Celebrating the Nation that Survived
Alive and kicking! Loud, colourful, flourishing. And inclusive! The first peoples of North America make it clear to everyone willing to open their hearts and all of their senses. The grand entry of the annual Wikwemikong pow-wow on Manitoulin Island reverberated along the northern shores of Lake Huron, as it has been for centuries, bringing together First Nations and communities from across the continent.
Wiikwemikong Pow Wow - Credit: Marc Lemieux
A rich variety of adjacent kiosks took their posts alongside many caravans and big tents celebrating all aspects of Indigenous culture, from the origins of cooking to painting to sports, song and dance contests. Truly, a festival of life, languages, and peoples, peace and coexistence with nature and with Canada, with anyone willing to listen and whose spirit wishes to soar in harmony with the first inhabitants of this vast land. Flags and eagle staffs, feathers and furs, painted faces, elders and children moved and flowed together. Over 400 dancers entered the main assembly, guided by beating drums, crying chants and the welcoming words of the masters of the ceremony. The three-day schedule included age-category dances, prizes, a beauty contest, smoke dances, Métis fiddle music, and inter-tribal dances that invite all visitors to celebrate. The elders, honoured guests and ceremony leaders kept the huge crowds informed and excited, even calling on volunteers to ensure that dancers kept hydrated in the summer heat. Ben and I witnessed this amazing celebration of life from August 3 to 5. It was my first such experience; what a first! Unforgettable!
Another personal highlight for me was visiting the fire tent where people come to cleanse, reflect, heal, seek counsel and belonging, dignity and community. The firekeeper and his two kind associates welcomed us inside where an open sky tent consumed the rising heat. They shared a collection of sacred medicines, such as cedar and sweetgrass for those seeking to make offerings to the fire, a gesture one performs by walking slowly clockwise around the fire while feeding your offerings to the flames. The soft-speaking firekeeper took the time to explain his role as mentor and healer to those who visited the fire tent. He also gracefully shared his story of pain during youth, of personal suffering, and of hard-fought resilience. He attested to the generations of residential school survivors, and how it greatly affected his life.
Ben explained our goal as non-Indigenous Canadians to reflect and acknowledge the mistakes and injustice of past Canadian policies toward our neighbours, the first guardians of the land. Acknowledging our efforts for reconciliation, the firekeeper guided our desire to offer tobacco and berries to the memory of victims of residential schools. The fire stays burning day and night throughout the festival. The fire tent stood near a small sweat tent of curved branches where a culture of healing remains long a way of life, a means of survival for people in past harsh climates or during health challenges.
We didn’t have to go far to find a residential school whose abandoned brick-and-mortar structure still shaded the main road next to the Jesuit church of Wikwemikong. Canada marked the location with a plaque admitting to the policy of elimination and erasure of Indigenous culture, of cultural genocide. Beside the church lay the final resting places of local inhabitants, marked by old wooden stakes, some next to official Commonwealth War Graves Commission tombstones, of so many privates who had died abroad, fighting and dying as Canada’s warriors in a global contest defending our democracy on European soil. A sacrifice that excluded their own communities’ right to speak their language, to pray and share their creator, to hunt and fish their lands, to sell their agricultural products, and to hold annual pow-wow celebrations like today.
Further up the road in Spanish Ontario, Ben and I visited two more residential schools, one of which, a girls’ school, stood tall and derelict, empty to the sky, a property that was now privately owned, near the Marina at the mouth of the Spanish river. The firekeeper explained that only part of the local cemetery could be visited because forest, brush and other properties now stood over the unknown last resting places of children who had died while attending the residential school. We offered berries and tobacco to the memory of these children.
The weekend included meetings with Rhea, Bob and Brent, local Anishinaabe leaders interested in the help that Remembering Project volunteers offer. Brent himself was a former Chief of the Serpent River First Nation, whose many projects include working to make the resolutions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a reality, a legacy for all future Canadian children. Rhea and Brent’s spirit of sharing and openness represent our future hopes and dreams, an energy of inter-communal coexistence long established in the region. Let us remember that energy. Let us nurture it!
- Marc Lemieux