We are one

November 27, 2024

Snake Swallowing Stone. Photo courtesy of Paul Chaput.

It is an honour to be invited to contribute to the ongoing dialogue concerning living and working according to Indigenous seasonal activities.

My name is Paul Joseph André Chaput. I am Métis from the Michif French village of St. Adolphe, nestled on the banks of the Red River, south of Winnipeg, Manitoba. There, in the spring of 1946, my feet first touched the sacred Earth, the holy soil of the Red River.

The Indigenous seasonal activities in St. Adolphe were comprised of harvesting and planting; pecans, apples, crab apples, rabbits, jack rabbits, fish, geese, moose, deer and ducks, to name a few. We harvested what the Earth had to offer. We never experienced starvation nor did we depend on expensive colonial products. We bartered with what we harvested and created. Years later I was told by a childhood friend that the Métis were viewed as "poor" by the newly-arrived French colonists and their cattle culture. Why? Because the Métis relied on rabbits and such to get through the winter.

With great regret my connection to Indigenous seasonal activities ended in 1954 (age 8) when my family relocated to Petawawa, Ontario. We didn't have to harvest. The food came to our door. Welcome to Wonder Bread. To this day I grieve the loss of the connection to the Earth back home in St. Adolphe.

Riviere Rouge

Dedicated to Lena Russel, Gainai Language Warrior

From the wound flow

Red encoded drops of identity.

From which mountain did they originate . . .

Aboriginate?

As it passes through this valley of open flesh

The victim, transfixed by the colour of the loss,

Forgets the Source.

 

My blood flows from many mountains

To this fountain in my chest.

Métis, poly-cultural

Français, bi-lingual

No voice, multi-faction

Can't get no status-faction.

So many wounds

So many streams

Too few bridges.

The colour of the river says it all.

It is obvious that "living and working according to Indigenous seasonal activities," is incompatible with modernity's living and working seasonal activities: it's "either/or". But what is at the root of this incompatibility? Seasonality. Why? Because these seasonal Earth-based activities are linked to ancient ceremonies honouring Mother Earth and all the Life that she sustains, much of which is linked to harvesting in sync with Nature.

Living and working according to Indigenous seasonal activities pertains directly to harvesting, celebrating, and honouring the Spirits. They are not about following the schedules of human direction divorced from Nature. Indigenous peoples have always practiced ancient ancestral rituals based on lunar and solar cyclical timing. Despite the unrelenting efforts of modernity by settler governments to eliminate Indigenous languages and cultural practices, much has survived.

The Indigenous approach recognizes and honours the Earth as an animate Being, whereas modernity's approach sees the Earth as inanimate. Underlying the Indigenous approach is the understanding that We Are One, and therefore everything is connected-not so within modernity's materialistic approach.

Harvesting Bison

A people who are rooted in the reality of "Oneness" would never-could never-have decimated the Bison, a sacred manifestation of the Creator that fed the People.

Deadly Harvest

Gone are the sacred herds of four-legged ones

Whose thunderous passing shook three days

Freely roaming

Grazing fields

Buffaloed over cliffs

Pulverized bones to fertilize monoculture deserts

Tended by tethered tenants

Niagara falls beneath the gaze of newly wedded workers

Who will never feel the freedom

Of riding bareback chasing herds.

Two-legged legends astride four-legged Gods

Harvesting the four-legged Goddess

Hooves pounding the earth

Now prairie memories, newly minted

Jingle in beggar pockets

Buffalo nickel dynasty descendants

Shoes pounding the pavement

Gone are the sightless seers

Eyes well up

Purity gives up the wealth of the heart

The body forgoes the banquet of the senses

Avails itself of the very nutrients

Rendered inaccessible while thrilling the senses

We Are One.

In 2019 I screened my ground-breaking documentary of the 2018 Indigenous Climate Change Adaptation Gathering (ICCAG), "Hishuk'ish Tsawalk - We are one. Everything is One." The film clearly captures examples of how climate change impacts Indigenous seasonal activities.

The film brings to the fore the Oneness that underlies all Indigenous cultures. I encourage you to view my film keeping in mind that the Earth is animate, noting also, the consistency of the Elders' voices regarding Oneness and Hope for the future.

Paul Chaput

 

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