decisions, gender performativity, growing up, money and on and on.




A couple of nights ago I went to the Aboriginal People's Television Network to check out their shows and watched "The Guilt Free Zone".  This show was Foucault come to life.  It offered a safe space to talk about sex and decolonize.  It even came with the properly dressed gentleman host and a faux Victorian set. The opening dialogue really says it all, that sex was not a bad thing for aboriginal peoples before contact. 




This reminded me of the chapter in Kim Anderson's "A Recognition of Being" where she discusses the negative construction of indigenous womanhood, often stressing the sexualization and uncleanliness of the "savage" female body which could be tamed by embracing christiainized social norms of sexuality i.e., that sex is dirty and shameful.  This show is a deliberate rejection of this body colonization.  Some of the jokes are a little primordial, but this too is part of the fun.  Farts and hard ons can be funny. The musical guests were interesting and some of the vignettes quite clever.  I like the inclusion of the safe sex element, which came across without being preachy.  Parts of it did not work, but the idea overall is great and we quite enjoyed it.




I have also become aware of the need to decolonize our food so I was interested to find a couple of cooking shows on the network.  I started watching a show called "Moosemeat and Marmalade."  The set up is two men, one a classically trained English chef and the other a Cree Bush chef together who explore the creation of food in each culture.  There is a fine line here not to cross that line into "look at what the funny brown person is doing".  There are times it got close to the line for me, but I did think in general this issue was well handled.  I liked the discussion of how pheasant hunting was important to maintaining the English country side and I like watching Art Napoleon (Cree) hunt, gather and cook. 


It was especially exciting when the girls joined me mid beaver skinning "it's sooooo gross" and stayed asking for more episodes.  We had a great conversation about hunting and gathering, I share some memories of my mooshum's love of tounge and we listed to people talking in Cree.  They liked the humour of the Cree women as they watched the very proper English fellow help cut the moose while in a white dress shirt.  They were inspired and decided that we need to make our own bannock today.




TV can be a crutch that we use to hide our real feelings about things that aren't working on our lives or to fill silences in our relationships, but it can also be a powerful tool in showing us different lives and communicating important stories.  A final link, this video on one hand is pretty straight forward interview with and Elder picking sage, but there is so much learning in these few minutes.  Since I don't have a lot of Elders around at the moment, I appreciate these moments of teaching.  How do you use tv?  What are you watching?

Assumptions

Maegan Tintari

In lieu of being the kind of person that does not make assumptions about others, I try to build reminders into my life that this behavior is harmful.  The woman in the picture is one of my reminders.  In my childhood home, we spent a lot of time envying people who seemed to have it all.  What was on the surface was the reality and we hoped that one day we could be those people without any troubles and with lots of money and interesting jobs.  Even when the cracks were clear, someone had cancer or lost a job, it was just glossed over.  Poor us.

As an adult, I am aware that the outside tells us little about the inside of a person.  The perfect person can be in an abusive relationship or have a troubled past or be sick.  I am aware that the more we tell our stories we allow ourselves to grow and we support one another as we go through things.  I am aware that judging based on someone's hair color or job is not helpful to supporting meaningful adult relationships.

Maegan is my reminder of that.  She is a DIY blogger that I liked to follow.  She is blond and beautiful, lives in a cool house in LA and has a job in a gallery.  She is the perfect outside to our society.  But Maegan is also a real person, who shares her challenges with infertility on her blog.  Looking at her picture it is easy to dismiss her as a person who I would have nothing in common with but with the layer of story, she is a multidimensional person who is sharing her difficult journey.  Her honesty inspires others to tell their stories and we are all better because of that.  



Nanabush and the Pumpkin

We completed our Nanabush story last night so here it is for your pleasure.  I am still thinking through the story medicine of this one.  The story is all Runa, with a little help from me to reduce run on sentences.

Nanabush and the Pumpkin. 

On a bright sunny day, he goes to choose a pumpkin, but he sees one that is very big and already has a face on it.

Suddenly Nanabush realized the pumpkin has arms and legs.  The pumpkin floats up to become the moon.

Then Nanabush yells at the moon, "you come down you silly pumpkin"

The pumpkin refuses and scared everyone in the town by coming down as a person saying "Croook, craaaak, clloooook" knocking over kookums and mooshums

So Nanabush comes and he says "poocon, go back to the pumpkin patch" and makes a ferocious face.

So, the pumpkin runs away to the pumpkin patch and is never seen again and that is why we have Halloween.

In the West

Sarrita King - Waterhole

Still working through Wagemese's "One Story. One Song" and I really appreciated the introduction to his essays on the West of the medicine wheel as we move into the fall.

"On the medicine wheel, introspection is the "Looking within place."  Humility and trust offer many teachings, and introspection is a means of seeing how those apply to our life.  It's a place of visions.  It's a resting place where the story, the song each of us has created up to this moment can be inspected and those things deemed unnecessary be let go...introspection is meant to bring us to balance.  It is the place where all things are ordered, where all things ring true at the same time.  Balance allows us to move forward..."

I think this quote especially speaks to me as it uses a number of words that strongly resonate, the story that is in all of us and that move to balance.  In the constant striving to improve our own stories we can become immersed in the need to change.  It is important that we take time to see how far we have come, to appreciate that we can change and sometimes, I wonder, to accept that certain things won't change. 


I like the medicine wheel as it reminds me that there is a place for introspection, but that this time also passes and there will be a time for action too.  It is easy to get caught in our habits and get comfortable with following the same mind paths day after day.  The wheel allows the support of the well trod path and the encouragement to wander and make new paths.  It is all about balance.  How do you make time for introspection in you life?

Juggling eyes

Tansi

We started the weekend with a late night walk under a very beautiful grandmother moon and the happy sounds of Canadian Geese on their way South.  Runa thought they must get very tired to fly so far.  While I wish this child would sleep more I also treasure these weird in between moments we share.

We also read "Nanabush loses his eyeballs" by Daphnie Odjig.  While the book shows its birth in the 1970s, the story was great and lead itself to a fun out loud read and since we know the names of some of the animals in Cree we got to use them.  The throwing of eyeballs made this a great hit with the children and it includes a lot of good story medicine.  I would recommend this book.

Sunday morning, I got it together to coral everyone for circle time.  It helped to have the new table with our circle supplies already set out.  It made it easy to pull things together.  It would be nice to smudge once without having someone ask questions or trying to find your tickle spots while you do it.  We sang the woman's honoring song and Sophie brought down her drum.  Then we read "Nanabush and the Wild Rosebushes" which I did not think could be as good as eyeball throwing, but it did pretty well.  Again the story worked well to read out loud.  The characters were engaging and the fat bored bunny and grumpy rose bush made the children laugh.  Both these stories would led themselves well to a group setting and could easily have accompanying crafts.

In one of those perfect moments, Runa got out supplies and put us to work writing our own Nanabush story.  We are working on "Nanabush and the spooky pumpkin".  I will post pictures when we are done.  These moments are great as I get to see Runa engaging with the stories and also taking on the role of the story teller.  I see her slipping into the stream of our culture and know these times will be with her forever.  I would really recommend these books and taking the time to make your own.  We love reading them later and it is great to work together as a family to create something.  So stop juggling your eyes!!

Change your questions

Fogbound on the Great Canadian Highway
by Michael Robinson

I have just finished "Change you questions Change your Life" By Marilee Adams.  The book itself is  business dribble.  I don't think it helped that I have a big text version either.  However, the idea, that by changing our questions we can change our perceptions and create spaces for new answers is a good one.  It is basically the process of moving from asking "Why me?" to "Why not me?"

A couple of quotes/ideas caught my attention. 

"Are you willing to take responsibility for your mistakes - and for the attitudes and actions that led to them?...Are you willing...to forgive yourself, and even laugh at yourself?"

"Change begins with the person who wants the change."

"Change your questions from who's to blame to what am I responsible for?"

Q storming - not brainstorming but coming together to look for new questions.

"Am I willing to allow others to contribute to me?"

******
The question that resonates the most at the moment is why is it so hard to forgive ourselves?  I have forgiven people for doing things that hurt me, but I don't give myself a break.  I am going to ponder this.

Books that follow you...

Book sculpture by Jodi Harvey-Brown 

I have been thinking recently of a book I read 20 years ago in university.  It blew my mind at the time.  It played with ideas of time that I could not even imagine when I was in that place.  What if time went in circles or backwards?  Now these things seem less new and I can examine them in a deeper layer.  The book is "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman.  What books have moved you?