The Facebook call went out- “Solidarity with Elsipogtog ; we
will light a sacred fire at 5 pm at the Forks:”
I gathered my belongings into the plastic milk crate on my
trusty one-speed 1960’s bike and headed over the lovely new bike bridge
crossing the Red River to the Forks.
I reached
Oodena
Circle- a gathering place for many, many
centuries, the place of sacred fires at The Forks. No one was there. I watched
the people coming down the paths, wondering which of them would be the first to
gather. No one came until one indigenous man strode out of his car to peer into
the circle. I asked if he was looking for the sacred fire. He replied, ‘yes,
but there is a blockade at
Portage and
Main. There are cops all over the place.” Then I noticed
the police helicopter circling above the area.
Part of me thought I should get on my trusty one-speed and
head home. The other part remembered my Christian Peacemaker Team training - I
wanted to be present, to stand in solidarity with the M’ikmaq people, the
Acadian people and the Anglophone people of New Brunswick. This morning they
had experienced a violent crackdown on their right to protest. If this was to
happen today in
Winnipeg,
I needed to be a witness. [My CPT colleagues who were in New Brunswick wrote this account of 17 October-
here]
On my way to
Portage Avenue and
Main Street I passed streams of cars and trucks diverted to
roads not usually travelled. The traffic cop helped me to cross the street. I
could not hear it but I imagined the grumbling and swearing inside the
vehicles, the drivers forgetting that each vehicle burned a sacred substance -
the bones and muscles of millions of animals buried deep within the earth and
then pumped out to fuel our desire for oil. This was not the sacred fire I
searched for.
As I found the east end of Portage Avenue that was totally empty of
cars or people I heard the drumming. I came up to the intersection where no
human usually dares to walk and saw a round dance. Police had blocked off all
four roads with their cars. A few bikes were laid on the boulevard. I wasn’t
sure what to do with my trusty one-speed so I walked with it closer to the
circle, my bike helmet on and my face red with exertion.
I watched and listened. There was a woman sitting in the
very center of Portage and Main
celebrating an individual pipe ceremony. There was another tiny fire five steps
away from her. I thought they were connected - one fueling the other. Later I
heard that the fire was the remnants of a burning Canadian flag. This was what
the media reports focused on. There was no recognition of why an indigenous
person might want to do such an action and no acknowledgement of the deep
meaning of the pipe.
As I stood I heard a drum beat come closer and closer to my
right ear. I looked and saw one of the women drummers standing right next to
me. We looked at each other and she stopped drumming for a minute, taking a
beautiful new handbag off her shoulder. It was sewn in the four colours
[representing the four colours of all peoples: red, white, black and yellow].
She handed it to me, we looked at each other for another few seconds and she
moved on, picking up the beat again.
I stood in silence again. I had ridden downtown to find a
sacred fire. There were no flames rising from the heart of Winnipeg’s biggest
intersection, and I hadn’t expected to find any there, but as I thought about
it, I knew I had found the sacred fire. Within each of the people standing and
drumming and dancing and singing, there were billions of cells. Within each
cell were the mitochondria. And within the tiny mitochondria there was the burning
of the fuel of food eaten to create energy- the energy for life process such as
movement and growth and activism and solidarity.
This settler of Irish and English ancestry found the sacred fire at Portage and Main in
Winnipeg, Manitoba on 17 October, 2013.
