Cirlces

Through much of the last couple decades of my work in First Nation governance I've had to be a generalist which is not how the foreign education that I've received has been structured. Fortunately, I've always just gotten by in my education and so am not at risk of being as rigid as all that. Either way, a specialized education is inadequate to address the increasing complexity and risk that we face as First Nation people. Fortunately, our culture is built on foundational principles that are infinitely wholistic and well-suited for the task at hand.

In our culture, the way to manage through complexity is to cultivate habits, cycles, and patterns, and to see the cycles and patterns of other elements of nature.? Everything is connected.? It seems like there are thousands of ways to explain that scientifically these days.? Every action and every motion create waves through space and time (lol), those waves crash into other waves and when you have infinite waves it can seem a bit chaotic.? But if you “go to the balcony”, or in this case, if you go up the hill and look down on infinite waves, there are patterns.? They are fluid, they are alive, but they are following rules, they are the same as equally as they are individuals.? And we are the same. I am too old to have pronouns, but I often refer to myself as a plural.

Our culture is all circles.? It is all ceremony and structure.? Everything is connected.? That’s the number one natural law.? Google the word Wakohtowin.? There are a few different spellings and several different dialects.? Search each and see how many things come up.? Companies, non-profit societies, university projects, buildings, history, ceremonies, and round and round.? One word from our language and it is alive and everywhere that we are, spreading to connect to all the nodes in the network like all natural things.? The word is defined (Wikipedia baby) like this:?

Wahkohtowin?is a?Cree?word which denotes the interconnected nature of relationships, communities, and natural systems. Its literal meaning is "kinship", but it is often used to refer to?Cree?law, or Cree codes of conduct. ?

Our number one law is that everything is connected.? Which is absolutely fucking true.? I probably can’t explain quantum physics very well, but I’m pretty sure they’ve recently concluded that everything is connected.? This is one of the most widely used words in our language today.? Even non-fluent speakers like me use the word all the time.? Our people put it on everything, our companies, our stores, fashion labels, and round and round.? If you’re close enough to see that Nihiyaw people are healing, but you’re not close enough to know how I will give you one hint, it is not economic reconciliation.? Wakohtowin.? It’s also the name of our lodge, our dance, our circle up here in the bush.

I would say that our people managed through the tumultuous end of the last ice age better than just about anyone.? That was complexity.? Dozens of generations (don’t bother doing the math on that) facing massive shifts in the climate and habitability of different regions of the planet.? All you have to do today to see how well we fared through those times is to do what we did back then.? Track the big animals.? In our case, track the buffalo and you will find us too.? That should take you back 15,000-25,000 years.? Before that we hunted even bigger animals, very successfully.? Indigenous people hunted whales thousands of years ago (still do or did up until very recently, I admit I’m not up on whale hunting).? Literally whatever is the biggest.? Not because of the size of their heads (weirdest fixation ever is animal heads), but because this was the most sustainable way to live. ?

One very relevant example: My last job was working in Treaty 8 BC for Prophet River First Nation.? While there I learned a bit about the history of the area.? In the archaeological record in the area buffalo have been around for nearly as long as there hasn’t been ice.? The ice receded and they moved in (from the south), and we followed carefully behind (I use “we” very loosely).? I almost just wrote that this was the beginning… but it wasn’t, this was another wave, this was our pattern.? Circles don’t lead back to the same spot.? Meaning, we do have our own concept of time passing.? We know that there are bigger circles, and collisions of circles and new patterns and round and round.? We know that as the circles coil around they are in motion, like planets, like migrations.? They change.? They are complex.? Knowing the pattern means you know when it’s changing.? Squirrels know if winter will be long or short, colder or mild, they know every sign, they know every element, and they manage through complexity with their own circles. ?

Anyway, back to the buffalo.? It’s too long of a story for here, its about 12000+ years long.? That’s how long buffalo and people (Dunne/Dene people) co-existed in the valleys and mountains where the Prophet River people still live and hunt.? The people there would burn the valleys whenever necessary to maintain good grazing lands for the buffalo.? Two species feeding each other.? This was the most sustainable farming operation in history (probably worthy of a citation?).? I’m half joking, I would never seriously refer to this as farming.? But it sure lasted a long time with no signs of being in jeopardy. ?

The fur trade arrived.? The new economy was a hell of a wave.? Within 100 years, or right around there (please look that one up), the buffalo in the area were gone.? Complexity.? Prophet River people at that time knew every plant, every trail, every season, every circle in the area.? They adapted theirs.? Still today, buffalo is everything to a lot of indigenous people across turtle island.? Buffalo is many tribes’ closest relation. ?

Another way to kind of get a sense of the continuity of the culture and concepts is to follow the medicine wheel.? I hope you searched that, or asked your AI and it told you that the medicine wheel is a visual tool for teaching wholistic healing, often to treat addictions.? It is that, and not to make light of that.? But the medicine wheels I’m talking about go back tens of thousands of years(conservative).? They were in the south, and as the ice faded, they came north, with us, and with the buffalo (boom).? We kind of know what medicine wheels are still.? They are calendars, they are the university, they are where stories get told.? When your culture is tens of thousands of years old (conservative) it measures time in circles because of everything we’ve been talking about.? If something big flies by the planet and it’s on a circle, then that’s something to keep track of.? Look up in the sky on a clear night (maybe not if you don’t live in the bush) and you can see complexity. But watch it for thousands of years and you can see circles.? People did this all over the world at different times in the past.? Maybe there is a common origin.? Maybe at one time there was only one culture, and it was something like wakohtowin.? Maybe we were just like the rest of life, connected. ?