Gratitude and tobacco: tools for decolonizing

"The word for "tobacco" is asema, and it is essential to bring some for this reason: Spirits like tobacco. Their fondness for the stuff is a given of Ojibwe life. Tobacco offerings are made before every important request, to spirits or to other humans. Tobacco is put down by the root if you pick a plant, in the water when you visit a lake, by the side of the road when starting a journey. Tobacco is handed to anyone with whom you wish to speak in a serious manner. It is given for a story, or as an invitation to join someone in a teaching or writing project. Tobacco begins every note-worthy enterprise and is given as a thank-you at the end of every significant event. Perhaps spirits like tobacco because they like the fragrance of its smoke, or because people like tobacco and they appreciate thoughtfulness." - from Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Louise Erdrich

Pete and I spent our Sunday journeying first East, then North where we met our "guide", Michelle Myles, language teacher at the Lushootseed Language Department who said, "Keep going, South." I first met Michelle Myles a few years ago, when I began my research into the proper/ancient naming of the land currently called South Whidbey Tilth. Reconnecting with Myles was an affirmation: trust Spirit to lead, of all the people of Tulalip I wished I would see, it was Michelle Myles. We didn't have a plan for the day, but knew it would unfold.

We enjoyed the company and culture of Indigenous Nations all afternoon; first on Tulalip Land and then with the many tribes of dancers, drummers, elders, and relations at Edmonds Community College's 33rd Annual PowWow "Weaving the World We Want."

When we traveled North, our destination was the Hibulb Cultural Center on the Tulalip Tribes of Washington land. The magnificent carved doors of the main room of HCC is pictured above. I respectfully depict that carving here, and if I have offended or abused protocol, please correct me, and I will take this photograph down.

The quote that begins this post comes from the writing and the book currently influencing with big medicine and powerful inspiration. Louise Erdich, Ojibwe-French-German woman, writer, storyteller and book store owner touches countless people through her work and her example. I had a chance to meet and speak briefly with her when she was in Seattle's Town Hall promoting her (then) new book La Rose. It was, for me, a touching and affirming meeting and we, both Pete and I, have been blessed with the potential to spread that "significant event" as we live our everyday journeys.

Encouraged by Erdrich's memoir Books and Islands in Ojibwe County and those notes on tobacco, I write this post -- not to steal the medicine of tobacco or appropriate culture-- but to honor Tobacco as I practice being an Indigenous woman of Hawaii living on Turtle Island. In Hawaii we do not name Earth, or the islands of Hawaii my birth land 'Turtle Island'. We have other names for Earth, among them, Haumea. However, since we, Pete and I live with the people of 'aina that do name her thus ... I have begun to carry tobacco with me for many of the reasons Erdrich suggests in her story above.

I left handfuls of tobacco with Michelle; the storytellers who left their stories with us as listeners in the HCC Longhouse; and lastly with this great Cedar on behalf of a dear long-time friend who asked for prayers.

Decolonizing is a process, and one that takes many cycles to restore well-being. I am seventy years old and the journey of being makua o'o ... an adult maturing, or an adult learning to use the digging sticks to eli eli kau mai dig deep are a life time thing. I am grateful to be proceeding and use this blog to navigate the metaphor and the mundane chapters of a twenty-first century Filipina-Hawaiian-Chinese woman living on Whidbey Island. To decolonize is a way for me to feel less alone, lost in my own body; unsure of the value of my history based on a nearly eradicated mother culture.

MCS, Environmental Illness, as odd as it may seem, is the leveling agent for me. Making my choices physical, and not 'just in your head' my body gives me unflinching messages. What a sense of humor do my kupuna have to retool me!

It seems fitting to me, as Pele opens up new channels for making new life filled with both the chaos and the organization of elemental goddess that she is that I too ought to recognize new channels opening for me/us, too. When we go on these trips away from the Prairie Front, to affirm our need to take care of our selves (body and spirit) we open to the flow of decolonizing making room for "note-worthy enterprise."

Any new channels for new life opening where you are?