Miywasin Moment: Becoming Wasani

By JoLynn Parenteau on April 13, 2022.

A retreat to the Muskoka Lakes offers many moments for reflection.--PHOTO BY JOLYNN PARENTEAU

The paths we travel in life are threads connecting where we’ve been to where we’re going.

A few years ago I joined a retreat on the forested Wasan Island in Ontario’s Muskoka Lakes. There is an ancient magic which lives in the earth there. You feel it in the soles of your feet, seeping into your bones from the moment you step onto the land. This sacred place has more than 10,000 years of history as spiritual ritual grounds for the Anishinaabe people.

Once this region was shared among many Indigenous nations, including the Ojibwe, Pottawatomi and Mohawk. The Muskoka region is named after Chief Mesqua Ukee/Misquakie, who fought with the British during the War of 1812. Treaties with settlers displaced Indigenous communities to reserves nearby, and their history is often erased from the landscapes of the Muskokas. ‘Cottage country’ has shifted how Indigenous peoples interact with their traditional territories, and in some areas this has led to strained relations.

On Wasan, Indigenous history is honoured and celebrated. Each day, Wasan’s guests gathered together in a circle, honouring the land, water and spirits around the island. A ceremonial bundle would be laid in the centre, sacred items including rattles, medicines, eagle feathers and stones. When a bundle is present in ceremony it often rests on an animal hide. Wasan’s bundle rests on a black bear hide; bears are an important part of the Muskoka ecosystem. It is about honouring the bear and its role in the territory and Anishinaabe clan system as a protector, and the good medicine the bear brings to ceremony.

Many different people visit Wasan as guests. A colourful MÃ©tis sash has a place of honour on the wall and I was often drawn to admiring it, despite being disconnected from my MÃ©tis culture at that time. My experience on Wasan was a stepping stone on the path my life was taking: closer to connecting to Indigenous culture. This great shift in my life and identity was just a year ahead.

My greatest take-away from this retreat was to consider the topic of the oft-asked, “Where are you from?”

Often we do not belong to just one place. When we travel, many of us from Northern Turtle Island will quickly say “I’m Canadian” to earn welcome and favour while abroad. But identifying as only Canadian skirts over much of what makes us who we are as individuals. Life is vastly different coast-to-coast.

To truly get to know someone, we might instead learn to ask, “Where are you local?” For even within Alberta, being born and raised in northern small-town Peace River could not have possibly prepared me for the culture shock of moving to big-city Edmonton at the age of 18.

Making a new home in Medicine Hat in my 30s meant leaving behind the urban rat race for a quieter pace of life, though a little time and distance has blurred the truth of whether I’ve really slowed down.

New vocations with Miywasin Friendship Centre and writing for the News has brought more professional and cultural fulfilment than I could ever have imagined. I now have a better understanding of how I represent all the experiences that built me, and of all the places I come from… from where I’m local.

On the cover of a journal gifted to me upon arrival on Wasan, it reads, ‘The mountains are calling’, with an image of snow-capped, forested mountain peaks. While that’s true, for I’ll always be “Alberta bound”: both in the sense of being tied to the place that birthed and raised me, and in always returning from my travels to home. Perhaps more fitting for the cover of that notebook would be a Muskoka chair and an acorn, for a piece of my soul now resides on Wasan. Yes, I am Canadian. I am proudly MÃ©tis. I am a local of Peace River, Edmonton, and Medicine Hat – Albertan from north to south. But I am called Wasani now, too.