We can't possibly find the path forward until we know the way home. That's why we who came from other lands to settle in this one so often feel lost. We're cut off from our ancestors and from the lands that were once indigenous to us. We don't know where we've come from, so how can we know where we're going?
It took a First Nations elder to set me straight. For five days I'd sat in the Talking Circle, hearing stories of Indigenous Anglicans from whom so much had been taken--their language, their culture, sometimes their children, and sometimes the lives of their loved ones. When the Talking Stick came to me I passed it along. I didn't feel I had a voice here.
For one thing, I had been invited to be present as a "witness." I knew no suffering as deep and as intractable as the pain others were sharing around that circle. But for another, when they spoke of the land that they'd known for thousands of years, and of their ancestors who had never left them, I felt like a homeless child in their midst, an orphan who knew neither his land nor his people.
On the last day I decided to speak up. I said how much I envied them their sense of home. I was a third generation Canadian, I told them. with a family history extending back to the industrial Midlands in England, and beyond that, who knew? I'd moved all my life, from Vancouver to Montreal and back, to Toronto and to Hamilton, to the West Coast and to Calgary. I had no idea where "home" was. I missed the one thing the European colonizers could never take from the others who sat in that circle--their roots.
Now, the protocol of a Talking Circle is that you don't interupt a speaker. They have the floor until they pass the Talking Stick along to the next person. But Lilly, a wizened elder from Central British Columbia, had been staring at me the whole time I talked. Suddenly, she spoke up, cutting me off. She addressed her niece in her native lannguage, who then translated for me.
"My Auntie says your home is not in England. My Auntie says your home is not in Vancouver or Montreal or Toronto; it's not on the West Coast or in Calgary. Your home is in none of these places." All the time, while her niece delivered to me her message, Lilly continued to stare at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. "My auntie wants you to know this: the Earth is your home. Wherever you plant your feet is your home. The Earth is your home." Then Lilly made a sweeping gesture with her hand and looked away. That was all she had to say.
I didn't know what had just happened, what I was supposed to do or what I was supposed to say. So, I just looked across at Lilly and I nodded. Then I passed the Talking Stick to the next person. But as the sharing moved on around the circle, my heart remained back where Lilly had torn into it. I feared that if the Stick made its way back around to me again, I might start to cry. The Earth was my home.
Elizabeth Buller Page was raised in a proper English household. Living in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary, her parents hosted cocktail parties, went to the opera, and played classical music on the living room stereo. But Liz always knew that was only half the story. Her mother was the daughter of a Cree father and Mètis mother from Saskatchewan. Her maternal grandparents, when they came to visit, represented a part of her past that was foreign to her; but it called to her nonetheless.
By midlife, Liz had known the dissolution of her dreams. She was diagnosed with Lupis, her career ambitions were dashed, her marriage was unravelling. Uncertain how to go forward, she went back. She began exploring and reclaiming her Indigenous heritage. What happened next has defined her life ever since, as she not only found her soul's home, but from that place she has moved out into the world with her healing gifts of art and of storytelling.
We can't know our place in the world if we don't know where in the world we're from. But for those of us whose tracks behind us have been erased and whose way forward is unclear, we might just meditate on this: the Earth is our home.
To hear my converstion with Elizabeth Buller Page, click the Play button below. To learn more about Liz and her art, follow the More Info link to the show notes.
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