The heartbeat of Dance

I think that we have established that I love to dance.  All different types of dance makes my feet want to move.  I think that my love for dancing comes from the basic drum beat that mimics the beating of a heart.  This rhythm is what our traditional First Nation drumming is based on. It's that base line beat that drives the song and gives dancers a beat to choreograph to.  This video is from a family reunion we had this past summer.  We have many talented members from master chef to nurses, tradesmen and students completing their masters in a variety of Aboriginal studies.  I feel so fortunate to come from such a line of inspirational people.  The focus for our family reunion was cultural education. You will see in this video, the singers giving our younger generations a cultural education.  

Moments like this is where it is clear to me how our traditional teachers would have taught. the learning was continuous. This is why elders were/are so valued, because they were to the ones to enrich the young ones.  Elders did not always mean someone of retirement age.  To me it means someone with wisdom to share and aid in person growth.  I wanted to share this video because watching these children dancing and hearing our language being sung encourages me that there is hope, and it lies within what we pass on to our future generations.  Here, I can see that we have modelled a passion to move when there is a beating drum or to join in when a song is being sung.  These children will start out dancing and the singing will come the more they hear the song.  

Ndï hinic ’ey ’indzin lhyenis nts’ën’a dinï hënlï’ wighewh ’indzin.

This language is our culture.  

Taken from the First Voices http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Wetsuweten/welcome

Fine Arts

As I think about fine arts and what that means to me and where it has a place in my life, I have come to realize that due the rich First Nation culture, I do not have to reach very far to connect myself to someone I know who is an accomplished carver, painter , singer, story teller, or skilled at beading or sewing.

              

                                                   

The list can go on, but as I reflect on my very own fine arts accomplishments I can count one area that I have really worked to develop--Language and as an extension singing and drumming.  

Language, to me, is the essence of my culture.  After starting my own family, I began to realize how much of my culture I was missing out on by knowing very little of my Wet'suwet'en language.  S'beb (my dad) has been involved in Aboriginal politics and had his own line of first nation inspired clothing, so I always felt that I was involved in my culture, as much as I needed to anyways. But, when I started my own life away from the home that housed my culture. The question that became very clear to me was, what was it that made me Wet'suwet'en?  My skin colour? the few words that I knew in my language?  

I grew up in Telkwa in an area that was well known for our family.  The reason I point this out,  is that I never wanted to live on a reservation. It seemed beneath me. My head was full of stereotypes, some that I still struggle with today. But today, My husband and me chose to live on the reservation of Moricetown.  I could have let the "Moricetown Indian Reserve No. 1" title deter me from a place that is directly tied to my ancestors and my language, but me and my family would have missed out on the wisdom of the elders that are still waiting to teach what they had to keep safe.

I did not want my kids to grow up torn between what they thought they were suppose to be as determined by society and what is pumping through their veins.  Through my journey to recover the richness and revive the organic sense of my culture, becoming fluent in my language has been my tool to uncovering the buried treasures being kept safe.   

Artist Toghestiy (Warner Naziel)

So in a nut shell this is my fine arts.  The unearthing of my language and my culture.  Like this door to the Moricetown elementary school, the door is opening and becoming more and more accessible. For me to be able to see in my kids and their love for drumming, signing, and dancing and for me to be able to talk to my kids in our language and them understand me is the essence of my being, my hontiyh.

Carter and Emma-Reese drumming

  

Sept 19, 2013

To start the title Hontiy means happy, in Wet'suwet'en.  I like to use my language wherever possible and I'm excited to have another avenue to utilize it.

As my first entry to my first blog I would like to make this proclamation that there are alot of whiners and negative comments around us everyday and I really appreciate the idea of focusing on what makes me happy.  I can get stuck under a rain cloud, but there's nothing to say that I cannot play in the rain.  In fact, I just bought a pair of rain boots this past summer. Now, prepared for the rain, I can play and be happy in any weather.