Who We Are

We respectfully honour and acknowledge the southern watershed of Manido-wizaagaiaagan (Spirit Lake), Georgian Bay and Wayeseyaaguining (Shining Lake) – Simcoe and centrally Lake Couchiching waters and land that have historically sustained the lives of Wendat and Anishinaabe – Anishinaabeg including the Ojibwe, Odawa and Pottawatomi Nations, collectively known as the Three Fires Confederacy of the Anishinabek and centrally Rama First Nation the keepers of the Mnjikaning Fishin Weirs.

These sacred lands and water ways are recognized in the Robinson Huron Treaty, Williams Treaty and J. Collins Land Purchase, and are the birthplace of Feather Carriers.

Wabeno Benasi Qweqwetchgun, Dr. Ed Connors: Elder

“The way I usually tell it is that John and I were doing work separately around suicide prevention and both of us has had different experiences with different forms of suicide prevention, different training.

In my case, it was going way back to about 30 years ago, when I began to work with Elder Alex Skead with the sacred circle, with the request of the Chiefs from Treaty 3 region, where we were asked to come and help with what we call today a ‘suicide epidemic’ meaning simply that many of the people, particularly the young people, were either attempting to take their lives or had taken their lives. It was the Chiefs that came to the conclusion that it was too much and knew something needed to be done to change what was happening. And that’s when Alex and I were asked to join together and I returned to work in that region with Alex, on what became known as the ‘sacred circle providing a way of life’. Alex named it that in Anishinaabemowin and then translated it. And when he gave it that name, it just seemed really right to us, because we had others who had come to join us and work with us. And so for over five years I worked with Alex on what we called the sacred circle providing a way of life, which was based on understanding how we needed to help our young people to be able to answer some very simple questions. Art Solomon actually stated this himself, when he talked in one of his teachings about identity, and how the importance of knowing who we are, and the way he put it at that time was, “You can’t know who you are, if you don’t know where you’ve come from. 

If you don’t know where you come from, and you don’t know who you are, then certainly you don’t know why you’re here and where you’re going.” What Alex did in our work together was help us understand the importance of that message. And we learned that through the young people as we went out and asked them about suicide and about taking their own lives and what they understood and knew about it, and why they believed that it was happening, why they were thinking of death. It was through that, and through speaking with the Elders as well, that we clearly came back to the understanding that what Art had said was true, that the central thing we needed to do if we were going to help young people connect to life, and not be encouraged to think about moving towards death, that we needed to be able to help them to answer those questions to know who they are, and where they come from. And then they could vision into a future. And so that’s what led us to do work in the sacred circle providing a way of life, which was based on the community there, we worked at Powell Island, and brought the youth together with the Elders and did teachings, central teachings that they hadn’t been doing for a long time, and the young people had not been hearing, and they’re all done in the language. Fortunately, in that area the language had maintained, and the young people were being raised in their homes and their families had their language. So we were able to do the teachings and speak and do it in the language.

So what it taught me there, because I left from there, and I came south to work here. And I came with that understanding, but it was kind of dormant, I didn’t really fully understand it and its importance until John and I started to say, this what we’re doing and suicide prevention right now, it is not enough. The suicide prevention ideas in terms of preventing death have value. But what is most important is that we focus on promoting life and helping young people to connect to life. And doing so through the understandings of those questions that we now understand is the four central questions, which are: Where do I come from? Who am I? Why am I here? And where am I going? And that’s just an extension, really, of what Art had spoken about. And those are central questions that we know now have been for all people through all time, essential for living life well.

So when John and I sat down, and we shared with each other and that something more was needed, and what was that something more? And that’s when John and I shared some of those thoughts, and then John start to speak about the Miikaans. And so you can pick up there John.”

Zahgausgai, John Rice: Elder

“So we both worked in this area for a long time together, but not together. The way I like to think of it is, we listened to survivors. We had known people who had experienced unnatural premature death, they had those stories. So when I was thinking about it, I was thinking that Feather Carriers would be the voice of those people. The voice of the people who can’t speak for themselves now. We came together with this understanding, both of us had to put suicide in a place for ourselves. I know for me, that was a big thing for me was to finally realize, we are not going to eradicate suicide. We have a teaching that says, it’s been here with us since the beginning of time. So it’s too big, just like all other ways of dying, murder, these things we’re experiencing now cancer, type two diabetes, there are many ways that we die. We talk about that. We know, we know you can’t scare someone into living: ‘suicide’s a sin – you would go to hell.’

Even though we hear those consequences to suicide, people still suicide. So, it’s not stopping. So the more we talked, we worked through that process ourselves and we began thinking about the terms of life promotion. I think before that we just talked about changing how we talk about it (suicide), changing how we talk about life: getting away from this, scaring people who are killing themselves. And what do we do then? – let’s talk about life. Turn it into a conversation about what life is. So we made that transition, that kind of conversation. 

We were talking about that, then it became an awareness. You know, like, you hear that phrase “changing the dialogue.” That’s what we need to do with our people in our communities. Whenever we have social problems, we have to itemize what’s wrong with our communities, to get dollars to address it. So it’s a negative source, we always have to talk about our problems in order to get money to fix our problems. So that’s what kind of structures our thinking in our communities into that negative side. I know, it’s very hard to fix the government to reinforce positive things, because that’s not what the government is programmed to think – so we talked about that. 

When I was young, my step-dad said that a man is in his prime from 45 to 75. I believe that’s the way you know, they’re not just stories from the past. Our ways are with stories from the past. So I believed him and thought “that’s what I’m going to do.” And I’m in my prime right now and it will last until I’m 75 – and I will stretch it longer than that! So my belief is, our stories aren’t just stories, they are accounts of our lives before Contact. 

And then what happened one time, Eddie Benton knew that I was keying into the Miikaans teaching and reconstituting when you go through the initiation. It is the second teaching of the initiation that you get to see and hear about the Miikaans. But for me, I heard a lot more than was spoken from the teaching itself. That’s really interesting because the first year I saw the Lines In The Sand teaching and saw the lines. In the second year I saw the spaces in between the lines, that’s the only way to describe it, spaces, so in the third year I saw even more but I still haven’t figured out why. 

So, the Miikaans teaching became very important to me, especially since in a vision I received the symbol here of the seven stages of life, so that’s what became my teaching to learn in this lifetime. So, we talked about elements of the Miikaans and a lot of it was we were to go back to our cultures – Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe teachings that’s what influenced Feather Carriers. So what happened in the Miikaans teaching outside of ceremonies one time and Eddie talked about, he said, “you know, we live long enough to see Halley’s Comet three times in our life, so we used to live and be up to 130 hundred to 150 years old.” He gave that teaching, that Miikaans teaching.

So, you know sometimes when we don’t grow up with something, it’s like you’re not convinced it’s truth – the knowledge – you kind of need to be convinced.