Five days ago, we arrived in New York City. It’s a long way from Bella Bella, but for the brief space of time we were there, we taught ourselves to own it. To make it home. We did that with the help of truly wonderful friends and colleagues, with the support we gave each other, and with the knowledge that our families and our community were rallying behind the idea of our trip.
The time has slipped by quickly – or maybe it’s gone slowly, because it feels like we’ve been here for weeks, pacing the sidewalks between our hotel and the Museum, dodging taxicabs and sweeping ourselves through the doors of the 77th street entrance of that great institution. What we found was not a revelation – it was an affirmation. We have always known, or sensed, our strength. Now, we can never deny it, nor can anyone who really hears our story.
We held pieces in our hands that were ancient, intact and beautiful. What we held in our hands was our culture. It is fundamentally unchanged from the culture that birthed our First Generation stories. If we ourselves have changed, it is only in developing a greater awareness of our roots, of the magnitude of our spiritual power as Heiltsuk people, and of the great obligation we so joyfully assume of stewarding our culture and all it represents – for the generations that came before us, and for the generations that will follow.
We’ve left eagle down in the halls and offices of Anthropology, and in the small, private room where our masks waited for us each day. We shook eagle down from our hair when we walked through the public exhibits, and down the streets of New York. We dropped eagle down from our sleeves and the hems of our clothing when we walked through Central Park and Times Square, and it drifted down in our hotels rooms, and on the sidewalks of New York City.
There’s this beautiful thing about eagle down. It represents something so sacred I couldn’t even begin to build four walls of language to enclose the concept. But it’s both light, and incredibly dense. It is patient. It will wait. Someday, after countless janitorial staff have come and gone through the Museum, when all of us who stood there this March are long passed on to dance with our ancestors, a little beam of light will come through the window, and something incredible will happen.
A little piece of eagle down that’s been waiting somewhere – tucked behind a beam, caught in a bit of cobweb, dangling invisible at the height of some room we walked through – it’s going to let itself fall. It will hang suspended in the air, and even though no movement will stir the currents, it will whirl and dance to the sound of distant drums and rattles that only it can hear, until the song ends and it comes to rest on the floor.
At that moment, the space will be sanctified all over again. And the room will remember the sound of Heiltsuk singing, the strong syllables of our language, the reverberation of drumbeats and footsteps and the soundless, wordless joy of masks that slept just a little too long. We’ll be long gone, and that space – like a far-flung corner of Heiltsuk territory, in the sense that it’s a space on which one of our important stories is now written – that space will whisper to itself all that happened here.
Please carry this story with you. It’s your story now, and I want you to share it. Celebrate with us. We uphold you and uplift you – you have witnessed something that is of great importance to us. The strength of our story, like the strength of our people, will not diminish. We hold it in a sacred space within us – a space of narrative, memory and language – a space of touch and sound and light – a space that is shared between all of us, and you, and everyone who reads this. We will remain strong together.
Thank you for witnessing what we have undertaken.
No comments:
Post a Comment