Outdoor ReconciliACTION

07/07/2023

In ithinimowin, nehithewiwin, or just speaking the Cree language and more commonly known as Cree; nipin (summer), comes from kinipin (fast medicine) is what the old people say!

Nakatamawow means “I will hide it from him or her,” as in protecting it for them. Pawakanak (dream guardians), Napewnak (male warrior), Iskwewnak (female warrior), or ithinewnak (human warrior or warrior if you may). Hence nipiynak (water guardian or water protector if you may).

Nīpin follows the calendar years of July and August.

Nīpin, or summer, actually translates to "gifts from the water" (nipi = water; in = to give) because this is the season in which water is providing life in the rivers and through the raspberry and blueberry rains. The moons for this season are paskahawī pīsim (egg hatching moon) and paskowī pīsim (moulting moon). The Asiniskaw Īthiniwak would fish, gather berries and medicine, and make pottery. Nīpin also marks the new year for the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak - this is when you count how many winters old you are.

For more information, visit our website: https://sixseasonsproject.ca/seasons/nipin

01/07/2023

Biological warfare has been going on for centuries, if not for millennials. Studies after studies illustrates this — which have established various modern theoretical including technical degrees, doctorates, professions and careers. In retrospect, the “prince” of darkness named Vlad III — also known as Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula, or the real Dracula — history depicts the Impaler as a ruthless leader in warfare who also practiced biological warfare. Chronicles chroniclize the “prince” of darkness of intentionally infecting his soldiers with disease in order to contaminate and eradicate his enemies on and off the battlefield.

Similarly, during early colonial presence in the south — and having no immunity to foreign diseases that were intentionally introduced — viral biological contagions spread across the Americas like wildfire. There were tens of millions of Indigenous people who perished from foreign diseases who never even seen or met a foreigner. Oral history, government reports, and early colonial journals portrays explorers including missionaries distributing and trading infected blankets that reports Indians dying in the hospital from foreign diseases.

Additionally, Colonial Officials waged biological warfare in order to dismantle the political units, strength, and influence of various sovereign Original Nations. There are numerous nations that became extinct we never knew of and will might possibly never know due to biological catastrophes. For example, a British colonial official once asserted “you will do well to try and inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race” (Jeffery Amherst journal).

What’s worst, John A. MacDonald — the Sinister Prime Minister — advocated and ordered healthy and sick children to sleep, play, and eat with sick kids at residential schools. There was even instances where children infected with tuberculosis were brought in and out of poorly ventilated and mold ridden residential schools. The residential school systems were just one of many “revolutionary” mechanisms, Indian Policy, public declarations, or legislation that were applied for assimilating and assassinating anything reminiscent of Indigenous peoples from memory, place, and sound!

Even my own nation were traded disease ridden blankets that nearly annihilated my community. My uncle said “it was like everyone just vanished one day” after they were traded blankets riddled with maladies of calamities as demonstrated above. Thankfully, a traditional healer saved whoever was left at that time! Although I do not agree with the “primitive” wording in the images, which is used by narrow minded academics to publicly and institutionally diminish the very existence of Indians to justify social hierarchy. This story is about warriors who were traded and infected by disease infested blankets. The mineral water or springs at Manito Beach is what saved them from extinction!

21/06/2023

The Indigenist Protagonist:

What does it mean to be Indigenous? Does it mean to be traditional, a person who smudges, a person who bingos, or does it mean to be a survivor, lover, friend, mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, aunty, or cousin? Or does it mean to be something else like some sort of deadly Indigenous creature?

Well, according to scholarly literature, Indigenous peoples can be described as ecosystem people, conservationists, bio-chemists, agriculturalists, and civil engineers; who had well-ordered, methodical, diligent, disciplined, and cosmopolitan societies. But because of experiencing invasion for over 500 years, we have been only allowed to adapt to to innovations of our own technologies. Not saying everyone was living in peace and harmony with all of nature - which is a fantasy and travesty to publicly assert that. But various nations did share and trade knowledge, ceremonies, agriculture, and various items in vast functional trade networks which spanned from coast to coast to coast to coast since time immemorial. Nobody owns anything - like some individuals and nations like to assert - but it is shared for all of mutual benefit which includes ceremonies, concepts, cultural items, knowledge, and even land.

Whereas, Indigenous Knowledge (IK), Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), or our Collective Human Heritage is geographically unique to a regional landscape. Knowledge gained from observing, testing, and analyzing the natural world of plant and animal life that has been developing, shared, and passed on through thousands of generations through rich oral history including graphic memory markers or dynamic tools of cultural evolution illustrated in rock art or picture writing, masks, and Wampum Belts. All languages and knowledge arises from the land!

In Canada, there are over 634 First Nations - including Métis and Inuit - each with their own unique identity, culture, and collective history. Most nations have been pan-Indigenized and labelled as Algonquin. From my view, we are all related and Crees, Anishnawbe, Ojibwa, Saulteaux can understand and have similar words. In my humble opinion, we all belong to the same language group and are one nation and all this it’s Cree, Anishnawbe, or Saulteaux thing is just creating division. To me, everyday is National Indigenous Peoples Day, or to be more politically correct in the Americas, it’s National Original Peoples Day! Because everyone is Indigenous, just depends where you come from.

31/03/2023

As you can see, the sun is nothing but a small speck in the massive Milky Way universe which emits the highest vibrations in the galaxy that helps sustain all life on earth. Me, you, your lover - or lovers - and haters are nothing but a tiny fragment to what is out there for you to discover. Anyways, Indigenous peoples - in this context First Nations - are also known as ecosystem people or in other words, environmentalists. Lol. With that in mind, Indigenous knowledge and law is uniquely distinct and cosmopolitan to each geographical nation. For instance; Ithinewak, Ininewak, Iyinewak, Illenewak, or whatever Cree dialect you belong to - including ones I won’t name - have largest land mass and population that stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the eastern seaboard. Whereas, Aboriginal Law derives from the Georgian and Victorian Treaties (pre and post confederate treaties). Treaties are international political agreements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous nations that must never be abrogated or derogated. Treaties provide rights to culture - such as hunting, fishing, gathering, and cultivating - education, healthcare, infrastructure, and judicialization; for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, the rivers flow, the four winds blow, and the stars glow!

16/02/2023

Wiscîkacôsî (onions). Sikakawak (skunks), Sikak (skunk in Cree), where Chicago’s name derives from due to the fields of onions cultivated there prior to and during settlement.

Okâw (pickerel); Askipôwah (potatoes); Mahcâminis (corn); Wîkisin (it tastes good); Mithôspahkon (it tastes and makes you feel good). Ni-kîspon (I’m full).

All Indigenous foods to the Americas that were apart of a magnitude of Indigenous cultures and diets that were also used for trade - such as seeds and knowledge - in vast functional trade networks which spanned from coast to coast to coast to coast. More than 2/3 of the current global food systems has its roots in the Americas. Can you imagine pizza, pasta, or hotdogs without tomatoes?

04/01/2023

Powerful Lyla June will be joining the Global Tapestry of Alternatives' first webinar of the year on Jan. 15, sharing the effective acts of habitat expansion in building food systems resilience. Registration required. Check out Global Tapestry of Alternatives on Twitter !
https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2023_indigenious_food_systems

Whether it's burning grasslands to maintain habitat for deer, buffalo, antelope, etc., or building intertidal rock walls to catch sediment for clam habitat, Indigenous communities have developed reciprocal relationships to learn and live by.

Resilience, Women4Biodiversity, War on Want, Uprooted & Rising

19/07/2022

https://www.gofundme.com/f/pukatawagan-manitoba-evacuees?member=20694475&sharetype=teams&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer

My name is Olivia and my home community Mathias Colomb Cree Nation issued an evacuation o… Olivia Bishop needs your support for Pukatawagan Manitoba Evacuees

16/07/2022

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/wildfire-evacuations-northern-manitoba-first-nation-1.6523098

More than half of all residents from Mathias Colomb Cree Nation have left the community after being ordered to leave earlier this week because of an out-of-control wildfire that covered about 10,000 hectares by Friday evening, according to the Manitoba Wildfire Service.

04/07/2022

Historically, warped and narrow-minded occidental politicians, clergies, law-makers, philosophers, explorers, geographers, anthropologists, archeologicists, and artists inaccurately and erroneously illustrated Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island as pagan, nomads, hunter-gatherers, wondering, and “merciless Indian savages” to justify Terra Nuillius - it means land that is bare and empty inhabited by non-humans - to sn**ch a continent from First Nations (through treaty processes) for lands and resources.

This is an ongoing process, for instance, the Indian Act and the informal Pass System restricted Indigenous Peoples onto small slivers of degenerate lands since their inception - making the lands appear bare and empty to settlers when they started flooding Indigenous lands after the inauguration of the Declaration of Independence (1776), “Manifest Destiny” (1845) and Confederation (1867)!

01/06/2022

Various Indigenous cultures thrived for millennials prior to contact, but due to colonialism, we were not allowed to fundamentally develop alongside with our counterparts but were forced to adapt to foreign concepts - such as Christianity - and ways of relating to the land; for example, land ownership and individualism. What’s worst, they formulated, implemented, evaluated, and re-evaluated warped and narrow-minded campaigns seeking to vaporize Indigenous peoples out memory, place, and sound for their own benefit for over 500 years. Moreover, whatever knowledge First Nations shared with settlers - they would claim it as their own such as democracy, agricultural knowledge to even maintaining clean hygiene - and illustrated Indigenous peoples as hooved devils who needed to be obliterated from existence (plenty of literature explores this).

“The earliest written description” of Indigenous people on the eastern seaboard was inscribed by Italian mariner-for-hire Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1523, he observed “the coastline everywhere” was highly populated, “smoky with Indigenous bonfires” everywhere who “could sometimes smell the burning hundreds of miles away.” After Verranzzo, Europeans were now regular fishers in the eastern seaboard who sometimes traded with First Nations and occasionally kidnapped natives as souvenirs or conversation pieces such as Tisquantum (meaning rage) who is more commonly known as Squanto from Norumbega now “New England” first coined in 1616. He is the one who showed the pilgrims Indigenous agricultural practices.

Additionally, archaeology finds pre-existing Indigenous metropolis’ such as Cahokia, near modern St. Louis; By 1000 A.D., their trade relationships covered the continent for more than a thousand years; for instance, “mother-of-pearl from the Gulf of Mexico has been found in Manitoba, and Lake Superior copper in Louisiana.” The Hopewell culture which covered most of North America built “monumental earthworks” and uttilized sustainable agricultural techniques “jumped to prominence about 2,000 years ago” and established a trade network – such as shell beads from Florida, obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, and mica (a shiny silicate mineral now used as thermal or electrical insulator) from Tennessee. Despite declining around 400 A.D. - the trade network remained - who also lived in well-ordered settlements with massive flourishing and nourishing fields of maize and sharing this knowledge transformed societies for common benefit.

Further, Dr. Eric Singleton the curator of Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World, an exhibit that was on display from February – May 2021 at National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma made a resource available on YouTube titled ‘The Kingdom of Spiro: A Forgotten Civilization.’ They have over 1000 artifacts ranging from pearls, copper from the Great Lakes, copper axes, shell beads; baskets; arrow points; bottles; and blankets. Singleton asserts the Mississippian cultures were highly developed who flourished between 800 to 1600 CE and established great cities in areas such Cahokia in present day Illinois (which had 220 mounds); Etowah in Georgia; Kincaid, North of the Cumberland Valley; Moundville in Alabama; and Spiro, Oklahoma. He also stresses their trade networks extended to Mexico and Canada which traded items such obsidian from the Valley of Mexico, Beads from the Sea of Cortez, Copper from the Great Lakes, engraved lightning walk is coming the Florida Keys. What happened to these cultures? They are still around such as the Cherokee, Potawatomi, the Seminole etc. You can watch the Kingdom of Spiro: A Forgotten Civilization on the link below. I will discuss the Missinnipi - erroneously known as Churchill River - tomorrow!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UDP9zHbJKN8

The Kingdom of Spiro | A Forgotten CivilizationThe Spiro people, and their Mississippian peers, are nearly forgotten in the pages of North American history, ...

31/05/2022

The month of June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada (Kanata) which means “Village” in one of the Haudenosaunee languages. The Nehithewiwin (Cree language) interpretation would be Kanatan meaning clean, pure, holy, or sacred. The Canadian flag is Indigenous symbolism which represents the Red And White Nations; the Maple Leaf symbolizes - what my colleague describes our national flavour or Maple Syrup; which is an Indigenous invention or to be more precise, a squirrel invention lol. With that in mind, whatever stereotype or anti-Indigenous sentiment you have ever heard is inaccurate - such as Indians were nothing but “savages” wondering aimlessly in the forests with no concept of land always on the brink of starvation - a sentiment often expressed in social media, in public, or even by warped and delusional explorers, educators, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, scientists, and even politicians.

(Trigger Warning) These dehumanizing sentiments derive from false and inaccurate annotations found in reports described by explorers such as Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci (where America gets its namesake); ecclesiastical figures such as the Divine Puritan Cotton Mathers; public declarations such as Magna Carta and The Doctrine of Discovery; and narrow, warped and delusional concepts such as Manifest Destiny; which and who all illustrated Indigenous peoples as non-human to justify theft of lands, resources, and knowledge that including justifying frontier homicide and forced conversion by enslavement or murder to be saved in this life and the next for their own benefit.

However, Indigenous peoples did (and still do) have their own highly developed, rich, and vibrant societies who all had functional intimate relationships to their landscapes. Knowledge that was obtained from observing the natural world of plant and animal life that was shared and passed on from generation to generation through rich oral history or using dynamic tools of cultural evolution such as Writing on Stone (inaccurately called Rock Art), Wampum Belts, and concepts such as Wahkotowin (it governs all things) that governed the two virtues - the internal and external - of Indigenous Governance. The inner regulates all aspects of an Indigenous persons reality such as how they relate with themselves, family, community, nation and most importantly the flora and fauna of our ecosystems. The outer virtue regulates everything outside the inner such as work life, meetings, consultations, working groups, focus groups and etc.

So please revitalize, celebrate and learn your identity, culture and history as an Indian, because First Nations social, economic, political, agricultural, technological, military, medicinal, contributions to society for common good is undisputed, which includes vast trading networks and early colonial texts, archeology and oral history illustrates this Picasso. Mithopimatisiwin.

05/05/2022

Trigger Warning. Truth before justice! Resistance can’t be seen, touched or smelled - but it can be felt. I feel it’s necessary for people to be aware that structured genocide is ongoing for First Nations such as 6(1) and 6(2) provision in the Indian Act, access to cheap and affordable unhealthy foods, limited to non-existent resources, racism, systemic racism, violence, etc. etc. because nobody knows, not even some of our own people. For instance, I seen a young Indigenous person wearing a red hand print on his mask, and I asked him what the significance of it was, and he said “I don’t know, my cousin sells them.”

Anyways, today is Red Dress Day, “Red Dress Day, or Red Dress Campaign, is an annual event held by the REDress Project in memory of the lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls across Canada. This event was originally held on May 5, 2010, and continues annually”

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) plus Two Spirit, Le***an, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Q***r, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (2SLGBTQQIA) Final Report is comprised of dozens of meetings and testimonies with over 2,000 participants which concluded in a 1,200-page document which examined the excessive amount of violence intentionally directed at the Indigenous women, girl and 2SLGBTQQIA community.

For instance, Helen Betty Osborne (Cree woman from Norway House Cree Nation) who was brutally r***d and murdered by a group of four white males in The Pas, Manitoba; who all considered her life to be insignificant because she was Indigenous. Or my cousin who was found in hockey bag in a trunk of car (her partner was white), or two women in Winnipeg who were refused assistance by 911 to come take one of the ladies white partner who ended up murdering both Indigenous women. There are so many. That’s the one thing the report fails to mention is that a lot of these partners are predominately white.

Additionally, a lot of MMIWG is connected to the resource extraction industry primarily because they bring in all these outsiders to come in do work in Indigenous landscapes who don’t know the history of First Nations, treaties, etc. and what’s worst they are educated by a system that was originally designed to expunge and obliterate Indigenous culture, history, and languages.

Anyways, the three-year study, supported by the federal government focused on family, healing and decolonization which concluded oppressive colonial frameworks influences this violence which recommends officials at all levels of government to fundamentally address the 231 Calls to Action made by the report.

You can watch the Helen Betty Osborne Story on YouTube title Conspiracy of Silence: The Helen Betty Osborne Story. It’s about how a whole town (The Pas, MB) chose to remain silent for nearly two decades regarding her death despite the whole town knowing about it. You can read the executive summary of the MMIW report by clicking on the link below.

https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Executive_Summary.pdf

16/01/2022

Do you have a green thumb and care about the environment - even just a little bit? Or do you feel like you spend way too much time on your mechanical handheld device? Or do you feel like you pay way more attention to your little mechanism more than the actual living people around you (well maybe not in this case)? Do you complain about the middle of the night emergency text messages?

Well you heard it here first, why don’t you power off your cell when you go to bed? You won’t have to wake up to that - what some call “annoying” - emergency text message ever again (if it’s a family emergency they can call the landline)! You’ll disconnect and disrupt the radio waves and algorithms transmitting to your phone while you get better rests! You will conserve natural resources and promote sustainability simply by powering off your phone and going to bed! You will also save money on your energy bills and even more if you go a step further and turn off all your lights or any power source not needed while you sleep.

Reason being, we are not merely living in an environmental crisis initiating eco-extinction spasms (such as wild fires, floods, failing dam structures, poisoned waters, CO2 emissions, coral reefs etc.), we are living in a geological revolution; creating creative convenient technological innovations that is motorized, computerized, digitized, and industrialized where consumerism plus transactions dictates and constitutes ecological havoc to our ecosystems for convenience; where we can be considered as ecological serial killers poisoning land and water ecosystems that sustain plant and animal life for “progress.” In the words of Catherine Martin, “when the land, water, and food systems are poisoned, so are the people” and any initiative that heals Mother Earth and its ecosystems promotes sustainability and your relationships to the land.

You can view other digital detoxing campaigns by clicking on the link below.

We're campaigning for a bit of online:offline balance by putting down our phones occasionally. Our digital detox campaigns help with ideas to do this.

14/05/2021

Indigenous ways of knowing nature is science, it is philosophy, it is astronomy and it is logic

https://www.facebook.com/jeremie.caribou.5/videos/356298542587613/

13/05/2021

Wreckonciliation

13/05/2021

13/05/2021

I’m sire we are directed by this person lol

30/04/2021

Placemaking is a reflection of our times. It is a “creative simulation” of our realities.

Placemaking is an endless process of planning, contributions, collaboration, forming, reforming, and evolution of place. It is a sense of place and place of sense. It is intended to promote healthy, inclusive, positive learning environments. Do statues of racism, oppression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, depopulation, eugenics, craniology or phrenology accomplish that? The question is, are we celebrating and memorializing craniology and all these other elements? For Indigenous peoples, you are quite literally a remnant of the ancestors the could not destroy.

Adolphus Egerton Ryerson wrote and submitted the blueprint for residential schools in May 26, 1847. It is the model utilized by governments, church officials to deculturalize Indians to become white brown people without all the perks of being white. And to be tolerated as guests within our own lands.

You read Kevin Annett’s report titled “Hidden History: the Canadian Holocaust”

Dr. Peter Bryce’ Report on Residential Schools titled “The Story of a National Crime”

And Egerton Ryersons Report including the Eugenics archives is all available online. So should we celebrate eugenics? If not, what do you want to celebrate?

https://www.ryerson.ca/news-events/news/2021/04/have-your-say-how-should-we-reconcile-the-legacy-of-egerton-ryerson/?fbclid=IwAR3YWMyKWSh3w6nV5VUGUnurdGX5zNr-TrQn2Uc_L9R90zAKD3iORKD9UwY

The Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force at Ryerson University invites community to share their opinion