2.2
Feb. 10, 2021 Home Sweet Home
Home for me is something that is more a feeling rather than a physical place. This is not to say I don’t love my childhood home, I just believe that it adapts as you get older.
I was born and raised in Vernon BC a small, sleepy town in the winter and a vacation getaway in the summer. I only moved once from ages 0-18 and never moved schools unless it was from elementary to high school. So with my lack of moving, I was able to get to know the areas in which I lived. Playing in the golden fields behind my house, splashing in the sparkling waters of Okanagan Lake and the brisk morning walks to the bus stop in the winter. These are some of my fondest memories. With this being said I was also able to build relationships around me. As these relationships grew the more attached I became to the place around me. Getting this comfortable also made me crave other adventures outside of what I knew. But my anxiety about different things and different people held me back. It held me back so much that at one point I was probably in a depression and didn’t know it.
Then came one summer’s day when my Aunt, who was an elementary school principal at the time called me. She told me that I had 24 hours to decide if I wanted to go on a 21 day trip around Vancouver Island and the lower mainland guided by a company called Fireside Adventures. To which I initially thought she was crazy and no way that I would be able to do such a feat. Needless to say, I said yes and I loved every moment of it. Ever since then, I have returned for the past 10 years not only as a participant, intern, staff but now I am a lead guide and coordinator for their Indigenous programs.
Now you’re probably wondering how this camping trip is related to my sense of home. I believe that even though I was born in a predominantly white community, off-reserve and nowhere near the land my ancestors called home. I have some unsaid connection to the land around me. Being on the land is my medicine. I always joke that I go on at least one to two 21day trips a summer as my “therapy”. I believe I am most at home when I am in nature, on the water, in the mountains with the community. When I first started these trips I was scared of the elements and was unsure of myself. As the years went on, I became more confident in my skills outside, my gear got better and my relationship with the natural world became stronger. With this relationship to the natural world, I found out that wherever I was, on whoever’s traditional territory I was on as long as I live in good relation, the land would take care of me. Okay, so now you’re thinking you have a crazy woman who went on this camping trip and believes that the natural world can take care of her.
And for the most part, you’re right but here me out. Through Traditional ways of knowing there is a teaching that one must live in good relation with all things. Good relation, in the way I understand it, is when people respect all living and non-living things around them. So when I am out leading groups of youth down the Yukon River. We offer tobacco if we need to take anything from the land as a sign of respect. We work with the river, not against it (the river has its own language too).
This understanding and respect for the land taught me to think of the land as part of us and just like being home in Vernon. The stronger the relationship, the stronger the sense of home is for me.
Work Cited
“About Fireside Adventures.” Fireside Adventures, 2020, www.firesideadventures.ca/about-fireside-adventures. Accessed 10 February 2021.
Fireside’s Sparrow Indigenous Youth Leadership Programs. Youtube. Uploaded by Jeff Willis. 12 October 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TnnDXbN_R0. Accessed 10 February 2021.
Tennant, Zoe. “’Our Stories Give Us a Lot of Guidance’: Daniel Heath Justice on Why Indigenous Literatures Matter | CBC Radio.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 9 Apr. 2020, www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/why-stories-matter-now-more-than-ever-1.5526331/our-stories-give-us-a-lot-of-guidance-daniel-heath-justice-on-why-indigenous-literatures-matter-1.5527999. Accessed 10 February 2021.