{"id":854,"date":"2023-12-01T22:02:17","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T22:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/capitalchill\/?p=854"},"modified":"2023-12-08T17:59:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:59:39","slug":"looking-to-the-stars-for-stories-of-indigenous-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/capitalchill\/2023\/12\/01\/looking-to-the-stars-for-stories-of-indigenous-ancestors\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking to the stars for stories of Indigenous ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before European settlers came to Turtle Island, Indigenous groups in the Americas had their own ways of geographical knowledge keeping that included their relationship with the stars and stories about each constellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Star stories were passed down orally through generations providing instructions to future generations about the origins of creation, the timing of the seasons, when to hunt and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to understand Indigenous peoples, you need to know the geography,\u201d says Will Morin, an Anishinaabe astronomy knowledge keeper from Michipicoten First Nation. \u201cMy elders speak of Indigenous knowledge as human knowledge and if I went to Africa and spoke with Indigenous tribes, their knowledge would be Indigenous knowledge from their geography.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recognition of Indigenous astronomy has grown in recent years as Indigenous people reconnect with their cultures and learn about Indigenous constellation stories. Through learning about these stories, they hope to revive Indigenous culture and languages to be able to share with future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When European settlers arrived in the Americas, they imposed their own ideologies on the land including their astronomy, disregarding the star stories that Indigenous people had told for over 10,000 years that were sensitive to their geographical location and ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brian Peltier tells the Anishinaabek creation story at Killarney Provincial Park in 2019. [Photo courtesy of Ontario Parks]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Repression of Indigenous teachings has had dire consequences for the natural environment and the wellbeing of other species that live alongside humans in the Americas, says Morin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are multiple examples right across the Americas of Indigenous tribes, but also other Indigenous tribes in Africa, Australia and Asia, where there is old knowledge that has been the guide and the instrument of the value systems of many of these peoples, but has been oppressed for generations now,\u201d Morin says. \u201cAnd some of that knowledge is getting lost. So both non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A prime example is climate change. Many Indigenous constellations stories teach humans how to live alongside other species to ensure the wellbeing of the natural world. However, Morin says that settlers have mostly dismissed Indigenous knowledge as primitive, believing their ways of knowing are superior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a call for humility for the main dominant society to recognize that there are other ways of seeing in this geography called the Americas,\u201d says Morin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Will Morin discusses Indigenous astronomy at Killarney Provincial Park in 2019. [Photo courtesy of Ontario Parks]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kahante Horn-Miller, who is Kanien:keha\u2019ka\/Mohawk from Kahnawake, says Indigenous cultures are bringing life back to old traditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cColonization has hugely impacted our ability to know our traditions,\u201d says Horn-Miller, an Indigenous studies professor at Carleton University. \u201cWe have managed to survive but a lot has been lost. So we\u2019re now in a time of change and revitalization where we are working really hard to bring back our language, our traditions, our culture and help our people survive into the future.\u201d<\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An important constellation that many Indigenous cultures use throughout the winter is the Pleiades. For both the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee, the constellation marks the wintertime and the door to the spiritual world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Anishinaabe, Michael Waasegeiizhig Price explains that the Pleiades is known as the marker for winter in addition to the Bagone-Giizhig hole in the sky which tells their creation story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the universe has four layers: earth, sky, stars and spirit world — all connected by a cedar tree. At the beginning of creation, ancient ancestors climbed down the tree from the spirit world to populate the earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waasegeiizhig Price said that he learned about this story in his 30s after hearing stories from an Anishinaabe elder from Winnipeg. <\/strong>He was raised in Oklahoma with his father\u2019s family, but his mom was Anishinaabe from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Manitoulin Island, Ont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waasegeiizhig Price came across the story of the hole in the sky when he was trying to figure out what his last name meant. He found that \u201cWaase\u201d meant bright and \u201cgeiizhig\u201d meant both sky and cedar tree. At first, he was confused about how \u201cgeiizhig\u201d could mean both sky and cedar tree until an elder explained to him that \u201cit goes back to an old creation story we don\u2019t tell anymore, and it talks about how our ancient ancestors came down from the star world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a much deeper appreciation of the skies and the cedar tree and the stars just by hearing these couple of stories,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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