Kewetan: Walking in the Ancestral Footsteps of Our Woodland Cree Grandparents

ABSTRACT1\nBackground: Storytelling is an important custom of Woodland Cree and important to understanding the Values inherent in the Indigenous health promotion of home life and housing. The literature on housing and health has been largely deficient in connecting positive health outcomes with housing, applying frameworks and methodologies, not designed to capture these important dimensions of dwelling places, and does not ask inhabitants to speak from the heart on what they enjoy about homes. Rather it separates the person from the house and rates all the negative characteristics of the built environment. The research question ‘What are the Traditional Values and customs that guide the stories of personal well-being, family, homes and communities of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band in Saskatchewan?’ informed the Storytelling. Implicit in the question is how we walk in the footsteps of our Cree Ancestral Grandparents when we carry out their time-honoured relationships with family and home. Home connotes a dwelling that is animate, alive with Spirit and feelings of Love, whereas house refers to the physical structure or container. In Cree culture, the body is a sanctuary for the Soul; likewise, a house or Tipi is a sanctuary for the Soul of individuals and families. A community is an extension of the individual and the family; how one contributes to community is dependent on the Spirit of the home in which one resides. Thus, the research objective of this study became to explore the healthy personal / family and housing strategies that ensure (d) the Wholistic well-being of Woodland Cree Peoples living in the Lac La Ronge Indian Band reserve.\nMethodology: The Woodland Cree Lac La Ronge Indian Band (LLRIB) is comprised of six northern communities and 13 Elders and Knowledge Keepers lived in three of these sites. I am a member of the LLRIB and a former resident of La Ronge. I am not a fluent Cree speaker but was raised in the custom of Storytelling by my Cree relatives; therefore I chose Indigenous Story work as a methodology. Participants engaged in a Storytelling interview process yielding 21 transcriptions. Participants reflected on being raised in a hunting, fishing and trapping economy as well as family life in Northern Saskatchewan. Analysis of the data was through Story creation and thematic analysis using Wholism via the Tipi Teachings and the LLRIB Medicine Wheel to understand how houses were transformed into homes through Woodland Cree community and family life.\nDiscussion: Wholistic health is a foremost Value outlined in the Medicine Wheel of the LLRIB and is conveyed in the motto of their Education Unit as kiskinwahamātotān, which means ‘Teaching Each Other”. The data yielded four themes which align with the four goals of the Education Unit of the LLRIB: Culture, Pride, Skills and Values. The Wholistic health of the Woodland Cree encompasses not only the Spiritual, Emotional, Physical and Mental domains of Wholism, but can be understood in the strength-based activities and traditions that are taking place in Woodland Cree homes according to Culture, Values, Skills and Pride. These activities and traditions are the rich Medicine that connects the community. The cultural activities include language, seasonal gatherings, fishing, hunting, trapping, Oral Traditional Stories, Spirituality, and art. The Values of Love, Sharing, Faith and Kinship as per the Cree Tipi Teachings shape the daily activities of the Storytellers. Historical and contemporary Skills are discussed within the context of Pride. Pride permeates all the interviews as the Storytellers chose topics that were of utmost interest to them. They were proud of the Skills that they had developed in response to trapline life and a modern economy. They related how colonization impacted their ways of life, yet they held dear to them their languages, Customs and Traditions. \nThis portrait of Wholism that is reflected in the combined dimensions and Values identified in the Tipi Teachings and LLRIB Medicine Wheel is not evident in most of the scholarly literature. Questions about the ‘house’ or ‘houses’ were the entry point to our conversations, but the focus quickly turned to the idea of ‘home’, maintained through strong Kinship relationships as the foundation to Wholistic well-being.\nThis research Story was inspired by the Pride I hold for our People and the rich Culture of the Woodland Cree. This research Story enhances a sense of Pride in a rich Indigenous cultural identity. It is one of my ways of kiskinwahamātotān which means ‘Teaching Each Other”. If I could fulfil a wish, it would be that all people live in well-built shelters that emanate the Spirit and Culture of her inhabitants. Thank you for joining me in this Ceremony.\n\n1 Following Greg Younging’s (2018) Elements of Indigenous Style, this dissertation capitalizes words ‘where conventional style does not’ (p.77). Terminology that is of a Spiritual nature is capitalized such as the Values of the Tipi Teachings or the domains of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band Medicine Wheel (Culture, Values, Skills and Pride). References to Participants or Storytellers are also capitalized as well as Medicines such as Balsam and Sweet Grass.

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