Healing Gathering II

It has been another month, and I am back with another half hour long video!

This chapter begins the day after the last one leaves off, and starts with a short clip of a circle that was held in the morning. (We would ideally have shown more of this, but those clips may have fallen prey to the data loss we incurred).

Next is an interview with Brian Deheer. Brian began as our first real contact in Alberta months before. He threw himself into helping our project, and it was he who put us in touch with Cleo Reese, the organizer of the Healing Gathering itself.

Brian was also there at the border to welcome us into Canada, which after months of talking with people we could not see, was especially meaningful. By the filming of this interview, he had met us days before and did what he could to be a support vehicle to Kyle and me to help speed us to the Healing Gathering. He was pretty much part of the team.

Later that day, we were invited into a sweat lodge (thanks to Les Cardinal and Lazare Whiskeyjack). It would be improper to show on film any of the ceremony, but our clip of the occasion introduces The Wishing Line.

The Wishing Line was a continually growing piece of art conceived by Heather Elder, a team member from the beginning of the project who couldn’t go on the pilgrimage. Assembled as we traveled and met people, it consists of strips of cloth where people could write, draw, or otherwise represent their fears, hopes, and dreams about the future. By this time of the trip, it had nearly 50 strips in all.

The Wishing Line was consecrated as sacred in the sweat lodge, and we were asked to not add to it or change it. The prayers on it were sent to the Creator in the ceremony.

Although superficially a sweat lodge resembles an insulated space where incense and water are poured on hot stones, every aspect of the ceremony from making the shelter to building the fire to heat the stones is done with great intentionality. In terms of what it was like, I feel that it’s proper to simply say it was emotionally intense. It was a demonstration of how much our hosts trusted our presence to allow us into that space, and it was an honor that none of us took for granted. To specifically quote our hosts, “It is Indian church”.

Hours later, we said our goodbyes to many who we met at the Healing Gathering, and people gradually left to go back to their homes in their countries. We on the other hand, had been invited to stay with an older couple, the Woodwards on whose land the gathering took place. We were allowed to stay as long as we needed until we had done what we needed to do, and began heading back home.

We had places to explore and some big interviews to do yet in the area, but for now, there was silence.

After two weeks of frantic planning, scheduling, bicycling, interviewing, and ceremony, it was as though the world decided to stop and breathe. There was nothing immediately to do, nowhere we were scheduled to be, and for the first time in so long, we could sit and recuperate. The end of the video shows the pace and spirit of the place we were at, with the Woodwards on the shores of Gregoire Lake with a setting sun and children playing.

This place would narrowly escape burning to the ground less than a year later in the Fort McMurray Fire of 2016, the costliest fire in Canadian history. Occurring during a rare early spring drought in 90+F temperatures, the fire is yet another lesson that no place is safe from climate change.