The Point
Ceremony, Eating and Talking
The leaders of two nations performed a private ceremony on sacred land. Leaders from other nations were there to witness.
When the canoe returned, more people gathered to hear the stories and share a meal over the course of an afternoon. I was a guest.
For the Lummi Nation and the Haida Nation, it was an exceptional event. It was part of a story spanning thousands of years.
Learning from Lummi and Haida
I haven’t lived their story and I won’t try to interpret it.
What is still with me a week later is a way of doing events, leading them, taking part in them, witnessing sacred ceremonies — unlike anything I am accustomed to.
I saw non-stop loose and informal formality.
No matter how significant the moment, I saw it approached in a casual, unscripted and unhurried way. The pace shifted some but it was never rapid. There was a rhythm I wasn’t used to that left spaces, without one piece immediately following the one before.
Most rules of Meeting Management I know of were ignored. There was no clear order. People repeated themselves and each other. The event was not efficient, by standard forms of measurable through-put.
None of that mattered.
A lot of different people stood up in front for a few minutes each and told everyone there what they saw and what they felt. They each shared their version, what it meant to them.
It wasn’t riveting. The draw was deeper than that. Pure sincerity wrapped in a simple story, or a complicated story, a universal language I would have listened to as long as it continued.
Ancestors
People who lived here on this land before us were present for the event. They were called or noticed or remembered by just about everyone.
Ancestors were there. It’s quite a claim. It wasn’t just some psychological construct based in our own individual memory networks.
Sometimes they come on their own and sometimes they can be called. No guarantees. No one has the ancestors dialed-in. There’s no formula, no algorithm. They are invited with the same respectful nonchalance that pervades every aspect of the event.
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I understood less than fifty percent of what was being talked about most of the time. Omens and clans and some of the convoluted stories go way over my head, but ancestor talk hits home.
My views of living and dying, of informationa and entropy, have room for my mom being more than a memory, sometimes. I couldn’t summon her to answer a question any more than Lummi can summon their ancestors. She does show up though, with messages to decypher.
They are all available, more than just my mom and my friends from high school who died too young. My dad’s around too, sometimes, and my grandfather who could do things with his hands I can only dream of. He and my grandmother don’t mind weighing in from time to time.
I think that’s why Lummi and Haida speakers left all that space. So we could hear what was being offered.
Peace
The event was about peace. Everyone acted like it. The Lummi-Haida relationship has taken many turns over the centuries and not all of them have been peaceful.
Dark times were acknowledged. The story of the sacred ceremonies done together now was told and retold.
The rest is eating and hanging out, which might be the most important part of all. We watched as a tasty-looking platter was burned for the ancestors, then we all chowed down ourselves. Older folks, like me, were served first by younger folks. I sat with people I didn’t know and got to know them some.
When we feel at peace, for a moment or more, it’s easy to be with anybody and nothing divides us. The Lummi and Haida Nations added peace to their shared story and gave the rest of us a story to learn from and share.
The story isn’t over.
A place, the Point, may be renamed. This is an aspect I do not fully understand.
There are other places with dark names associated with the Lummi-Haida past, all near the Point. Massacre Bay is one of them. There are about one hundred place names in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, that contain the word, ‘Massacre.’
Massacre is a strong word. Maybe it’s accurate in each of those 100 places, (shudder) — but it’s so strong that it knocks everything else out of the place like nothing else ever happened there or could ever happen there.
Victim Island is another one, just offshore in the Bay. It is the only place name in the GNIS that includes, ‘Victim,’ also a strong word. The place is more than that.
A video of the island is shown below in full 360 degrees. As you watch, let the place be anything you see or hear. If you download the video in VR, you will be in the kayak with me.
I write about mortality and new media technologies and hold a Black Belt in Learning. I wrote an earlier piece about the Lummi and Haida to help organize what I am learning about the history of where I live.
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