What if we had been able to tell the wind not to blow?

What if the water refused to carry you?

These are stories just as you carry stories; stories across water, stories carried by wind, but these stories grew here. Just like invasive species some stories grew stronger for a while and displaced the stories grown from my ancestor’s bones. But these stories on wind and water curve and sway escaping any plans we thought we may have had. And today we are both here and I am both of you.

I went canoeing, with my family, we carry with us a mixture of these wind and water stories, some from here some from afar and some that have grown here alongside those whose roots extend to the marrow of ancestor times. We canoed a few days after the full moon on the lake, to the mouth of the creek and watched the red salmon stories spawn new future stories in the cold creek water.

Next we climbed that hill, its golden curves set against the cyan blue sky. The wind was strong, we claimed that story, that day, claimed our heritage, re-claimed our land together. But these claims are calm, these claims are about belonging not taking, these claims are in our hearts and our future generations.

After this we went to the lookout and the wind was light and there was no water just this abandoned rez car. Broken windshield, garbage strewn about on this viewpoint over the town. This is a moment too, where the calm is broken by our thrashing. Just like the salmon that thrashes on the line, the salmon that thrashes to survive, we are all thrashing now. Broken windows, struggling towards a new future, a future we claim, carried on water and winds. 

The winds are changing.

-Tania Willard, 2020