A season of connection, a season of change – Indigenous Peoples Month Reflection
Summer solstice quickly approaches. This is a time of great meaning for Indigenous Peoples. The day isn’t simply a day to mark the longest day of the year, the beginning of summer and the time for barbeques and beaches. Like the changes of seasons, we also go through seasons of change. There are times to pause, times to learn and times of new beginnings to shed what no longer serves us. This is the time to remind us to turn inward and nourish what is needed for us to grow and evolve.
First, for each of us to be here today we needed to have over 4,000 ancestors, over the last 400 years alone, from our parents back to our ninth great-grandparents. We were a part of their dreams and are connected to them all.
Time passes quickly and much has happened over the course of not only the last few days, months and years, but over decades and centuries. These lands now referred to as Canada, were initially inhabited by the First Peoples and Inuit practicing their ways of living and being. Connected as one with all of creation.
Today, the ability to easily connect to Mother Earth can be challenging for some and is completely lost for others. The disconnection to all of creation is felt globally. We feel it, see it and know it from Mother Earth and how she responds through our climate and through how we interact with each other. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to feel connected to all of creation.
I consider myself to be privileged to have the ability to connect to Mother Earth in any given moment. I have the luxury to sit and listen to the whispers of the wind across the trees, trees who hold all knowledge since creation, the birds singing for the joy it brings them and for others around to share in. I can sit in complete darkness, look up in a clear night sky to see the stars and moon in all their glory looking down upon me with my ancestors in all their glory.
Disconnection comes from more than being removed from the land, all that inhabits her and to the Creator. Disconnection is also from within us.
Over the course of history there have been acts of genocide from one nation over another on a global scale. Although, you may not see the struggles of Indigenous Peoples regularly on the nightly news. The Indigenous Peoples still remain in a fight for their survival. Many communities don’t have running water, never mind being drinkable. Many communities don’t have hydro and rely upon diesel generators for power. Children must travel hundreds of miles away from their home and community to get a high school education, and there are more children in care than at the height of the Indian Residential Schools. It is an alarming rate of epidemic proportions that women, girls and 2Spirit Peoples are murdered and go missing every day. It is easier to erase a people when they have no women.
Words like genocide are used to describe other nations around the globe who are fighting for their survival. We tend to forget that the struggle for the First Peoples on our own land carry these same words and have so for hundreds of years.
Summer is the time to sit, reflect and work on ourselves to help our inner beings evolve. To remind us there is hope and there is a light within to nurture others as the sun does for all of Creation. Now is the time for faith and to allow the light to shine through the darkness. Like the ball of fire in the sky that sustains us all, our inner ball of fire keeps us strong, keeps us resilient and keeps us growing.
Know your truth, accept it and sit, listen and be guided by your inner light. Reconnect or connect with your true self and live that truth, whatever it may be and be okay with it.
Connor Sarazin is KAIROS’ Operations Specialist.
