Reflecting with Grandmother Moon: Canadian Embassy

In May this year I was invited by the Indigenous Systems Knowledge Lab in Australian to be in embassy with newly formed Sister Lab Makwa Waakaa'igan in Baawaating on Turtle Island. This place is known to first nations Anishinaabe people as the place of the rapids, the water was once so thick with fish through that corridor that you could walk across the water on their backs. It's also known to locals as Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and serves as a huge shipping point taking stuff here and things there across the great lakes. It took a little while after my return to reflect and sit with the stories, I was gifted with a lot to reflect on so I waited for the right moment to switch back to another perspective so I could pattern myself back into those layered circles of relations I sat with across that time.

So I waited and waited... for time... and I waited to feel story unfurl inside me, playing out on a screen behind my eyes as I looked at grandmother moon and reconnected to those memories. There’s a weight to telling these stories, I'm always looking for the boundary lines, knowing I'll cross one sooner or later but keeping myself aware of the responsibility to honour the people, the land, and the layers of knowledge that came through. Some stories demand time, they insist on moving through you first, settling into your bones before they’re ready to meet the page and this one has many origins that are not mine to share, this sits with Tyson Yunkaporta and Melanie Goodchild but I'm pretty sure it can involved an email about Sand Talk, Relational Systems Thinking and ends with her telling him he looks like a biker.  

The invitation was accepted, right when I needed it the most. I began to prepare for my visit to Sault Ste. Marie and I received advice from Tyson on how to prepare, some of the protocols I could expect, a few words of wisdom on the gifting and reminder to center my own ceremony. He also told me I'd be accompanied by other Australian Labbers Josh Waters and John Davis who would be bringing another deeper level of embassy to the fold to fuse the Labs. I was confused on how all this would play out and to some extent what my role would be here so I began to paint.

I had a huge canvas that I had started with my daughter a few months earlier and we lost our way on it a little, the colours and patterns not really taking any form of meaning to us at all and we began to disagree on the direction it should go, the energy died and it was packed up so I decided to unroll it again to see what I could salvage from the project.

As I painted it began to feel like I was carving, I was thinking about my recent learnings from another embassy trip I had just returned from in Uganda doing ceremony with mob from all over the world all the while being chased by a DV beast (these stories are another chapter each with art ready to unfold soon, it's so big.. and scary in some places too!)

The thinking I fused into this painting was about how all this work to center Indigenous systems knowledge is also about sitting with the right people in the right spaces, not looking for too many connections, like our social networks encourage relentlessly, but instead being intentional with our energy and connections and looking at sharing that knowledge with different layers of relations. Sometimes this means only giving some the little pieces of the whole complexity pie and bending those stories to put protective processes in place to limit the breaking of them.

If I know anything at all it is that we always break these stories as humans with limited capacity as individuals to understand the "whole complexity pie"

So I carved into the painting and myself even more, taking it to the water and letting all these big stories flow around me in the hope that it would to help me understand and to have her make marks on it too. I looked at adding in avoidance lines and stories on power and I thought very deeply about the value in all those old maps that where past on to us to navigating the knowledge scaffold in these very real places across the planet and the universe.

Then the day came to leave and the painting was finished, it was hard to think about letting it go at this point and that was one of the lessons Tyson gave, when gifting a gift, it should be something that is a little bit hard to let go of.

I met with John and Josh at Brisbane airport to make the 20 something hour journey, building the relationship between us 3 all the way too, with some of our own avoidance and permissions stories folded in as we jumped from airport to airport before finally landing on this beautiful piece of counrty situated in the heart of the great lakes on Turtle Island. Canada sat on one side of the river, the US on the other, an invisible line of separation.

It was spring when we landed, and everything seemed alive with a kind of generosity I wasn’t expecting. Dandelions bursting up through the soil in slow slow motion before hurriedly throwing their seeds into the air and making it seem like it was snowing, I saw the fattest bubble bees in my life all buzzing around and weaving all those invisible lines too, these ones where the unseen threads between the blossoms but these lines where made for deeper connection and entanglement. As I walked that first sunrise on this land with John and Joah time slowed all the way down and it was as if the the whole ecosystem was showing me how to be how to give and move and connect.

On our second day, Jacqueline Twillie arrived from New York to join the flows and we were welcomed with gifts and ceremony by Melanie, her husband Sly, and fellow Anishinaabe Labber Joel. Smoke from the sage swirled out of the abalone shell and into the air, this was soon joined by Anishinaabe songs and stories.

This ceremony, we where told, is known as “the edge of the woods,”  loosely translated through my lens, it is when a traveler is seeking permissions to enter through place that they do not refer to as home, it is designed to exchange and set intentions, ensuring the traveler/s are capable of acting in good and kind ways to all the relations that live within that place. For me this is where I see a medicinal journey unfolding too, the big gifting energy that begun to flow served as a doorway in to receiving this good energy, knowledge and medicine.

Melanie invited us on a Truth Walk on the grounds of Algoma University later that day a former Residential School. Here we heard the story of Chief Shinwak's vision and part of the big story colonisation laid down here. These stories were difficult to hear and stirred up fresh echoes in me. There is a shared history that we are moving through, the babies where taken here too.

The Residential School Survivors want these stories to be shared for good. They see all the places where these stories are tightly fused into the sick systems we have inherited and understand they are also part of the design solutions we need right now as a species.

The children of Shinwak stories are woven into the legacy of the Makwa Waakaa'igan Labs, allowing systems and complexity/ IK to go to work on these old, calcified ideas and look for the levers that increase the health of the whole system.

And... we must look, it demands our attention right now.

During the visit, we attended the symposium with community members over 3 days to speak about these big stories and the roles of governance plus announce the Labs sibling fusion. This was done with a connection back to culture both from Joah and Josh, and also from Melanie and the other fellow Labbers in Baawaating. The star blanket was placed on the floor, and the gifts that were entangled with knowledge were placed in the centre. Songs and stories about them were exchanged. Ochre was on the skin of us from Australia, and then, as part of an outer circle of these embassy relations, I was invited to offer the painting and speak a little bit about where and why it had come to be.

Timing allowed for another very special invite to be received from Melanie's brother, Keith to share in a sweat lodge ceremony together. I was so excited and also anxious but ready to trust these incredible people and relations around me so in I went looking for connection, understanding and some healing for these cuts deep inside me if that was available too. Sly looked after the ceremonial fire here and I was cautioned to not take pictures of the fire in a very kind way, guidance and boundaries pointed out as i stumbled around.

It is the role of the men to look after fire on this land, John and Josh were inside the inner circles here with Keith and Sly as they helped prepare the ceremony for us woman who arrived later with some food and blankets, it was super chilly once the sun went down.

Circles inside circles inside circles - Nick named the Taj Ma-Lodge

Cedar for protection

Don't take pictures of ceremonial fires

I began to see some layered processes that went into the preparation of the whole ceremony, the fire, the food, the helpers, the songs, the drums, the cedar, the water, the wood for the fire, the direction you walk around the fire … the relationships between it all, the knowledge exchange/superhighways in movement, dancing together beautifully.

I’ve tried to explain some of my experiences in the few deeper ceremonies that I’ve been invited to and I’m seeing patterns, I’m learning…

I’m learning…

Part of this energy/knowledge sharing is also sitting with the right people in the right spaces, being intentional with sharing processes, not all knowledge/energy is intended for everyone. Sometimes you have to bend and twist these stories that come from IK to put those firewalls/avoidances in place to limit the breaking of them.

I’m learning…

Ceremony is designed to increase your relatedness and is an essential element to designing the interconnected, entangled, networked systems we live in and are part of. There is no denying it is essential, I will not be convinced otherwise but this is where things get a little squiggly for me because ceremony is so diverse.. and needs to be, it needs to have grit, flow and elusive indescribable elements to show us our human limitations in individual understanding.

I’m seeing...

Story and the power it holds. I see it unfurling into the room, being called in by us setting circle there.

I’m seeing...

We have very little control over the story once it is in motion and with that motion comes very real responsibilities as custodians, guides, translators.

I’m seeing...

Those responsibilities extend to all the things that story can create or destroy as it moves through the infinite meaning making systems, knowledge scaffolds, stacks on stacks on stacks... just like that water moving around the planet.

I have this deep sense of gratitude for being in these spaces and receiving all this care. I also had a realisation that these are the stories I’ve been looking for my whole life. The stories that reconnect us to those big, big songlines... All this embassy work abroad has strengthened my relations back home, increased my appetite for my own stories from my ancestors right here and others I'm now connected to who are trying to find ways through the mess made by locking it all up all the land and removing relations, it's helping me see through lots of different lenses to recognise what has been in front of me the whole time.

So much art flowed across this time, some being inspired by the governance sharing, the stories of the children who were taken, and some directly from the words that came to me inside the lodge... It is my hope that we can find ways to sit tenderly with the land again, like you would with any sick relative, to see all that she gives us unasked every day and sing those old songs for her and dance those old dances and make those straight lines curved again. Enjoy the images and the imagined in the gallery below x

I'll leave you with a final gift of wisdom that was given to us from Sly as part of wrapping our time in this place.

I hope this little story has given you some joy and some good energy as you too make your way through the complexity pie, see you somewhere around imagination soon

Lots of love xx