As I sit, peacefully reflecting on the last week, I am enjoying the most perfect bowl of cornsoup. My children are resting peacefully in the living room eating the soup I made. My husband is away working but I will keep this soup warm until he comes home. Love is definitely in the air in my indigenous home.
It’s one of those grey overcast days where nothing incredible is really happening but you have the luxury of time. Time to make corn soup, time to watch cartoons, time to watch the rain and think. All of a sudden these visions of people come forward in my mind.
I can see my Gramma Rovina and how she would be sitting at the table quietly cutting radishes, thinking.
I can see the grumpy ladies who taught me how to make moccasins and the still quiet that hung over the air as they laced pieces together.
I can see my dad working in the garden, tilling the soil his ancestors tilled, and shaking the weeds from the earth. He is getting ready to plant the onehe that will keep our family eating corn soup throughout the year.
I can see my neighbour silently mixing scone dough, and hear the quiet sound of her slowly adding in more buttermilk.
I can see my Aunty Emily, quietly drinking a cup of hot water and looking out the window just like me, reflecting.
Each one of these people have, at some point or another in their Haudenosaune existence, been under the psychological assault we are all under, living our lives as Haudenosaune in North America. These are the people I have watched, reflecting in the quiet, and return to peaceful steps forward after the noise of our identity war calmed.
Then in the quiet, I see another memory I know, a child named Makayla sitting beside her mom eating a bowl of corn soup.
As that little girl ate I could see a glimmer of that same reflective stare in her eyes that I’d seen in other people five times her age and I recognized it immediately. It’s not the stare of your everyday ten year old. This is the long gaze of a person who has lived through a lifetime’s worth of pain and identity war.
Someone sent me a video of Makayla telling the story of the pain she was in while she went through chemotherapy. She was crying, saying that when she tried to walk that she would collapse from the pain. I saw that look in her eyes, and I have literally felt that kind of pain in my own life when I collapsed and fainted from pain after my double mastectomy. As I sit here eating my corn soup, I am halted in one of those moments where deep hearkens unto deep, real recognizes real, and I find myself having a moment of acknowledgement with a ten year old that is just a shadow of the truth she has walked through.
Makayla’s journey and her story of pain is evoking that kind of reaction all across Indian Country. In the last week I have received emails from indigenous people across the United States and Canada offering prayers for Makayla and her family; the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Odawa, Haudenosaune, Navajo, Lakota, Cherokee, Shawnee, Choctaw, Ute, Penobscot, Tlinget (from Alaska), Dene, Cree, and Algonquin nations have gathered together to pray for this child, in ceremony and in churches across Turtle Island.
To bring another dimension of sacred illustration to this, is the story of Jesus coming to Makayla and saying to her, “do not be afraid”. Across the indigenous world, this vision is seen as valid, this child’s cries are heard and this family’s decision is honoured.
Makayla Sault represents something strong to the people. This child was in pain crying out for help, longing for her own medicines, having faith in the vision the Creator gave to her, and then begging for freedom from the chemical warfare being inflicted upon her body. That combined with her parents response to her request, and the brave step of faith toward indigenous medicine is one of the most poignant illustrations of empowerment that indigenous people have had for generations. The amazing story here is that Onongwatri:yo: is not only healing Makayla, but it is also healing some very deep residential school wounds impressed in our collective spirits.
Makayla, there are hundreds of thousands of people all across Turtle Island who have heard your story and who have offered prayers, asking the Creator to help you in your journey. We honour your voice, your bravery, and your parent’s choice. Jesus was right, do not be afraid! Go forward in faith and trust that you are loved and surrounded in prayer from all nations.
