It’s been a while since I got up before sunrise, but it’s getting easier with the shorter days. Looking over social media, I see that it snowed south of here, which is to be expected. At the 55th parallel, winter doesn’t usually set in until Halloween night, then the stone-cold wintry weather ices us in the following day. No November rain for us, it’s straight to skating.
In 1998, the Grand Council of the Crees published a book titled Never Without Consent: James Bay Crees Stand Against Forcible Inclusion into an Independent Quebec. This book looked the referendum on October 24, 1995, asking whether the Crees would join an independent Quebec if the province voted yes in the provincial referendum to be held a week later.
I’ve been spending time in Winnipeg for work, and it has allowed me to check in with the large Indigenous community here. A few steps away from my hotel, at the forks of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, stands Camp Marcedes in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. It’s named after Marcedes Myran, whose remains are believed to be at the Brady Landfill.
At least once a year I venture out of our traditional territory to wreak a little havoc in the lands of our southern brethren, the Hurons. It’s not really to wreak havoc but to learn and trade information for business development, something that’s kept me busy for the last 30 years.
It is with delight we see that the Cree Nation Government, Cree Trappers’ Association, communities and other entities will create a “Cree Cabin Damage Assessment Registry.” Cree land users will be asked to fill out a form by November 1 to describe the damage the fires have caused to their camps.
Whew, what a summer… interrupted. It’s not a season that many would acquaint themselves with as being a hazardous time, but it was this year. The summer of scorching fires across the country made headlines and as I write, another natural disaster has hit elsewhere on the planet in the form of earthquakes. I shudder to think what that type of disaster would do to us up here in the North. Most likely a huge tsunami created by a giant burp in the mantle of northern America, most of which consists of rivers, lakes and all kinds of ice.
I feel like a survivor at times and there is good reason for that. As an Indigenous person living in this time and country, I have seen so much happen over the past four decades of my life. The sad reality is that I have lost many young and Elders close to me over the years through tragic situations.
Given the life expectancy in times past I might once have already been considered an Elder. Not so these days. But a few years back Matthew Coon Come said he met a people that had a category called junior Elders. Maybe I qualify for that category.
I spent the last two weeks in debilitating pain that demanded me to feel it. Not just my physical pain, but the emotional pain I’ve been carrying as well. Although I’ve been scared to face it, I had no choice but to do just that.
These past months, I couldn’t stop thinking about the impacts the forest fires have had on wildlife. Many of the animals we harvest have offspring during the summer and we haven’t been able to measure the losses these species suffered this season. With Moose Break fast approaching, I wonder how we’re going to collectively manage harvests in the near future.
