Elder Dave Courchene: Starting with the spirit
Elder Dr. Dave Courchene – Nii Gaani Aki Innini (Leading Earth Man) – is a respected Elder and Knowledge Keeper of the Anishinaabe Nation who has committed his life to environmental stewardship. After receiving a vision, he founded the Turtle Lodge International Centre for Indigenous Education and Wellness, a sacred lodge recognized internationally as a place of learning, healing, and sharing for all people, and by the Assembly of First Nations and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, as one of the most important gathering places for Indigenous Peoples in Canada. In 2018, Knowledge Keepers across the Americas named Turtle Lodge their Central House of Knowledge.
Study after study shows that Indigenous Peoples are true stewards of the land and achieve far better outcomes in preserving the land and biodiversity. Why do you think that is?
Indigenous peoples have lived on and been sustained by the land for tens of thousands of years. In more recent times, we entered a very dark period where we had to endure the genocide that brought many negative impacts in our communities. In spite of all the broad attempts to destroy us, they were not successful, because there was always those amongst our Nations that found a way to be faithful to the ancestral way of living and a way of life that was sustainable.
When we talk about sustainability, you cannot talk only about it from an intellectual, scientific or an academic sense. When you listen to the Knowledge Keepers of our Nations, they will never go into conversation until the spirit is acknowledged. We are spiritual beings, and our challenge is to try and share our understanding of what spirit is, what it means, and how it influences our lives, because spirit is not something you can intellectualize. You cannot take science and prove that it exists. It is beyond the realm of man’s limitations, physical, mental, and intellectual understanding.
With spirit, it is about having a relationship with the Great Mystery. We as people do not have the intellectual capacity to be able to understand the fullness of this great power. The best chance or hope that we can have to get to know this Great Spirit or energy is to be able to feel it. And this is where Indigenous People, in their way of life, have always had ways to be able to make that journey to the heart, because the heart is the spirit, and the spirit is the essence of life. It is this spirit that defines our identity and who we are as human beings, and it also carries the memory of our own beginning in our own creation. As long as we continue down this path of self-destruction, believing that we can control and dominate the Earth, this is very short-term, simple minded thinking.
The phrase “sustainability” has gotten away from its true meaning. What does it actually mean to you?
Everybody is using it, but nobody understands the root of how we sustain ourselves as human beings in the world that we are destroying. There’s mitigation, but it doesn’t do anything. We can keep playing around with legislation, programs, and other things – but they are just tweaking around the edges. People are hesitant to reconcile what they have done to the land – and we are all co-participants in that.
“We need to get to the root of the problem, which is our attitude and values, and we are going to have to find a way to let go of these things that are not sustainable to life itself. This is the challenge in front of us today.”
Nature seems to be sending us a message – with the pandemic, with some of the more severe weather events that have been more commonplace over the past few years. What is Mother Nature telling us?
I think this is what the COVID viruses have been about – it’s this little virus screaming – “Wake up! Wake up! What you guys are doing is wrong and if you do not get it the first time, we’re coming again.” We have a saying - be careful what you do to the land, because what you do to the land, you do to yourself. We were given a prophecy that here on Turtle Island, that Mother Earth would give birth to a new life and that she would remove all that was destroying the balance of life. She would restore it to its natural balance.
Because of what we have done to the land itself, because there is a consequence for every act that we do in life. It goes back to the universal law of the circle - what you put into that circle will be multiplied and will come back to you. That is why the Grandmothers of our Nations always influence and lead the community, and they lead the community through kindness. It was kindness that prevailed in keeping the community together, keeping the family strong, and ensuring that you treated the land in the way that you would treat your own mother. No one can lay claim and say, “I can control and own my mother.” These are words of insanity. Who in their right mind would ever think that they could have dominion over their own mother?
I cannot understand how these attitudes continue to prevail, that people think they can do whatever they want to the Earth to reap the benefits. The problem with this is that it is only a few that benefit. It is not the majority of the human population that is benefiting from the extraction of all those resources in order to support a money economy that is held by an elite that control and dominate all these other institutions, be it politics or education. If they control these institutions and continue to educate our children to support this philosophy or ideology, then our children are denied the opportunity to learn from the land itself.
What does land-based education look like to you?
One thing that I have really been promoting, is the need for Indigenous Peoples to set up our own infrastructure to help create higher places of learning. We have been working with some universities to try to develop a training program. What is important for me in my engagements with anyone is that I will not relinquish my leadership in terms of the vision that I have, or what our people have in terms of developing a proper support system and educational support for young people to be able to learn the laws of the land, to be able to feel the land and learn those laws and teachings.
We are now getting into an area where it is about survival – how to survive with what is here and what is coming up. It must be led by the Indigenous Knowledge Keepers of our People that have designed this model of education. And also knowing that we will extend an invitation to other cultures.
“We know young people are going to be and are in the forefront. They shouldn’t worry about trying to change the system – people in power are not going to budge. So, attention needs to be focused on re-building, knowing the truth of your own identity, and having the full purpose of why you have been given the light to be able to take care of the world so that future generations can enjoy the beauty of the land. ”
We need to bring young people in and create that experience of land-based education for them. I think Indigenous People are guiding us in the right direction, because my ancestors left us a footprint, and that is what I am following with Turtle Lodge. It is a way of life that has to be lived every day and not just one day a week. And you live that way of life, practicing these values in these teachings that reflect kindness for each other, showing love to the land, showing love for each other, and appreciating diversity and welcoming it within our Circle. This brings more richness and more knowledge and more understanding. What a beautiful way of life it would be if we could reach this level.
In the position paper you wrote with your fellow Knowledge Keepers at Turtle Lodge, Wahbunung, you provide insight into the path forward for the resurgence of Indigenous peoples and the path for your future. One of the many interesting points you mention is to “take great care not to cross the line to step into protest, aggression or violence, as these acts only serve to empower the colonizer, as they reflect an acceptance of one’s role as a victim, and internalization of one’s oppression and victimization, along with being ineffective tools in the long-term.” Right now, there seems to be a lot of anger in society, and we have a lot of protests about any number of topics. How do you recommend people channel their anger into something positive?
I can speak from my own personal experience in my younger days. I did a lot of protest which was motivated from my anger and frustration. It wasn’t until I was able to find myself within the environment of the Grandmothers, and the Elders of my people, that my whole attitude started to change. It all came down to the simple truth of what was continually expressed to me. You cannot live your life in anger, you cannot work in anger. You cannot protest in a way that is from frustration and anger. Over the years, I began to realize that what had to be done was not so much waste all this energy to protest against people that are not going to change or are too seduced by power or money. They’ve designed their laws and structures to protect their ideological concept of domination, and they’ll throw you in jail. So, I’ve come to understand, through the Knowledge Keepers of my People, that we need to rebuild, to start at the beginning. They said that the beginning is your spirit, and your spirit is within your own being. Go back within yourself, because ultimately the answers you are looking for are within you.
Why is diversity in sustainability important?
Our ancestors left us a footprint, and that is what I am following. That was the reason why I set up Turtle Lodge. It is a model of life, practicing these values in these teachings that reflect kindness for each other, to show love for the land, to show love for each other and to appreciate that diversity and welcome it within our Circle. This, in turn, brings more richness and more knowledge, more understanding.
“When I think of who we are as a People, we have never forced ourselves on anybody. We do not try to evangelize our way of life, but we try to show it through our own actions by offering acts of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. ”
Look at what has happened to people of colour around the world – they have been dehumanized because of colonization, because of the attitude that a man can denigrate another human being because they look different. These people have never seen the diversity of nature and the beauty of the inner diversity we see in nature. Somehow, they equate that diversity in humanity as needing separating, and saying that one is superior to the other. What an awful way to continue to think that we are not in truth, all related, that we are brothers and sisters.
I am not an Indigenous person but feel a strong affinity to the idea of connecting with the land. This can almost feel impossible in a city, which often feels like it made for humans and machines, rather than supporting nature. How do you recommend that people connect with the land in such settings?
Let me first put it in its simplest context – as long as we all walk Mother Earth, it is who we are walking on. That is how connected we are being in the city or not in the city.
The foundation of life is the land itself, even though the city it is in has been filled with concrete and things like that. No one has the power to stop the movement of the life force that comes from the Earth. You will see a road that has been paved and is not used anymore – then you start to see nature tearing that concrete apart. That is the power of nature. So, no matter where we walk, we are walking on Mother Earth. And the old people say, “Make sure you walk softly and gently on Mother Earth.”
When I am in the city, one of the things I usually do when I go to a city is to try to find a park. I find a tree or a river, something that has more of a spirit of life. The concrete does not give you that. You just need to take the first step and make that journey to go be on the land, even if it is for an hour. You have to take the time and have a conversation with the land itself. Talk to her like you would talk to your own mother. She is alive, and she has an intelligence, and she has a language. I work with a lot of young people, and I have used the trees a lot and I tell young people to go over to the trees and talk to them. Initially, they think it is a foolish idea because they have never been taught that, and they have never experienced it, but the tree always manages to reach one or two of them to have a conversation if the person is open enough to hear that voice of the truth. That is where true education comes from – it does not come from books or real life; it comes from nature itself.
In our culture, we never go to the land and take anything from the land until we make an offering – whether it is food or cloth – in a ceremony of gratitude to say, “Thank you Mother Earth, in spite of what we have done to you, your unconditional love prevails.”
Every human being has the capacity to be able to hear the language of the Earth, but they choose not to hear it because they have overpowered that spirit and clouded their minds with everything that is in opposition of what is the truth, and what the spirit is all about. It is not necessarily about being an Indigenous person - it is about all of us hearing that call from the inside and to be able to hear that universal language of nature itself.
And my last question - are you optimistic of pessimistic about the future?
I am very optimistic, but also being a realist, I know that we are going to have to go through some tough times in order to make it to that day of reckoning when we realize that we cannot continue down this road. It will be very tough for young people, and we are going to have to rely on a lot within out own spirit to be able to meet challenges. We received a prophecy that said that Mother Earth is going to give birth to a new life and I believe that. She will purify herself and new life will be born again. As she is giving birth to New Life, we also have that same opportunity to give birth to new life. And this will have to come from within ourselves.
Learn more about the incredible work of Turtle Lodge. All pictures above provided courtesy of Turtle Lodge.