changing camps

in this season of my life

i am:

makwa ododem

waaseyaa’sin

ojibway by way, most recently

of michi saagiig anishinaabewaki

and michi saagiig anishinaabeg,

living in WSÁNÉC territory

working in Lekwungen territory

(reading, writing, thinking, visiting, making a salary on top of one of their buried villages, an old camas harvesting site. the view is to die for.)

camas are brilliant blue flowers, not the kind Bram Stokers brother imported either; i offer my glass spirit beads from my necklace to you and your relatives because that’s what i have to offer these days of not yet unpacked.

i feasted these places and then the deer walked by my office window,

and a raccoon came home to eat at the bottom of nokomis giizhik

here, odjig anang sits behind me

and waabanong, the east is wodi, *points lips* there, left of that wajiw (mountain)

i wonder how the Coast Salish know all these ones: the skies, the waters, the hills, and mountains. how do they call that big one? the one Vancouver calls Mt. Baker? i never imagined that offering my asemaa and words to the east would have me facing my geographic home, having always faced the east, from within my home.

 

changing camps, following the nourishment.

 

it’s what anishinaabeg do. it’s what anishinaabeg mamas do. traverse waters, plains, mountains and water.

 

this next part will move like a Tlicho stitch > Anishinaabeg : Coast Salish, Anishinaabeg : Coast Salish, Anishinaabeg : Coast Salish.

eya.