Page 21 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

animals were Skywoman’s life raft at the beginning of the world, and now, so much closer to the end,

we must be theirs.

Whether her name is Skywoman or Spider Woman or Changing Woman, the Goddess Ki or Gaia or Eve,

our origin stories, the stories of who we are in the world and how it is we might live, often have a cast

of characters which includes women and the land. The bond is deep and enduring. We know these

stories, for isn’t the world shifting under our feet, too? Aren’t we all at some time falling into a new

place? And trying to make a home?

In an era of accelerating climate change and the Sixth Extinction, we know we too stand at the edge,

with the ground crumbling beneath our feet. Like Skywoman, we ask: what can we grab onto to stop

the fall? What gifts do we carry to make a new home? How do we care for the beings who have cared

for us from the beginning of time?

This time we live in—one of great change and great choices—has been spoken of by our ancestors, in

the teachings of the prophecies of the seventh fire, and I will share just a tiny fragment this morning.

After the long migration of our Anishinaabe people, after the arrival of the newcomers and after all

the losses—of land, of language, of sacred ways, of each other—the prophecy and history converge. It

is said that the people will find themselves in a time where you can no longer fill a cup from the

streams and drink, when the air is too thick to breathe and when the plants and animals will turn their

faces away from us. It is said in that time, which we will know as the time of the seventh fire, that all

the worlds’ peoples will stand at a fork in the road. One of the paths is soft and green and spangled

with dew. You could walk barefoot there. And one of the paths is black and burnt, made of cinders that

would cut your feet.

We know which path we want. The prophecy tells us that we must make a choice between the path of

materialism and greed that will destroy the earth or the spiritual path of care and compassion, of

bmaadiziwin, of the good life. And we are told that before we can choose that soft green path we can’t

just walk forward. The people of the seventh fire must instead walk backwards and pick up what was

left for us along the ancestors’ path: the stories, the teachings, the songs, each other, our more-­‐than-­‐

human relatives who were lost along the way—and our language. Only when we have found these

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