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BROUGHT TO YOU BY 2 RIVERS REMIX, THE EN-OWKIN CENTRE & IGNITE THE ARTS FESTIVAL
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ᑖᓂᓯ ᓂᐚᐦᑰᒫᑲᓇᐠ ᐁᑿ ᓂᑑᑌᒼᑎᐠ
tânisi, niwâhkômâkanak êkwa nitôtêmtik,
Hello, my relatives and friends,
My father recently shared with me a teaching from his grandmother: that the winters where the temperatures rose and fell significantly tended to be winters with a lot more sickness.
I'm thinking about this now as I endure another bad cold, my second or third of the season already. My kids, colleagues and other friends have all been sick multiple times over the last few months, too.
This correlation between unusually large temperature fluctuations and increased susceptibility to illness is a poignant reminder of how interconnected our health is with the Earth and her cycles.
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Spring on the prairies, 2023.
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While some may view Indigenous knowledge as separate and apart from the discipline of science, my great-grandmother's teaching highlights the inherent scientific nature of traditional wisdom.
My ancestors may not have written down their observations, but our oral traditions meant that information was preserved anyway, over thousands of years.
My Ukrainian ancestors were also connected to the land – first in Ukraine and then in Saskatchewan, where they farmed for multiple generations before my mother was born.
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I found out recently, through an excellent book called Valley of the Birdtail, that Ukrainians were purposefully sought out by the Englishmen who dreamed up "Canada." They wanted to populate the prairies with whites, but also wanted sturdy, hardworking folk who could survive the harsh prairies winters.
Ukrainians fit the bill. The government back then actually sent people to Ukraine to advertise Canada. They even offered some settlers free land.
Winters on the prairies are indeed long and can be bitterly cold. And Ukrainians have their understanding of nature, too.
Our neighbours in Treaty six, who "own" the land next to our acreage, told us about how they predict the weather for the year with a pig's spleen
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If you squint just right, the bottom line looks like it says "Land back." 😜
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That's right. Even to this day, farmers in Saskatchewan will cut up a pig's spleen and then "read" it. Depending on the ways it curls up after the cutting, it may be a particularly difficult winter, or a dry summer. Earlier this year, our neighbours let us know that the temperatures would rise and drop significantly over the winter –– the pig's spleen told them so.
What some people write off as superstition, I believe may be an alternate understanding of reality. Of the earth, our bodies, our relationship with nature and of the seasons.
hiy hiy,
Aunty Eden
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Eden Fineday is a nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 territory. She is the publisher of IndigiNews, where she leads a team that is decolonizing the media with their trauma-informed approaches. She endeavours to be a good relation as an uninvited guest on the territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqeum), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and
Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples.
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