Free All Sacred Sites

I am not Algonquin and I have never claimed to be but I was taught that as an Indigenous person it is my duty to speak up about harmful actions to the land whether it is my traditional territory or not.

Here in Ottawa, on traditional Algonquin territory, lies the heart of all our Nations’, it is referred to as Akikodjawan or Asinabka by traditional people and Victoria, Chaudiere and Albert Islands and Chaudiere Falls or the old Domtar Mill to those unaware of the proper significance.

The local Elders and knowledge keepers continue to remind us of the spiritual significance of this area. They say these islands are the Creator’s first  sacred pipe. The stem, the islands, and the bowl, towards the East where Chaudiere falls in its original state would swirl and the smoke from that sacred bowl would rise to share prayers with the Creator in the most profound way. This was the first pipe given to Naniboozhoo by the Creator so we as humans could practise our spiritually and ask for guidance from the Creator.

This is also where the Southern and Northern Equinox meet. I often beleive this explains why the weather in the Ottawa valley is so polarizing. For thousands of years, visitors from all nations would gather here, hold ceremony and even bury their loved ones. Ancient bones are constantly found along the shores of the Ottawa River and even downtown Ottawa and Gatineau during reconstruction of the city infrastructures. Just like the true stories of the land, these ancestral bones are swept under the rug, thought of as a nuisance and forgotten. I beleive my ancestors also passed through here as they journeyed from Trois Rivere, QC to the Red River Settlement in MB in the 1700s however I would never claim any right to the land, as that is not my duty, except the inherent right to advocate and to protect all of Mother Earth.

Akikodjawan and Asinabka, most recently, was the heartbeat of the Idle No More movement. It was here that Chief Spence fasted, it was here that thousands of people gathered and beat their drums in sync with the heartbeat of Mother Earth. Drums around the world beat and it was here that a vibration was sounded that awoke all of our spirits. Since Idle No More, I have seen so many young people find their pride and joy in ceremonies and their identity, I have seen a huge increase in settler ally support and solidarity. I have seen us as Indigenous people overthrow a tyrant and demand that an entire country remember us and never forget us again. It is no coincidence this vibration came from this sacred area and there is no denying the sacredness of this site.

This past summer, I travelled across the country visiting sacred sites, walking the foot steps of my ancestors and collecting clues they left us along the way. While in Saskatchewan, I came across a place on the map called Mantiou Beach. I have come to understand the significance of the word Manitou/Mantioo, which in many languages and dialects means spirit. Therefore I was draw to this location and I was curious to learn more. I learned that this is the “Dead Sea of Canada” and is now used as a spa resort town. However, I beleived there was more to this body of water. As I continued to search, I found a story about an “Indian tribe”. According to the story, this water healed Indigenous people that were suffering from small pox in the 1700s. I immediately felt the power of this water and I put some tobacco down.

What broke my heart was to see this sacred water now turned into a spa and resort. Motor boats propelled through the water and the sacredness had been forgotten by local settlers and completely dismissed by visitors. The water swells every spring and floods the shops and homes that have exploited this sacred water. Across the water, I could see a medicine wheel. I am positive the Indigenous people who carry the stories of this water continue to honour it’s sacredness and do what they can to protect the water. This is just one example of a sacred site that has been misused and exploited for greed and money. Now Akikodjawan and Asinabka face a similar threat.

This is a direct attack on our spiritually from corporate giants and political interests, benefitting and exploiting from the violence of colonization. Indigenous peoples’ from all different Nations, whether Algonquin, Iroquois, Ojibway, Metis, Inuit, Cree, from all directions of Mother Earth, will be affected if the islands are destroyed.  Spiritual leaders from around the world have prayed and gathered here for time immemorial. Friends have told me stories of Tibetan Monks looking for Akikodjawan and Mayans bringing gifts and medicines for the sacred land.

It is my fear that if Asinabka and Akikodjawan are destroyed, humankind’s first sacred pipe will be destroyed. So much worse than being placed in a museum not to be used but completely broken in half. With this first pipe gone, how will we be able to practise our spiritually and communicate with the Creator? I am worried about my future generations, I worry about my own well-being and self-preservation. How will I be able to cope feeling the iron claws tearing apart this sacred land? How will my peers and the elders be able to live with this?

If you understand this, you will understand why so many elders and knowledge keepers are upset, you will understand why our hearts are so heavy. The impact of this destruction is that fork in the road and if we cannot work together as Indigenous and non-Indigenous people then we will walk down the road of chaos and destruction that has been prophesized centuries ago. We will only have ourselves to blame as we have been warned of this time yet we chose money and greed over love and harmony.

This is a call out to all people to protect and free all of the sacred sites, not just Akikodjawan and Asinabka but protect the thunder bird nests, the resurgence of the buffalo, the healing waters, sacred burial sites in the pines and the grandfather sturgeons from the dams. Protect it all because all land and all beings are sacred.

We need less condos and more language houses. Less Big Macs and more feasts with wild meat, wild rice and wild berries. Less sugar and candy and more maple tree tapping. Less twerking and more powwow dancing. Less lateral violence and more love in our communities. Less feeling helpless and scared and more faith in each other and the Creator’s plan. Why? Because it’s 2016 and the fork in the road is in front of us.

We Are All Survivors: I Never Realized How Close I Was to The Issue of MMIW..

Disclaimer: The nature of this blog may be graphic and offensive to some. This is a raw and personal story.
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I never truly realized how close my own story was to the issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women until I began to tell my story out loud. I’d go to the rallies and show support for the families but I went because I just wanted to support my sisters, I never truly made the connection until recently, that we as Indigenous women and two spirit people alive today are all survivors and we come from long lines of survivors. I am a survivor of genocide, colonization, male patriarchy, and a system that has done everything in its power to break me as an Indigenous woman.

We read about the stats and hear about the stats but as Indigenous people we forget that these stats are often a reflection of our realities although they do not define us. In some ways, seeing front page headlines and national meetings can glamorize and desensitize the lives of people on the ground. Often we don’t even realize the pain and trauma in our families. Stories so horrific that they have turned into dark, dark secrets that we cannot uncover until we start searching, that is if we ever get the urge to face criticism and lateral violence head on.

I believe that violence and sexual exploitation among the women in my family began up to 500 years ago and I know for fact that it goes back as far as my great grandmother. She was raped by a Norwegian butcher in Saskatchewan in the early 1900s. You have to understand that this was only a few decades after the hanging of Louis Riel and not far from where a jury of settlers found him and all Metis resistance fighters to be guilty of treason, which would include my relatives and my great grandma. Under the strong influence of the Catholic church, whether she decided or was forced to, she gave my grandmother life. My grandma did not tell anyone this secret until she was in her 80s, she finally wrote it in her Bible, she wrote down the name of her paternal father. I am unclear as to how my grandmother learned about her paternal father, regardless she either found out late in life or she kept this hidden for a majority of her life, I cannot imagine bearing either of those burdens.

As my grandmother began her journey into adulthood, she too began a family. She had thirteen children to be exact. While I am grateful for all my aunties and uncles that have come into this world, I beleive the Catholic Church had a strong influence and even control over my grandmother’s body and life choices including staying in an abusive relationship. Just like the concept of Terra Nullius, which in Latin means empty land or lands not occupied by a sovereign nation, this gave Christian European settlers the right to claim new lands, they believed that because the people living here at the time were not Christian it meant they were not sovereign or “civilized” and the land was theirs for the taking, just like the land was being marked and claimed so were the bodies of Indigenous women. My great grandma, my grandma and all my maternal relations were survivors of this chauvinistic and unnatural way of looking at the world and all of creation.

In the 70s, my auntie wasn’t able to escape the “phenomenon” of colonization and its cruel affects on Indigenous women. Growing up, I remember my older cousins and aunties talk about Girlie. “Girlie would have loved this” or “Remember when Girlie did that?”, it wasn’t until I was 25 that I understood that she was murdered by her partner in a violent incident in her home. She went to the cops, family members went to the cops but nothing was done, she was not protected at all. I still see the pain that lives within my family to this day. I still see the pain that lives within my family and myself filled with the shame of being an Indigenous woman, many of us have learned to hide our true identity as a way to protect ourselves. Many Metis went into hiding after the Resistance, they hid who they were and where they came from, many are still hiding and have every reason to hide. We hid from the RCMP, the government, and the raw hatred that exists towards Indigenous people. It is not safe to be a Metis, First Nation, or Inuit person especially a woman or two spirit person in Canada today. Violence of colonization sees no difference if you are Metis or First Nation, non-status, Bill C3 or half.

A few years ago, my uncle brought forward an article from the Calgary Herald. It talked about a young woman who had been murdered by a bouncer at a nightclub. Her murderer said it was her fault and that she was “promiscuous”. Her mother fought for the true justice in her daughter’s name and eventually DNA was found to prove the bouncer was in fact guilty beyond reasonable doubt. My uncle said that young woman was one of my dad’s daughters, my sister. Unfortunately, I never knew I had a sister, I wonder if she knew? I wonder if she knew she was Metis and I wonder how she lived her life? I have a lot of questions that will probably never be answered. But the one thing I know for sure is the number of reported missing and murdered sisters is certainly much higher than the 1,200 reported in 2014. The inquiry must examine these hidden connections, the break down of families due to residential schools, the child foster care system and incarceration. The inquiry needs to go deep and bring to light all of our truths. As much as this inquiry will reflect the painful truths about Canada, we need to be prepared as Indigenous people, families and communities for the old infected wounds that may open up only to truly begin a healing journey.

My story as the descendant of survivors did not get easier. Living in poverty as many of our sisters do, you become very vulnerable to people that have methodically developed ways to trap women into the sex trade. By the time I was 21, I had been to two Hell’s Angels clubhouses, I had been approached to be an escort or a stripper by friends and male acquaintances multiple times, I had been drugged by someone I knew, later to find out this person and their crew had tied up other girls in their basement shortly after and these are just a few incidents I was able to escape from. I remember one pimp who honed in on my vulnerability right after my mom passed away. He was very charming and persuasive and the word pimp never even came up, he called himself a friend and supporter. He asked me many times to work for him and words like escort or prostitute were never used either. After turning down his offers, he asked me to work as a receptionist for his service, he said I would get paid 250/hour just to answer phones and direct “clients” to his girls. As I look back on this, it was all a master plan to recruit me into that lifestyle. When you grow up on welfare and you are offered easy money, it’s very hard not to take it, you’re just trying to make it out of the struggle. These people have master plans that not all of us escape from. Despite all of these advances, I trusted my instincts which I beleive were my loved ones in the spirit world watching over me. We, as Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people, should not be to blamed or shunned for the actions of these perpetrators.*

The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two spirit people will not be solved with a simple band-aid solution. My hopes are that this national inquiry will shed light on the systemic racism and abuse towards Indigenous women and two spirit people that has brought us to this place. There is no denying the beauty of our people and our women however this issue of sexual exploitation, abuse and violence has nothing to do with what we look like or who we are as people but it has everything to do with how we are treated by the general society, how Hollywood continues to romanticize our women into objects to be claimed, and how voices of victims are shamed or ignored by the justice systems that are supposed to protect us. It has everything to do with how the land is continuously destroyed and our voices ignored, just like a rapist continues to violate his victim after being told NO over and over again. Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people have been murdered and violated since the Doctrine of Discovery in 1492 with the ideology of a male dominated hierarchy that arrived in Turtle Island at the exact same time.

Elders often tell me how Indigenous women were the leaders of our communities, that nations were led by our grandmothers and mothers, just like the moon leads the waters and the water is essential to our existence as human beings. Water comforts us and brings us to life and when it is taken away, we become fragile and weak. This is what has happened to our society. We all live and share the land here now, we are all connected and when Indigenous mothers and daughters and sisters and aunties and cousins are going missing or being murdered, the land weeps and you feel it whether you are Indigenous or not. The land remembers, the animals and the plants, the birds and the sky beings start to talk, whether I know you or not, through natural law we are all being told something needs to change. We have survived so that we can be that change.

This is dedicated to all my relations, my kookum, my grandma, my aunties and my cousins and a sister that I will never know in this life.

*Note: Many people CHOOSE to be a sex worker which is very different than being FORCED into the sex trade. I respect my sisters in the sex trade and their autonomy.