New book shares insights into Ways of Knowing

By ANNews staff

(ANNews) – In a 2012 commencement address to Sir Wilfred Laurier University Graduates, Cree poet and storyteller Louise Bernice-Halfe Skydancer tells the students to unpack their own medicine bundles – and examine their unique gifts and blessings. One gift is the presence of a spirit guardian – who guides us and believes in us. Spirit guardians come in many forms, explains Halfe. They can be a teacher, or an Elder but they can even be a stranger’s insight, a few words or a book. She writes, “They may hold a mixed bouquet of kindness, patience, respect, love and forgiveness.”

In her latest book  Wītāmōwik / Tell Them: On A Life of Inspiration, the author and kēhtē-aya /Elder, becomes a spirit guardian and her book is a treasure trove of empowering lessons from a well-lived and beautifully articulated life.

With moving poetry and descriptive prose, Halfe chronicles her childhood in a cabin on reserve, follows her experience in the Indian Residential School system, and her becoming as a writer. In these never-before-collected essays interspersed with new poems, Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate tells the story of the trauma of separation.

She writes, “My parents taught us the art of observation. I learned to hunt, skin, and butcher game through non-verbal methods. I also watched my grandparents work on the land and live their spirituality. I helped gather, dry, and grind their medicines. I inhaled the medicines’ power and ingested it. When I left for residential school all this fell asleep.”

Wītāmōwik / Tell Them is also the story of how she woke up. In Cree, inspiration is described as a sudden insight. Louise finds that it can come from visits from spirit, from the charged reciprocal experience of being taught by Elders and teaching the next generation, from speaking Cree, which allows the poet to “somersault into memory,” and from the practice of observing and being in relationship with the land as it “constantly gives birth to itself.” Wītāmōwik / Tell Them is a stunning love song to nēhiýaw ways of knowing – ways which Halfe has spent her life working to reclaim from the violence of colonization.

She writes, “We need to lift up and acknowledge the cultural risk-takers who went underground but then resurfaced and led our cultural restoration. They beaded their souls, patched and quilted their knowledge, sought out others still living in the deep woods of memory and brought back the ceremonies. Our life is that walk.”

In the book’s forward, Louise’s daughter Omeasoo Wahpasiw writes that this collection weaves her “mom’s insights across her generations” and that each piece is a “journey – but none is a leisurely stroll.” She says after all she experienced, one might think that her mother is a gathering thunderstorm but that she is actually the sun. “So many of her poems reference the joy of living in the world.” Her words are chosen carefully and each word grouping paints a vivid image. There are many wonderful lessons written within the pages of Wītāmōwik / Tell Them. They are a gift and should be savoured.

Louise Bernice-Halfe Sky Dancer is an acclaimed nēhiýaw (Plains Cree) poet and writer from the Saddle Lake First Nation in Alberta. She has been the recipient of multiple awards and appointments for her work, including the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal, Saskatchewan Provincial Poet Laureate, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, King Charles III Coronation Medal, and Member of the Order of Canada. Wītāmōwik / Tell Them is available from University of Regina Press or from your favourite bookseller.