Cree Sacred Circle

EAST

The woman spirit comes from the east, where the sun rises, where our warmth and vision starts. And the spirit of women brings that warmth into the home.

One of our four sacred medicines, sage, also resides here in the east, because it is women’s medicine. It comes from the buffalo plant that was gifted to the women. It is called prairie buffalo sage. There are many sacred teachings about the plants and medicines, and of how they decided to be where they are, but that is another teaching for another time.

Here in the east is the beginning of all life, when the spirit is conceived and gifted to the womb of the mother-to-be. And because that being is identified as a person at conception, the older women taught us how to balance ourselves during that nine-month journey, how to look after ourselves so that journey would not be disrupted. My mother would sit and talk with the young women, and the men too, about how to make that connection with that spirit, before the child was even born. Because it hears your voice, has your emotions, feels your spiritual state during that nine-month journey. She used to say, “Your child can hear everything you say, feels all your emotions.”

My mother also taught how human life is conditioned in the first year. She called it Eshkawasis, meaning “new child.” She stressed the importance of this first year - that the new chid’s journey in this time should be especially safe. For example, you would always carry your child with two hands, with the greatest respect; you don’t carry such a special gift under one arm.

A newborn is very powerful, the greatest of all teachers. They can sense things that are not the norm, and let you know, protect you spiritually. We call it having a nightmare, but that’s not what it is. And they continue to teach us as they grow. For example, they will crawl, stand, fall down and get up again, and learn to walk. My mother used to say, “That child teaches you what life’s going to be - you don’t just get up once and walk forever - you will fall, and you will have to get up. Maybe you’ll need to crawl a little bit, but you will get up and walk again.”

She said, “look at that child, how they struggle. They teach us that we don’t give up just because we fell. Even as they get older, they fall by playing. Again, that’s a reminder: we must always persist in getting up and doing things again and again.”

My mother also taught us to give thanks to Mother Earth for accepting our child to walk upon her. When that time comes, a celebration feast happens, and Elders come and pray for that young person on the next stages of their journey.

SOUTH 

Here in the south all life is active. It’s the time of summer. Our physical aspect is represented here. In this part of our journey, we become young people. The young are very physical beings, very active, continuously moving, changing themselves, even their moods. We have good energy at this time of our journey.

A lot of people today are scared of youth; we don’t quite understand or trust them. But there’s a reason why: we’ve kept them apart from that circle of life. We need to respect youth, and accept them into our world. In our Cree language, there’s no word for “teenagers.” They’re young adults. And we need to encourage youth. We don’t need to say, “You’re bad,” because there are no bad people; we only do bad things.

But sometimes youth need to be reminded by the old people. And that’s okay. I notice older people saying, “I can’t tell my grandchildren that, because they don’t believe me, they don’t listen; they think I’m wrong.” Say it anyway. Like my mother used to say, “You don’t hear everything today, but someday you will hear what’s been said. When you need it you will hear it.” So it’s good to take young people to older people, to have them sit there and listen. Because they might be blocking out that day, but their spirit never blocks out; their spirit will take in the information.

And we should take the youth to see different people. My mother used to say, “If you only go to one elder all your life, you will only know what that one elder knows.” So expand your wings and learn. Go and listen. You might not agree, but hear how that person is teaching. Hear the teachings from other nations, and remember yours. But don’t ever contradict or correct them. Only when you’re asked do you share. Young people sometimes disrespect the Elders when they’re talking about stories and teachings; they’re correcting them. But that Elder can only share with you what they’ve heard and what they remember. Maybe you heard it different, but that’s okay. If you listen, you’ll be richer, because now you’ve heard different sides of the story.

WEST 

Here in the West is the time of adulthood, of responsibility. You’re responsible at that time for other people. It’s also the parenting stage of your life journey when you have that bond with the child in the eastern direction.

And most often we are so touched by our children that we want them to have a better life than we have as adults.

And those children teach us, help us to remember to go back and do things over and over again even when we fall. It’s never a smooth journey when you are an adult because you have a lot of responsibility. You’re responsible for the children that you brought into this world. And once you’re a parent, you’re a parent for life. 

So at that time, thinking about those responsibilities, people tend to seek advice from older people and sometimes the emotions and stories from your childhood experience come out at that time.

That’s why that gift of emotion is also in the West with the adult. We can do our own thinking and speak out more as adults we’re stronger, more capable, if we have grown in a good way. And if we know we need to get healthy, that’s usually when we come out and talk about issues that have held us back in our journeys to be good people, to live a good life.

It’s a time to let go of anger and disclose emotion because a lot of times emotion turns to anger and that’s when it’s no good. It can be very harmful. It’s better if the emotion turns into a release through crying, which is a good way. It is a time when you can process your emotions and no longer be afraid or shy, when you are brave enough to tell your story. If there’s anything we need to get rid of most often that’s when we do it on our adult journey because sometimes we keep our mourning, our loses in family and life until that time when we realize we need to let go if we’re going to have a healthy journey.

And it often takes that long until we are adults to finally grow that way, when we are faced with great responsibility.

NORTH 

We started from the east, we went to the south, and in the emotion part we went to the west in our journey. That’s like any ceremony we go to. We start our ceremonies in the east, and then we’ll finish in the northern direction, which is our life journey. We finish our journeys as older people in that direction - which is the mental part of our journey.

I think the mental part is there because we’re capable then to stop and think, and look at our journeys and foresee the journeys of our people. Because we have the capability to be mentally intact, to know a lot of things that are needed in our communities, in our people. We have time to think; we’re not so rushed, not so physical any more. We went through our emotional stage of life. Now we are sort of the thinking part of the community, of the family. We are the ones that make decisions for families. We’re supposed to be the brain people; if we’ve looked after ourselves, we get to that stage in our journey.

And in this place we also have that relationship with the youth – who are looking to us from the south.

And we’re in that stage for a certain amount of time. Then we go back into infancy. You often see old people starting to forget, starting to act like children. They need help to walk, to be fed. We go back into that spirit world of being an infant one more time. In Aboriginal society that was accepted. When you see old people go into that stage in their journey, beyond their mental capabilities and back into that infancy, spirit, they talk a lot about their childhood, remember it like it happened today, remember those stories so vividly, but they won’t remember much about their adulthood or their youth. They’ll remember, because they’re going back into that journey. My grandmother used to talk about how they played and how they climbed trees. She was 92 years old and she would tell me stories about when she was little, being a child. Because she was going back into being a child one more time.