We have to protect our Metis Nation Territories Lands Air and Water

We have to protect our Metis Nation Territories

Lands Air and Water

We have to express our Aboriginal and Indigenous Rights
We need to create our future with more than memories
Living within our lands and hunting and trade territories

1.4 Million acres
In the Manitoba Act
Respect the Canadian Constitution
and reconcile our restitution

*

Exercise your Aboriginal and Indigenous Rights
Protect the Land, Air and Water

Protect Mother Earth

Protect Mother Earth
Exercise your Aboriginal and Indigenous Responsibilities
Protect the Land, The Air, The Water 
Protect Mother Earth
Protect Mother Earth

*

I am where

I am from

Occupy the Homeland

Sunshine Sketches of the Rez

(No longer available)

Clearwater Clarity

 

I don’t know why I had to go

I had the time that day

That much I can say

I would make an offering

Place tobacco on the ice before the break

Before solid becomes liquid on Clearwater Lake

 

It is two days after spring

The transformation begins

Today I can walk on the water

Soon I will swim

 

It is my wife’s teaching

Anishinaabe ways

I carry all those good things

With me to this day

 

Tobacco on ice

Not clear crystalline

Prayers giving thanks

For my life, my wife and all our children

 

Asking strength for the sick

Sick from affliction

Sick from confliction

Sick from addiction

 

 

Still Frozen Clearwater Lake

I did what I was told

I made my offering and prayer

Now it was time to drive home

*

 

Standing on frozen sand and a sudden wave of memory

6 years old sitting in a wooden Adirondack deck chair for the first time it comes to me  

Metis families and new friends laughing and mingling about in bright colors and sunshine and the clearest water in the world and laughter and laughter

It was some kind of Metis thing.

Some kind of Metis thing.

It wasn’t just us.

Just our family.

 

It was the first time I knew that the Metis Nation was bigger than us.

It was my parents work and others in the early days of the MMF

An expression of the dreams of a dozen or so people not so many years ago

That brought us together and created that moment of sun speckled unity in a glorious pastel rainbow

I knew that I would be applying for membership

To go and speak about a Federation

That is for all of us

 

*

Without Historic Metis Communities we will have no rights

Without Land there is no Homeland

No Land No Nation.

 

*

 

That is where you are from

Said My Mom

After the hospital in The Pas

That is where we went

We were living in that unheated cabin

With ice coming through the walls

On Clearwater Lake

 

Where in our poverty

She broke from the contemporary colonial orthodoxy

That formula is best for babies

They made people believe that powder produced in the factory is the future and proper path

Mom breastfed me out of desperation like John Steinbeck’s Rose O’Sharon in Grapes of Wrath

 

I was breast fed rebellion

On Clearwater Lake

It has been half a century

I am finally awake

 

-30-

 

Marked Down and Discounted

 

One month after The Chief died

His jersey was marked down and discounted to half price

Less than half price on the official Toronto Maple Leafs' online store

George Armstrong was a Toronto Maple Leaf for 21 years

He was captain for 13 and he led the team to 4 Stanley Cups

I stole that from a Wikipedia page

And that line from the Hip

He was the greatest captain during the greatest run in the greatest franchise in English Canadian Hockey History.

He was the Chief

And when the broadcasters eulogized on his nickname they suggest it was a simpler time back then

It wasn’t meant as an insult.

It wasn’t racist.

That is the subtext to what they were really saying

Classic Canadian Erasure

It was a simpler time back then.

First Nations were still being restricted by an Apartheid like Pass system when he became a Leaf in 1950

It was a simpler time back then

Children were being dragged away to residential schools and ads in newspapers are selling 60’s scoops to rich White folks around the country and south of the border.

It was a simpler time back then

He played the first 10 years with no right to vote for First Nations across the country represented by the Maple Leaf he wore on his chest.

It was a simpler time back then

Indigenous Veterans were being neglected on the streets of the city, the gravel roads and bush trails across the country after serving in World War II.

Even Tommy Prince, Canada’s greatest Warrior would not be treated Equal as Canada’s greatest cowards.

They sold their rights to be Indian to fight for Canadian Freedom and were discounted after their service.

Marked down and discounted.

Marked down and discounted.

Marked down and discounted.

They should not have said that they called him Chief because it was a simpler time back then.

They should have said the truth.

They called him Chief

Because he was the Chief.

He had been through more than anyone in that room.

He was hardened.

Hard as flint scraping and scorching shards of steel into molten balls of fire.

He was the Man.

He was the Leader.

He was the Captain.

He was the Chief.

***