“The virus is here to wake up the world. Too many people are not connected to the land and water. It’s time for people to pay attention, to be still and to re-evaluate our lives. It’s time for us to be connected to our own way of being in the world and to get in touch with our own self in spirit.” –Teaching by Elder Liz Akiwenzie, May 12, 2020.
Time. I’ve spent the last eight months dancing with time. Time to be a mother. Time to be a student. Time to pay the bills. Time to cook. Time to advocate. Time to clean. Time to be a wife, daughter, auntie, and friend. Time to self. Time to practice culture. Time to do ceremony. Time for exercise. Time to run a business. Time to homeschool. Before the pandemic, I always knew how to use my time, and there never seemed to be enough. Once the virus hit, I had to learn how to do more things at one time in a confined space. I became filled with uncertainty, fear and anxiety, losing track of time and space. I needed my family to be safe, and I fought to keep them well. To keep them well, I needed to be balanced mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
On April 28th, I made the decision to nurture my spirit, and to make the time to join a zoom with Elder Liz Akiwenzie. She shared so much this day, and every other week for two months after. I was craving the knowledge of how to find peace, comfort and safety. Liz told us that “to keep our minds good, we must be living in the heart, body and spirit”). Through these teachings I woke up to the knowledge that unseen “Medicine”[1] is everywhere, and with each new day comes new understanding. Sitting out on the land and on the earth can offer an immediate sense of safety and belonging. And while I had no control over the circumstances and time around me, I still had some important work to do, and needed guidance to seek out the kindness, gratitude and love that I could share with my family.
I learned that the gift of the pandemic is about stopping and being still. The gift of the virus is also about time. Time to go inward and reflect. My reflections bring me in and out of fear and uncertainty and remind me that growing up, as a Sixties Scoop survivor[2], I had no access to Indigenous Knowledge, teachings, culture or Elders. This disruption has caused so much trauma and insecurity around issues related to identity, belonging and having a secure place of being in the world. It has taken many decades to come back to a place of love, where I have the confidence, bravery and belief to know I have access to Indigenous knowledge, and that it has been there all along.
The teachings from the Elder reinforced something my body has always felt: Unseen medicine is everywhere. Unseen medicine is about giving thanks for the basic things; it’s about being able to listen and hear with the whole being. It’s about going back to basics and understanding our logical place of being in the world. Unseen medicine is learning to continue to feed the spirit and take care of ourselves. Unseen medicine is the best way to help others: when we use this knowledge and share it, we stay in the love and light, and out of fear.
Ceremony doesn’t need to be elaborate. Ceremony can be simply walking in your spirit and connecting to the grandmother and grandfather that walk with you, or sitting by the water to connect with Her spirit.
Living through this pandemic as a mother and a PhD student has offered many lessons and gifts. I learned I can reclaim spaces and nurture connections to my family and our relationship to the land, and that practicing culture is a state of mind that is accessible to everyone regardless of where one lives in relation to their traditional territory or families of origin. I learned that Indigenous Knowledge originates from cultural and spiritual connections to the land. Indigenous Knowledge is needed to form strong and healthy relationships. Through connections to the land, we’ve learned to survive and thrive, and that we can continue to ask for help through these connections at any time. We can do this by sitting still, on the land and by placing our semaa on the ground and asking Creator to show us what we need, and the answers will come when we’re being attentive, looking out for signs, and loving ourselves.
This article is a component of a collection that will be published by the Royal Society of Canada. The collection is available here: https://rsc-src.ca/en/covid-19
[1] “Medicine” refers to Indigenous methods of health and healing through “the use of herbal remedies as well as specific ceremonies and rituals to promote spiritual, mental, physical and psychological well-being” (Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996, Vol. 5, p.11), known more generally as ‘traditional healing’ or ‘traditional medicine’.
[2] The “Sixties Scoop” is a colonial initiative defined as a wide-scale national apprehension of Indigenous children placed in primarily non-Aboriginal homes in Canada, the U.S. and overseas from the late 1950s through the early 1980s (Wright, 2017; Johnston, 1983; Kimelman, 1985). Recent estimates suggest over 20,000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children were removed from their families (National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare, 2016).