I recently lost my cousin Joey Okimaw. We were childhood friends who had grown up together since we first entered grade school in Attawapiskat. Joey’s...
I was surprised recently when I saw my relatives in my home community of Attawapiskat First Nation on the James Bay coast were still having to fetch water...
A friend of mine came to visit recently to ask for help with a new piece of technology. Her son had given her a Kindle, an electronic reader or ereader. She needed assistance in setting up her new device and was seeking some answers on how to load the latest books. I was happy to help and I spent a few hours on my own learning how the device operated.
My Kookum or Grandmother, Louise Paulmartin, often told me when I was young that “the world was getting crazy.”
She reserved the comment for when she heard news from the southern non-Native world about a calamity or crisis like a war, a terrible flood or if she might have viewed some violent or horrible news on the television. Of course, as a youngster, I never realized what she meant. When I became a teenager I merely attributed that comment of hers as a result of old age and being out of touch with the modern world.
I have been travelling and on the road lately. I don't keep on top of my email as much as I would like when I am moving around but I do watch the news every day. I was shocked like everyone else at the terrible tragic events that occurred in Japan this past week. It was bad enough that the country got hit by an earthquake and then a tsunami, only to be topped off by the failure of several nuclear power plant facilities.
Babies are a big responsibility. They need to be helped with everything and fussed over 24 hours a day in the beginning. Children are very important in First Nations and often, in remote Native communities, many members of the town will assist in raising them.
We Cree welcome newborns no matter how, when or why they have come into this world. A newborn is often cared for by the parents, grand parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends. Everyone pitches in to help out.
Over the past hundred years, spring has developed into a religious experience for we Cree. It all started in the late winter in March when the local Catholic church reminded us of the days of Lent that begins the 40 days of fasting. My parents were brought up surrounded and deeply influenced by the Catholic Church from the time they were born. They had been baptized at birth and the first few years of their lives were spent in Catholic residential schools where they were indoctrinated into the religion.
Everywhere I travel these days, I feel the effects of global warming. Weather patterns are changing, ice caps are melting, glaciers are receding and it is all becoming very obvious.
I first started hearing about a change in climate from some of the Elders from up the James Bay coast about 20 years ago. More recently, I have learned through news from the worldwide scientific community that a phenomenon such as global warming is upon us.
I have been eating a lot of fish lately. It is always good to eat the various types of fish the world's oceans, rivers and lakes have to offer. However, over the years as I have travelled in the far east, Americas and Europe I realize how fortunate we are in Northern Ontario. Our fish wins in my view.
On a bright sunny morning recently, I found my long-lost great grandfather John Chookomolin’s grave, in an English cemetery just outside of the historic city of London.
His white-stone commonwealth cemetery headstone glimmered under the strong spring sun on a lawn of well-tended grass. I found him in an ancient part of the cemetery where the grave memorials were pitted and roughened with age and stone borders had moved, cracked and in parts disappeared.
I recently travelled to the United Kingdom on a pilgrimage to find my great grandfather's grave. The good news is that I found the white stone marker bearing his name John Chookomolin although they had misspelled it Jakomolin. It was good to kneel at the place where he was buried and to feel the space around me.
I am happy for my mom. She got a great gift this hunting season with a helicopter trip back to her traditional family home on the shores of the Nawashi River. This place is special to my mom and I understand that.
Susan, my mother or nigawi in the Cree language, was born and raised on the land along Nawashi. She is the most recent link for my family to the traditional life that the Cree lived for thousands of years until the coming of the European.
I recently lost my cousin Joey Okimaw. We were childhood friends who had grown up together since we first entered grade school in Attawapiskat. Joey’s...
I was surprised recently when I saw my relatives in my home community of Attawapiskat First Nation on the James Bay coast were still having to fetch water...