There are times when I really miss our tipi.
It was a casualty of a fierce April wind some ten or twelve years ago. We did our best to salvage it, but it was shredded, and some of its ancient poles had been snapped like the thinnest of twigs. We’ve talked about putting up another, but the time has never seemed right.
Mostly, I think, because in the intervening years, the winds have only grown more powerful, and more destructive, too.
In May, three years ago, a small twister ripped through here one morning, spiraling past the house to veer off and destroy half the stables. We still have not had time, money, or resources to replace the demolished portions of that, either. It’s a big job, and as long as the horses still have shelter, a roof, space out of the cold winds and the hot sun? There are always more urgent tasks requiring our attention now.
Especially now.
It’s tempting to think that the country is collectively emerging from the dark now, but we know that for the dangerous lie that it is. It is still a construction of colonial, genocidal system and structures, built upon the bones of our ancestors. Its machinery is oiled by the blood of our contemporaries now.
That’s a truth rendered with undeniable clarity in light of the events of the year just past, when our peoples were made not merely dispensable and disposable, not merely left to die, but purposefully, deliberately made to do so. This pandemic has, by its very deadly darkness, illuminated other dark corners of this colonial society as well.
It’s an ugly sight. And it’s one that cannot be allowed to swept back into those corners, not placed conveniently out of sight and once more out of mind. Colonial politics, its figureheads and fellow travelers, make much of the aphorism that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” even as they break out their brooms to sweep everything back under the first available rug.
Our peoples have always known the value of illumination, and this must be the year that we demand and use it.
You will notice that, with that juxtaposition, I implicitly prioritized “illumination” over “light.” That was entirely intentional. “Light” is like sight and sound; it exists irrespective of whether it is used, and in fact it can be ignored, shades drawn and eyes closed to its power while the deadly work goes on under cover of dark.
“Illumination” is a marriage of fact with understanding, the truth of empirical existence cultivated by a willing, seeking, even prophetic and visionary state of mind. And we shall need all of it to counter the ill winds to come.
Because it’s not merely spring that is destructive now. It’s not even the pandemic, nor the variants that continue to crop up, ready to elude whatever measures a colonial world can be convinced to take. It’s not even the climate change that drives these catastrophic winds and the drought and violent weather that attend them.
Those are all facts of our existence now, yes, but they’re also only symptoms and side effects of the greater disease that bedevils the planet. My own language has a word for it that at once falls under its umbrella and a the same time exceeds that label, but it fits. It’s a phenomenon of the cold, of the dark, of the empty void, and that is what we are battling now.
We need shelter, traditional and otherwise. We also need the light.
It is the ways of illumination that will heal this earth: a golden glow of spirit and light to warm our bodies, our heart and our souls; the medicine of prophecy and dreams for a world badly ailing now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
