Television was never a big part of my early childhood. In the early 1980s, TV was a new phenomenon that had just been introduced to our community merely a decade before. Even though mom and dad furnished our living room […]

I recently came back from a vacation to Cuba. In the three weeks that I was gone, I managed to lose about five pounds. It was relatively easy to lose that weight. Since Cuba is not a wealthy country, food […]

This year, just before Christmas, while I was travelling in some bigger city centres of southern Ontario, I noticed just how crazy this holiday season has become. There were long streams of traffic going from mall to mall and every […]

Christmas is a stressful time of the year. It has always been that way for me. From the time I was a child I have more or less endured the coming and going of Christmas. Back home in Attawapiskat in […]

Sometimes life does not seem fair. That’s how I felt when I heard the news about my friend Audrey Allaire on November 4. I was shocked to hear that she had passed away at the young age of 44. All […]

In November 1993, a group of eight students from my high-school English class in Attawapiskat agreed to collaborate on a Christmas play. We wrote our own script which we presented at a combined elementary school / high school Christmas concert […]

It’s four in the morning, the room is dark and quiet as I lie still in my bed. I am in a cabin in the wilderness and in complete silence except that I can hear scurrying and scratching in the […]

I was lucky to meet some very interesting traditional First Nation people this summer. I always learn so much when my walk leads to someone with a lot of knowledge about my people and their traditions and culture. When I […]

Elders and traditional people are special in that they are capable of handing down their knowledge in the simplest ways. I was reminded of this simple, patient way of teaching recently when I attended a gathering this summer. I took […]

I spent some time in the deep forest this past week. It felt great to breathe in the fresh air and to stir the coals of a fire while the weather turned cool and wet. One morning, a young eagle […]