A humbling experience of cultural appreciation

Last week, I was honoured to be invited by Xanthe Isbister, Director / Curator, Galleries and Collections to attend the ceremonial blessing of the Mike Mountain Horse Story Robe that took place inside a tepee on the Esplanade lawn.

The ceremony was organized by Xanthe and her team as a way to honour the cultural significance of the story robe and to ensure it received the proper blessing from Indigenous leaders before being featured in an upcoming BBC Two series.

Led by Elder Charlie Fox with support from his brother, Dan, friend, Brenda Mercer, and war veteran, Glen Miller, the ceremony was an intimate display of Indigenous culture and tradition. Surrounded by the lodgepoles and canvas of the tepee, sitting cross-legged on the grass with ants crawling over me, smelling the aroma of the sweetgrass sage, and getting a slight buzz from the tobacco burning inside a pipe, I couldn’t help but feel deeply connected to the earth and our ancestors. Watching my colleagues and new friends have their faces painted by Elder Charlie with red clay and bison tallow, I felt a tug in my gut as I thought of Indigenous warriors who navigated this land long before we arrived.

Overall, the ceremony left me with a deep sense of cultural appreciation for the ways of life of the Indigenous peoples. Long before ink and paper were readily available, Indigenous peoples used the tools they had to document their stories. Mike Mountain Horse, for example, used a cowhide (from a cow that he likely hunted and skinned himself), and pigment (likely from a mineral, animal, or vegetable source) to depict twelve battles he fought with the Germans during World War I. The depictions are pictogram-style stories that tell of the hard-fought battles Mountain Horse endured and serves as a historical record of his wartime experience. Brenda Mercer, in an article I wrote for Indigenous Peoples Day in June, describes a similar appreciation for her ancestors by saying, “every time I pull a thread through my beads, I think of my ancestors. I think about the tools they wouldn’t have had access to that make it so easy for me today. They would have had to go out and harvest an animal to get sinew – dry it, butcher it, and harvest pieces that would become threading material.”

As the ceremonial blessing came to end, Brenda left us with some parting words of gratitude for making space to feature this important piece of their history, she concluded by saying, “this is truth and reconciliation.”

The experience I had yesterday left me feeling like I am now part of Indigenous history in some small but significant way. As is tradition in this culture, oral storytelling is how history is passed down between the generations. I am honoured to be but a footnote in the story.

by Gillian Reimer , Manager, Marketing and Creative Services