Aneegis and my Mom

My mother came to visit from Grand Rapids, Manitoba with my sister Melissa and my nieces, Lydia who is six months pregnant and Raven who would turn 13 during their stay. I told my brother over the phone, "It's nice to have someone from out west come and see the beautiful little life that we have here."

Earlier, I had told our oldest sons Bear and Adam that I was happy that we were having visitors when our home was at peaking in cuteness factor. The boys had just finished replacing the shingles on the roof, spring cleaning had been successful, the yard was trim and the flowers and garden bountiful and blooming.

Yes, we had our junk pile hidden behind the three sister Cedars. Yes, if anyone swung open the door to the sugar shack it looked like recycling done by hoarding.

But on a sunny July day with popular trees floating puffs of fluff in the air and the birds and frogs singing, our little home back in our little bit of bush looks like it could be made out of ginger bread.

It was a wonderful visit full of love and laughter. In evenings the frogs are really starting to sing. They all begin to sing. It's louder. Than it has been for a while. My mother mentions the sound. I tell her that it's much, much louder earlier in the year.

Still the sound continues to build. It never reaches that noise level of the early summer but for the middle of July, it's impressive. Of course, they sing all summer but we never had to close the door choosing no breeze for a quieter room on a hot July night. Not that I can remember.

The day before my mother leaves to return to the North she tells me, "You have some kind of Chief Frog out there." I ask her what she means.

She says, "You know the Head One. The Boss."

I see my old friend Aneegis in my mind and I nod in agreement.

After everyone is gone. The yard and house are tidy. The pool toys are put away and the pool is clean and shut down for the night. The wife is in the house. I'm sitting in a lawn chair reading the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star. The only newspaper we buy these days and only the Sunday edition.

I'm reading the Sports section first as always. I hear a sound from the bush behind me. It sounds like a bird of some kind. Maybe even a squirrel. The sounds are complex. Jazz like.

It ends. Silence. For a heartbeat.

Then the sound starts again. I can not place this sound. This series of distinct and complex chirps, bleets and croaks. Croaks.

A response croak from the pool. One on the side nearest me. Then one on the side furthest.

The frogs have been singing in the pool all summer. They aren't going anywhere. I knew their sound as soon as I heard it.

The response from the bush behind me was the same croak as the frogs in the pool.

Aneegis croaked and they responded.

Aneegis croaked and they responded.

Aneegis croaked and they responded.

Aneegis visits on Solidarity Day

Aneegis, the ancient Tree frog who hunted around our front porch for a couple of days during the frog mating season returned on Aboriginal Solidarity Day. It was a pleasant surprise. For the most part, the frogs have moved on from our swamp by this time of year.

When first I had seen Aneegis, the creature had surprised me with its size, now it was timing.

There is a three month period around our home on the First Nation when the singing of the frogs is like nothing I have ever heard. It begins in the spring when the first frogs begin to thaw out from the mud at the bottom of the swamp. A few bull frogs here and there. Slowly. Stopping. Freezing. Silence. Start up again. Then again and again. A slow heart beat. It builds and builds adding a variety of voices.  

The singing rises into a throbbing amphibious wall of sound. Every night for weeks. Thousands of creatures singing and singing and singing and having sex in that way it is for all the wild, as though life depended upon it.

I was surprised to see Aneegis sitting on the rail of our front step. I greeted Aneegis. Tansi, Aneegis. I was pleasantly surprised to see the ancient Tree Frog again. Aneegis sat on our rail until night.

Aneegis reminded me of what I had done so many years ago. The  first time that I had ever deliberately taken a life. How I had killed a beautiful Leopard Frog in the most cowardly way when I was a boy. I thought often about why this hurt me so much. We were raised on a farm. I have killed hundreds of animals or have been present and participant in their slaughter. I cut heads off chickens and held pigs to get their throats slit. I killed hundreds of wild chickens and thousands of fish. Why did this Frog bother me so deeply?

The first time is a factor. There was something else. I had an unreasonable fear of frogs as a child and one that hasn't gone away. The idea of a frog touching me under water. It never kept me from doing anything but it was unreasonable. When something is unreasonable it makes one question the reason why. 

One day my younger brother and I were talking. I hadn't seen him for a while, we were grown men with families by then. He asked me rather pointedly. "What is your spirit animal?" I said, I didn't know. I hadn't asked an elder or anyone about that. 

"Yeah, but you know what it is?" He pressed on. "If you don't know what it is, how can anyone tell you what it is." He looked at me. Knowing me as well as anyone. He was starting to get upset,  "Just say it."

"I think it's the Frog," I said. 

He burst out laughing. He thought that was hilarious. I knew he would think that was funny. I know him as well as anyone, too. 

So I explained to him my reasons and also that I had thought a lot about the frog and it is one of the Creator's most amazing creatures. It lives first as a fish breathing water and then it grows legs and lungs and hops on the earth breathing air. It spends its life living between both worlds. Then it spends the winter in the dream world. This is a powerful spirit animal. 

On the evening of Solidarity Day there are fireworks at the park. Our family just gathers at the lake in front of Nanny and Papa's and watch from there. Cars pull up other family members show up and set up lawn chairs. It's a nice ending to a full day of activities in the community.

I step away to have a smoke, something jumps below my foot. I step back. My eyes focus in. It's a large Leopard frog. 

Tansi, Boozho, Ahneen. Ni Na Napayo.

The Frog sit there. I break my cigarette in half. I squat down and reach slowly towards it, the half cigarette offered forward. I put the tobacco down a couple inches from the frog. That's as far as a I want to reach. I realize that I'm as much afraid it will move as I am afraid it won't. I say I am sorry for what I did. I stand, step back and light my half of the cigarette.

The fireworks begin and I turn back to my people.

June 21 rolled in with heat and I figured it was time to clean out the above ground pool. I put on knee high rubber boots and ventured in. It was thick and about three quarters up the boots. I walked in circles a few times guiding the dead leaves, walnut husks, walnuts, branches, bugs and assorted debris. Black walnut turns everything black. The water is like oil until the sludge begins to move to the centre. The edge of the pool becomes less opaque.

I begin scooping out the sludge. I wonder if the liner will hold another year. I will put on socks later and scrub the black stains on the bottom and around the edges with my feet. A usual trick I learned last year.

I see black marks along the edge begin to move. In the sunlight. There are hundreds. Hundreds of tadpoles. I turn 360. They are all along the edge. Most on the sunny side.

My granddaughter is excited about getting the pool cleaned up and filled up. She comes to take a look. "Disgusting."

I tell her. Look along the edges. In the sun.

"What is that?"

I tell her they are tadpoles. "Aneegis in my Language. Muckee in Grandma's language."

I ask her to run to the sugar shack and grab the big white pail and fill it half ways up with water.

"What are we going to do?"

We are going to put them in the swamp.

+++++++++++++

What is the Cree word for singing?

What is the Cree word spirit?

What is the Cree word for redemption?

Throwing seeds on the ground is not gardening

I did not complete my vow. I knew I was out of my league and ulitmately done-for very early on. I knew even upon saying the words out loud, that I was wasting my breath.  I wanted to make the grand statement. I wanted to make it easier.

I should know better. I'm almost 50 for crying out loud.

I had a plan in my head. Which is always the worst place to keep a plan. I keep so much stuff up there. A bit of a hoarder. I have to admit. I was a collector and things in the collection are in pretty good shape but it's almost all trivia. I could compete in Jeopardy if I had a better filing system.

I have a lot of stuff in big piles. I feel comfortable that it's there and believe that I could move things around and find something. If I really needed to find it. That's if I really needed to find it. I know couldn't do it with that Jeopardy music playing. I just start humming along when I hear that.

How could things have turned out any differently. No real plan. All icing no cake. All sizzle no steak. So life happens. All this kind of life happens. Just like it does everyday until doesn't. I lived that life and failed to complete my vow. It's pretty sad. We are talking about one hour a day for a month.

No matter how I feel about that, it won't change the fact. I made a vow and I can't go back. You don't get out like that. It's not the time it's the act. So let's begin again and prepare a forward path.

So, I think of my mind. Not as a storage place with file and piles.

Instead I find it is more like a garden that has become overgrown with invasive species and other plants that dominate aggressively. I need to create space within my mind for the language and place that is fertile and can be easily attended. I need to create a language garden in my mind.

Clear out a place and prepare the bed. Pulling out the other plants, turning over the soil. I have to garden every day planting and watering and keeping it in the sun.

I call my mother and I ask her for these words.

kistigan -garden
geestigan - I put in the garden

The Spider and the Frog Pt 3

I was about 11 years old and with my older cousin who showed me how to add a nail to the end of my bow. He was visiting from up north and we were wandering along the shoreline that extended along land that as far as I knew was Morrisseau land.

The weather was perfect. I remember feeling completely alone. Just me. On a perfect day with a bow and arrow in my hand.  A bow and arrow with a nail on the end of my arrow and I was looking for something to kill.

I gave no thought beyond that thought. With this weapon in hand. It was time to hunt. Hunt? No, nothing was going to be eaten. I was going to practice killing.

I came up a beautiful leapord frog. I was taken aback. I can't explain it. I had a fear frogs. I remember being a little boy in The Pas Manitoba and feeling fear about stepping on a frog or being touched by a frog when I was walking in mud puddles. I couldn't explain it.

I remember watching Hawaii 5-0 after the late night local news and in the episode a kidnapper is wearing a frog mask that fit right over his head. I thought it was terrifying. I also knew that it wasn't rational. I knew that frogs were not dangerous in anyway. This is how I felt.

I don't think I thought of any of those things. I know that I waited and so did the frog. Brilliant green and with a white fleshy throat and belly like a pickeral. It wasn't big. A normal size. Eyes round and alert. I stood over it. All was still but for the frog's white throat, expressing breath, heart and life.

I pulled back the bow string and struck the frog in the middle of its body. The nail sunk most way through the creature's soft body and into the ground below, the sharpened edge of the arrow buried half way.

I don't know what I expected to happen. That is not true. I know what I expected to happen. I expected the frog to die. As I watched in horror and then much worse in sadness and shame, the frog struggled to be free, to be free and to live. It tried to hop free. It moved it's legs in crawling motion. No freedom. No life.

And I cannot kill it. I can't kill it.

I walk away and then sit down on the grass and begin to sob uncontrollably. When my cousin finds me I am unconsolable.

A Visit from Spider and Frog Pt 2

My daughter bounded into the house. "Yuck". What is it? "There's a big fricken' frog sticking to the side of the house." How big. "BIG!"

Sticking to the side of the house. That's a tree frog. But a big one. No. A Big Fricken' Frog. How big is that. I've seen one the size of a small grape but they are usually smaller than that.  I looked out the window and the tree frog was the size of a frog.

I paused. I've never seen that before. Once again. I opened up the door, "Tansi, Ni Na Napayo." I thought of the word, Leegitz. Which is the name my mother had for the girl's privates. I also knew that she used the English word, Frog, to mean the same. Was this the word. I wasn't sure.

What I was sure of was that the word for frog in Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibway language was "Muckie". This I knew because many years ago our second youngest daughter sang a heartfelt and often entertaining version of "Froggie Goes A Courtin'." The song had enough verses in the Anishinaabe language to exceed my entire Cree vocabulary.

"Tansi, Boozhoo, Muckie." My granddaughter and her cousin are curiously watching. I tell them that I think this tree frog is very old, because it's so large and that I have never seen one that size before.

"Tansi, Muckie, Boozhoo, Ahnee" My granddaughter turns to her cousin. "It's an old grandpa talking to an old grandpa." I'm not that old, I think. "Yes, that is an old Muckie, I'm gonna take his picture."

I feel again that I should document this moment. Then, I get that moment of unease. That there are things that should be seen and remembered. That some things are just for you. I know this. But I've made this committment. This is part of the journey. I want to share it.

The girls return

to their game and I open the door back up. I greet Muckie and say that I want to take his picture. I move up slowly. Speaking softly and take a few pictures. I thank him for visiting and wish him well. My favourite is the one take from further away. You can see the trees in the background.

I know that thousands of frogs are singing in the swamp and surrounding trees and other habitat. It is a symphony of our spring and it rises to levels that border cacophony. I have said, in these days, that I envy the frog. Singing to the night. Singing and singing. Fighting and breeding. And singing and singing. Just an insanely joyful expression of life.

The frog has been my teacher for many years. It's the only creature that I can say I had an unreasonable fear of when I was young. It was also the creature onto whom I committed my most regrettable act as a boy.

A Visit from Spider and Frog Pt. 1

With spring blowing up around us, it was time to do some spring cleaning around the yard and start getting ready for gardening. I was in the small shed next to the sugar shack. I looked in a large white pail that I had used in collecting maple sap and where I had also brined my fish for smoking. I had let it sit for a few days filled with water and a little vinegar and then emptied it and put it in the shed. Any excess water would have evaporated and it could be put away.

I reached to pick it up and quickly pulled my hand back to my body. Inside sat the largest spider I have ever seen in my life. A shock wave went through my whole body, that primal instinct that is connected to this creature. This eight legged, many eyed, hunter, trapper. Thinker. Survivor. Drinker of blood.

The spider lives outside the insects. The scientist says that the spider is closer to the crab under the water than he is to any creature that walks upon the earth.

I put the pail down and take a step back and look away. "That is the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life." These words just kept firing around in my head. I didn't want to look at it. But I couldn't keep my head up. I could feel my neck exposed.

There was something else in the pail. What was it? It wasn't that. Could it be? No. It couldn't be. But, it sure the hell looked like that. This time, I shivered. I'm sure that I made some expression, some sound. What the hell happened here?

I took a breath. A step forward and I peer cautiously and fully into the pail. It was the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. And next to that glorious creature, the carcass of the second biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. I got the shivers again. What the hell happened here?

Yet, all my instinctual shivers and shocks could not overwhelm that sense of complete awe and wonderment of what I was seeing. I went through the list of the largest spiders I had ever seen in my whole life. The one at the putt putt golf course where my mother in law and our oldest son, then around 11  years old, played the greatest game of putt putt  golf in family history. That was the biggest one I could recall. This spider was much much bigger than that.

"Tansi, Spider. Ni Na Napayo". I then told the spider in English that I wanted to take its picture because it was so magnificent. I lifted my head and stepped back and out of the shed. I never took my eye off the edge of the pail.

I went into the house and grabbed my phone. I went back out, picked up the pail and took it outside. The spider just seemed to be watching me. I can't imagine what a creature like that must know. To survive to that size, it must be very old. How must it regard me?

I took a couple of photographs and turned the pail on its side. The giant spider skittered out and under the shed. I turned over the pail and examined the carcass but briefly. Who knows what happened here. Did they both fall into the pail somehow? Is one male and female? Is it one's past left behind.

The questions wash over as the fear did just moments ago. I feel the speed of life grab me again. I'm running out of time. I'm running out of time. I'm running out time.

That night frog comes to visit.

++++++++++++++

The language is in the story. The story is in the language.

I replay the words in my mind. The ones I have. The few. I make up an introduction. A greeting. I repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It echoes down. Hollow empty into some far away cavern.

I can feel the barriers in my mind. The chains of assimilation weaved with such intricacy, billions and beyond of cables and wires and nerve endings twisted and connected and firing one into another.

I had a dream in the language. It was as simple as breathing. The work of manifesting dream into reality is somewhere between learning to swim and learning to breath underwater.

The Ease of English. The numbing narcotic ease of the english world. The blaring, demanding white bleating bleach. The tsunami of language and culture that is swallowing up the whole world.

Go with the wave. Go with the flow. Go with the wave. Go with the flow.
Go with the wave. Until we are all washed away.

I've come to understand the complexity within the few words that I have. A mastery of Tansi would be an accomplishment. It is "Hello" and it is "How are you?" It is inflection and connection.

I smoked fish this week. I am idle no more and continue to seek out and practice our oldways wherever possible.

I was repeating my words and I paused on Fish. My mother had told me in a story and as the story unfolded the word Kinehsayou came quickly. Embedded in the story.

The language is in the story. The story is in the language.

The words I know. As best as I can spell them.

Tansi - Hello
Tansi - How are you
Niminoyan - I am well
Moe nan doe -No problem
Ni - I
Ni Na - I am
Ni Na Napayo - I am Man, I am The Man
Kinimah - Who are you?
Key Gon - What is it?
Mootz - No
Eh huh - Yes
Mootz Kistanstan - I don't know. I don't understand
Ashtum - Come here
Kinesayou - Fish
Ota - Here
Neta - There
Awahs - Go away

Ashtum Kinesayew - There's an App for that

There are an incredible wealth of online resources for the Cree language. There is even an APP for that. The Cree dictionary is at the APP store for Iphone. So that forced me to actually set up an Apple ID account. I tried in the past but became so frustrated with the signing in process I gave up. Then everytime I tried to finish the registration process, I always ran into hurdles and I would give up. I'm not technologically challenged in anyway. I just don't have much desire to further digitize my life. I feel my relationship with my Iphone is already unhealthy. So I tried a few times to download APPS that then required me to reset my Apple ID and then I wouldn't. I cannot remember what the APPs were that I wanted to download.

The thing is I didn't care enough to download APPs or iTunes or anything. After awhile I just ignored, denied or not allowed any requests to download any APP's.  Now, I've done it, I wanted to check out the Cree Dictionary APP and so I went through the rigamarole of resetting my Apple ID.  It was worth it. It's a pretty cool gadget. I called my Mom and check a few words. They didn't all match, but she said it was still a good thing. "People who speak Cree can figure out what words mean."

I told her that I was planning on smoking some fish. "The Sugar Shack is going to be a Smoke Shack for a couple of days." I asked her how to say Fish. "Geego", they say out here in Ojibway land, I'm thinking, I wonder how close the words are to each other. In Cree, we say "SeeSeeb" for duck, the Ojibways in this territory say, "Sheesheeb". Just like we say, "Soonyah" for money and they say "Zhoonya". In this case it wasn't that close. "Kinsayew", says mom. I repeat. She repeats. I repeat.
"That's it," she says.

She is reminded of a story with her granddaughters. "The twins were little. Their dad had taken them to Lockport to some fishing along the riverbank. I told them. "You have to call the fish." I said, "Ashtum Kinesayew." I through my fishing line in the water and sure enough, I got a fish. The rest of the afternoon, the twins would say, "Ashtum, Kinesayew", and cast their lines into the water."

After I get off the phone I check the APP. "Kinosêw".

Vow of Language - Day One

This is the first day of a 30 day period in which I will commit one hour of everyday learning, speaking, thinking in Cree.

It's not very much time at all when you put it on paper like that. I think that is the appeal of the idea. If it works then it's not a major sacrifice of time. It really is the least that I can do to try and keep my Mother Tongue alive.

I was preparing my preparations and my mother called. She started talking to me in Cree right away. I was trying to explain to her that the purpose of last night's phone call was to explain the idea to her. I was taking a Vow of Language and I had this idea and stuff. I was going to put it on the internet on my blog. She like the idea right away. I realized I was moving forward already.

When she called last night, I realized that I had already begun this journey. Tansi. Niminoyan. Tansi Monah Nahndoe.

The Plan

I don't want to begin my vow without putting some preparation into the way the hours will be spent. I want to go ahead and complete my vow with the least that I could do, that's not a vow that's community service.

First step, who is in my Language Circle. The speakers I know, starting with family and then friends and associates. Fortunately, with Cree as my mother tongue, it one of a handful of languages where there are still many speakers. Although like all Indigenous languages it remains under continuous and relentless attack.

Starting with my Mother and spreading out from her, I have a very good Language Circle of aunts, uncles, cousins and then friends and associates. It would be excellent if I lived up north amongst that circle of speakers, but I am in the South where the language is Ojibway and the dialect is Pottawottami.
I also have a textbook but the dialect is the James Bay Cree and our dialect is Swampy. I want to utilize as many options as possible, but am careful to stay within the lines.

Digital resources both online and broadcast are also present. I am aware of two radio stations that broadcast in Cree and there are programs, I assume in Cree on APTN. There are CBC and National Film Board archives.

I don't want to get too hung up on the dialect during these upcoming 30 days. I am going to focus on vocabulary. My measuring stick is going to be the same one I use with my grand kids; how big and complex is their vocabulary. When the 5 year old came up to me the other day and used "incidently" in conversation. That's a high bar to set. Come to think of it.

What is a Vow of Language?

What is a Vow of Language? The same thing as a vow of silence except with the purpose of learning your Indigenous Language. A Vow of Silence is usually an act of protest or an act of contrition. A Vow of Language could be both and more. It is certainly an act of protest against the ongoing cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples. It may be an act of contrition to your parents or grand parents who tried or didn't try to pass the language onto you before they passed on.

It part I believe it is how we defend Indigenous rights in Canada. If there are no Indigenous rights, then the last human defenders of the Earth, the Waters, the Wind will have been taken care of and moved aside. The death machine of government, religion, media and corporations will swallow everything up. A blind insatiable monsterous snake who cannot open its mouth wide enough, cannot choke down fast enough enough, enough, enough to quell it's junkie hunger.

The movement to cash in on generations of genocide has begun. Stephen Harper apologized. Compensation has been paid for Indian Residential Schools. Now, the end game has begun.
Government and corporations are playing our people, left and right and all the time. It is hard to build the unity with our histories of oppression and division. There are many amongst us who have given up the faith. Who do not believe that Mother Earth must be protected. Who do not believe that we owe our great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren a healthy environment. Who believe that money and all that it buys is the only thing that matters. That is one of the front lines.

The other front line has been the same for over 150 years. The attack on the spiritual and cultural of the people continues. But now the question is being openly debated, "if they don't practice their culture, if they don't speak their language, why should they have special rights." The idea being the genocide worked or is nearing completion.

The Harper Government strikes coordinated attacks on the environment and on First Nations as they are one and the same. But wait. Some how.  Four women in Saskatchewan built a fire that went viral.

The Idle No More movement started quickly and burned fiercely and moved on wings like a bush fire chased by 100 kilometres winds. Speeding across the tops of trees, jumping rivers and roads like lines in the sand. Invigorating and inspiring, our eyes opened widest in its light.

But a fire can only burn fierce for so long. If it is to be our fire, it must be tended. A fire that must always be fed cannot feed. A fire can live in many ways. As a dancing light on a warm summer night. As a roaring welcome companion on a cold one. As embers in the morning, that with wisps of tinder and a breath of air become fierce fire once again. As the sign on the horizon that we are not alone.

Now, then, how do I take this fire and turn it into something that I can use and not fuel something that burns me up from the inside out?

This spring, I collected Maple Sap and made my own Maple Syrup. It took about three weeks and it was a beautiful thing.

And now this. The Vow of Language. I haven't made it yet. I only know what it is. This time. A vow to speak or meditate or listen to my mother tongue, Cree, for one hour everyday for one Month.

I have to figure out how I am going to work it. Check back now and then to see how I'm making out.