16 April 2006
the web of life
& the medicine wheel
Seven generations after the leader of the Six Nations Chief Joseph Brant welcomed the Pennsylvania Mennonites and other European settlers to share the Grand River watershed with his people, WLU Faculty of Social Work welcomes his descendants to a unique graduate program based on the aboriginal holistic healing approach to the former St. Jerome's building --cf. 1912 line drawing above. This new master of social work degree in an aboriginal field of study is the only program of its kind in a mainstream university in North and South America. Even the restored building has been designed to extend the hand that heals as it includes a circular room to remind us all of the part we play in Creation.
The building's restoration was begun in March 2005 and will be finished by August 2006. According to WLU spokesperson R. Dupuis," This has been a very complex project. The heritage aspect of it obviously drove the costs up right from the very start. " Well, one might will imagine that a 99 year old building could use some retrofitting in order to bring it into the interconnected, digital 21st century. Structurally there were steel frames to be reinforce and wooden beams to be replaced. As well, the building acquired new heating, plumbing, and sprinkler systems; new wiring, wheelchair access, elevators, etc. The designated exterior also required some spring-cleaning: repairs to the cornice, new windows, masonry and brick repairs. Cost of all this? approximately $11,500,000 of which $6,500,000 are to be contributed by Kitchener taxpayers = $5,000,000 less $1,500,000 donated by the Lyle S. Hallman foundation (building is now named the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work) = balance of $3,500,000 to be raised through local fund-raising efforts.
For those in the Christian tradition who celebrate Easter this day, Rambling Rose provides two meditations:
the first comes from the prophet Micah
He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
The second has been taken from a speech by Chief Seattle in response to the American government's offer to purchase his people's lands:
If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's graves behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave, and his children's birthright, are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.
The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of
leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings....
But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.... Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.
One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover, our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.
Speech of Chief Seattle (1790-1866) delivered at Seattle, Washington in the fall of 1854 in response to
address of Hon. Isaac Stevens, commissioner of Indian affairs for Washington Territory…translation by Dr. H.A.Smith… (http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/seattle.htm
&
"St. Jerome's rebirth," by Barbara Aggerholm, The Record 10 April 06 http://www.therecord.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=record/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1144619556567&call_pageid=1024322645917
& perhaps on another day, the teachings of the medicine wheel which shows how we are all brothers in each of the four quadrants??? We have our beginning here and our work to do: to heal this land and to heal our broken relationships with each other. Meegwetch (thank you!) to my gentle readers!
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