A few years back, I spent 4-months on Haida Gwaii-

I’d stand in the company of eagles on kilometre-long stretches of beach, no person in sight. Under grey skies, I’d watch the waves lap onto rocky shores. Inhaling fresh, salty air, I found peace.

I’d stand in celebration and remembrance of the power of the Earth. The power of the Ocean.

I felt grounded and humbled.

It is from this Earth that I sprung. And, when I die, my body will turn to soil, to Earth, offering nutrients for lives to come.

Moments of silence and stillness in the face of epic beauty, offer a homecoming of sorts. A remembrance of the interconnectedness of all life and form. My being, in all its complication and simplicity, was and is part of the big play – Life, Earth, Death, Universe, Sun, Moon, everything, nothing.

And I am home.

Yet in this home, on the beaches of Haida Gwaii, my reverence was directed to the people. I was home, but still a visitor on someone else’s homelands.

The Haida people.

They’ve cared for and loved those lands and waters for thousands of years. This relationship is embedded in their culture, their ways of life, and language. They know through their clan system and oral histories and relationships to Land, Water, Spirit and one another, and, I think, in their souls, that they’ve been there for a very, very long time.

Since time Immemorial.

And, because oral histories and knowing the land and seasons and a feeling in their souls aren’t enough to prove the Haida’s home to British Columbia or Canada, who have tried to occupy their territories with their governance structures and who’ve raped their land, uprooting and selling cedar and spruce ancestors for profit, in the national interest of Canada, the Haida also know through western science, through archaeology, and the village sites the Haida Watchmen care for that they have been there for a very, very long time.

And it is home.

The Crown tried to name the place in 1778. The Queen Charlotte Islands, the colonizers called it. After decimating the Haida populations with smallpox, banning the potlatch, sending the youth to residential schools, and imposing reserves, Canada wrongly thought they’d claimed it. 

The Haida persisted.

In a moving ceremony in 2010, the Haida regifted the name to British Columbia and The Queen. The Queen Charlotte Islands wrapped in a bentwood box.

For their home, the Haida chose the name Haida Gwaii – islands of the people.

The Haida are the people. The islands, theirs.

I learned that being at home in my own body, in my own knowingness of self and that which is beyond self and identity allowed me to be grounded enough to offer my respect and to show up as a good guest at someone else’s home.

I left Haida Gwaii feeling full but homeless. Uprooted and unfurled, I sought a home on the land.

Was home 108 Prospect or 4484 W 15th? No.

Though they housed me, and were places where I felt loved, cared for, respected, they were on stolen lands or lands (un)settled through dishonoured treaties. When all my relationships were gone from those places, I knew, deep in my soul, that those places were someone else’s home- homes that need to be returned to the Indigenous people to be governed and cared for.

Was home where my ancestors came from? South Indian Lake or in England, Ukraine, Russia? Maybe, but I’ve yet to visit. Perhaps when I do, there will be a sense of knowingness.

Home is not Canada, though it is a nation to which I belong (in an administrative sense and, in the sense that I am warmly welcome as a cisgendered, able-bodied, educated and friendly white lady). The imposition of Thunder Bay and of Canada on already occupied, already loved, Indigenous lands, has, and continues to be, one of violence, dislocation, and fractured relationships. And I know violence is not home.

When we are home, in an embodied sense, there is no harm.

Home is a place of ease. Closed eyes, deep breaths, quiet mind. I meditate, to bring myself home, or I stand on the beach under eagles, or by the cottonwood tree, or with my palms feeling cement, or in the arms of unconditional love. I guide myself home in moments of silence. Home is without thought, without action, without personality, neediness, attachment. Home is without touch, taste, smell, sight (yet, in another sense, home is all these things).

Home, ultimately as I understand it, is a sense of belonging found within and beyond oneself. Beyond reality and imagination; life and death.

Home is awareness. The witness consciousness. That which is aware of thoughts, aware of emotions, yet unmoved. It was not born, and it will not die. Home is deep peace. Simple, yet elusive.

The potential to connect with home rests inside all of our bodies, yet it is beyond the body. Beyond form.

At the same time, home is the body, for without the body, there would be no vessel to carry the awareness of beingness. We nurture and care for the body because it is our home. And, because life is confusing and challenging, we forget, too, that the body is home. We abandon it by failing to offer it care and rest. But it is still home.

And, at the same time, home is the Earth, for without the Earth, there would be nothing to nourish and house the body, there would be no vessel to carry the awareness of beingness. And, because life is confusing and challenging, we forget, too, that the Earth is home. We abandon it by failing to offer it care and rest, by manipulating its cycles through carbon emissions. But it is still home.

And, at the same time, home is the Universe, for without the Universe, there would be no place to hold and heat and revolve the Earth, there would be nothing to nourish and house the body, there would be no vessel to carry the awareness of beingness. And, because life is confusing and challenging, we forget, too, that the Universe is home. We abandon it by ignoring its majesty and grandeur, by forgetting to see the stars, or gaze at the moon. But it is still home.

And, at the same time, home is noplace, for even with the death of the body, the Earth, and the Universe, there is still a sense of awareness, resting somewhere and everywhere.

Home is everyplace and noplace. Home is also very specific places, lands, waters, but not really for me. And also entirely for me.

For I know, that the trees and the waters and all the people are, somehow, my relations. I seek to respect and love it all.

Home depends who you are. Depends where you came from.

Works Cited

Brown, Brene. “Finding Our Way to True Belonging.” Ideas, TED, 11 Sept. 2017, ideas.ted.com/finding-our-way-to-true-belonging/.

Hall, Chris. “Trudeau gives his definition of National Interest.” Analysis, CBC News, 16 April, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pipeline-kinder-morgan-analysis-chris-hall-1.4620823.

Hume, Mark. “Underwater discovery near Haida Gwaii could rewrite human history.” The Globe and Mail, 2014, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-researchers-may-have-found-earliest-site-of-human-habitation-in-canada/article20737278/.

Mooji. “An invitation to freedom.” Youtube, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5_sbzSXs0E.

Richard, Graham. “Back from whence it came.” Art, Council of the Haida Nation,  2017, http://www.haidanation.ca/?p=4717.