I phoned my brother to give him some sad news about myself. I admitted that I’ve been sick and needed to let him know. His bravely solemn tone indicated that this wasn’t what he was expecting to hear from me. He wanted to know what was wrong and I stated rather seriously that I had goose fever.
As Goose Break approaches, I share the heartbreak of my fellow Crees who won’t have a campsite to return to this season. I’m also holding my breath, hoping this forest fire season won’t be as bad as the last.
March was Cree language month. Various people did different things to acknowledge it such as the local Mistissini Cree Language Conference. Cree language has been taught in our schools for many moons now. This is both in the written and spoken forms in Southern and Northern dialects.
The pounding blizzard, beating rain, deafening hail and the fallen trees laden with jagged ice. Then the disconnection from the power and communication grid. Apocalypse? Hardly, it’s just typical northern Quebec weather that will change several times during a day in the supposed warm spring months.
I have learned a few things after almost five decades on this earth. One of them is to live in the moment. Ever since my partner suffered from a lung disease, I am more aware of how important it is to savour life, to be kind as possible and to find joy in your work. It’s not always easy, but I find it leads to a happier existence.
Just when it seems that things are going better between Indigenous Peoples and the government, news arrives showing that it isn’t so. Yes, there have been some funding increases, but not nearly enough to address acute inequalities, especially for housing. The Liberals have budgeted $2.7 billion for on-reserve housing, but that’s far short of the $40-60 billion that is necessary, according to the Assembly of First Nations.
I received my copy of No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in the Defense of the Sacred by Klee Benally around the same time as the Oppenheimer-dominated Oscars ceremony. I learned about Benally a while ago through his activism against radioactive waste from nuclear bomb testing in Diné (Navajo) territory that still poisons his people and his land to this day.
The flock of geese, majestic and noisy, flew over the southern farms and started heading north. Then suddenly, they headed back south before flying north again. What is going on?
Extreme cold weather is part of life every winter on the James Bay coast. The cold was normal for my parents who were both born during a time when people didn’t have very much. My late father Marius Kataquapit was a trapper and hunter who learned to live and thrive on the land from the time he was a child.
For several months, my overworked dryer was cranking out a sloppy thumping sound. I wondered if I should get a new one or fix it myself. I decided to try repairing it, so I went on YouTube to find help. Sure enough, within minutes of browsing I came across a Canadian site that seemed to be trustworthy. It was quite informative, and I was able to deduce my needs by the thumping sounds alone and quickly ordered a repair kit. As its delivery by post took several weeks, I did some online studying.
