Equinox~Fear and Hope

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

We have arrived at the Equinox again, when our local star appears to circle the earth's equator. This is a time of speedy sunsets and a twilight that creeps in earlier day by day. To compare, back on July 23rd in Yellowknife it was 18 hours, 15 minutes and a few seconds, but today, September 23, it's only 12 hours and 17 minutes. On December 23rd, there will be only 4 hours and 57 minutes of light in the city, and most of that will be better defined as "twilight".  Old Sol can barely haul himself above the horizon in December, peaking around at a mere 27 degrees.

The seasons change with emphasis in the North. It's time for that last big hustle of animals, birds  and those humans who still take much of their living from the land to stash what they need in fat and fur in order to get through the coming winter. So things have been in the NWT for a very long time,  through ebbs and flows which the First Nation's noted as feast or famine. Now, here in 2019, it's become obvious that the old cycles are in flux.

The Northwest Territories are warming at 3x the global rate. The worst warming is during winter/spring so now the traditional ice roads become passable later and turn to mud--or water--much sooner than they used to.  The permafrost is thawing, knocking over homes and emptying lakes. The permafrost melt water contains carbons and many other chemicals which have been locked and stored within for thousands of years. Today these are entering the Arctic Ocean at ever increasing rates, changing the chemistry of the sea water. This will eventually affect not only the red blood denizens of the landscape--mammals, birds, fish--and the green/red plant photosynthesizers with who knows what consequences.

On the Arctic coasts and along riverbanks there is greater erosion because, due to the activities of liquid water, they are suddenly in a new, ice-free world. At the same time, new species are arriving from the south; the moose and caribou and the Jack Pine forests alike are sickened by year round insect infestations.  It all reminds me of that old advertisement (for margarine?) where a voice, accompanied by wind, thunder & lightning and summoned by a wave of an angry mother goddesses' hand, declares: "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature."

Never mind, on we go, miraculously alive on this uniquely welcoming planet, spinning on our way around the sun. We're heading into the dark times if we are in the northern hemisphere, or moving into spring and new life if we live in the southern one. We'll be doing the things human beings do every day as we scuttle around, busy, busy, busy! Inside the confines our global cultural shell, we sometimes don't see the big changes, at least, not until water fills up our basement.

Down south of the Canadian border, I rejoiced to see another new thing on Friday last--young people in the streets, carrying signs and asking for some real thoughtful science to be put to the task of dealing with what are the genuine, speedily escalating problems which threaten our world. I was so HAPPY to see those kids out there beside me, full of anger and ideas and so full of hope that they can save our beautiful planet in all its wonder and diversity--as well as themselves. 

Their presence made me want to take some time away from "Mundania" to reflect upon the great and holy mysteries inside the oldest stories. These are the ones mankind mustn't stop telling--the one about the beating heart of All-the-Waters hidden in the cold clean depths of Great Bear Lake or the one about the muskrat who "will be swimming," because she, though small and humble, is the one among all creatures who will be able to do Creator's bidding.

"We did not weave the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together..."  Chief Seattle.

and from the Christian Bible:

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell within..."  Psalm 24:1



With hope,

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Snow Goose Time

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Every year the geese pass over in great numbers because I live in the Atlantic flyway. When I was small, my dad made a big deal out of the Canadas, because at that time, DDT had nearly killed them off. This is hard to believe now, of course, as the Canadas are seen as a golf course/corporate campus pest.  

In those days, though, the sound of their haunting voices would bring Daddy out of the house with his little girl in tow. He’d tell me another extinction story, the one about the Passenger Pigeons, although the last representative of that family had died a decade before he was born. These birds had gone from a population of perhaps 5 Billion to none in fifty years.

“Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”

—Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” 1947, from Audubon online

The goose represented wilderness as they flew and called in the truncated V arrangements typical of the early ‘50’s. Where were they going, I wondered. “To the North, to the shores of the Bering Sea, way up north in Canada.” The magical destination was now named--a world as mythical to a small American child as the Back of the North Wind.

The snow geese were a revelation and a delight to a transplant to central Pennsylvania. I remember the first time I saw them, just a few flying over our home, in the sunlight that follows a February snow squall. Light gleamed on their bodies against a blue sky. In a moment of late winter quiet—no trains, planes, snow blowers--I heard their high voices, sweet and whispery compared to the brash honks of their Canada relatives.

The magic of white geese with their black tipped wings reminded me of other mythologies—like those European stories upon which the Swan Lake ballet is based. The sight of them set off thoughts of enchanted princesses and frozen lakes and -- magic!

The snow geese that come through here have a rest-stop fairly close, in Middlecreek. I'd been there in the summer, on long bicycle rides. Once, though, I'd driven out in February and had been lucky enough to find a great host of migrants already there. 

I was simply blown away by the sight and the sound of so much avian beauty, some rising in clouds while others, dumping air beneath their wings like fighter pilots, landed in open water. There were snow geese flying and snow goose swimming and snow geese resting upon the ice. In one small outlet, like royalty keeping to themselves, were the elegant Swans.

Like a child, I could look up and imagine myself rising from the earth and flying off with them, joining the storm of wings. I'd find my place among relations, get in line and cruise across mountains and forests. I'd forget the past and the future and just be in today--the next patch of green, the next drink of water, delighting in the strength and power of my wings! 

This flight of fancy ended abruptly when an eagle cannoned into the cloud of geese and took one of the beautiful creatures. For an instant, seeing a limp neck dangling in his claws--a creature that just seconds ago had been full of life--I was stunned. That's when I remembered the rest of a goose's--or any wild creature's life--suffering through storms, the fox in the night, the insatiable men hidden in the reeds.

 Coming home from a friend's house last Sunday as the sun went down behind low clouds, I could hear the Canada's calling in the last quarter mile. Overhead sailed great Vs of travelers. Others were landing, in the littered cornfield behind a row of old houses. When drivers in front suddenly turned in. I followed them, and sure enough, from a back alley, I could see snow geese, a great army, taking a break, looking around, talking to one another, here before sundown. 

 I had the pleasure of seeing them up close--just for a few minutes. It didn't take the wise old leaders long to figure out that there were too many people here. Soon, too soon, they lifted up again and moved on north, in the direction of larger and more isolated fields. For the brief time it took for the great cloud to arise, I was a kid again, imagining that if I wished hard enough, I could grow wings and travel with them, looking down upon the wonders of our Mother Earth.

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels at:

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Dream Trip North

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Ah Canada! I learned so much about NWT and even a bit about neighbors like B.C. and Alberta in the process of writing Fly Away Snow Goose. The land, so important in the story, got into my head until I began to have a fantasy about traveling to see it.

The kind of travel I envision, is the kind that, ideally, a 30 year old should undertake, but heck, it doesn't stop me from imagining. So here it goes: my dream of a northern adventure, carried out by some athletic babe ideal of my physical self at 34. (Not that this powerful woman ever existed!) For some reason, the fantasy-prone being who inhabits this body always wants some sort of hardship to accompany her dream travel. In my real crone self, each of these travel destinations would be a tough slog, only available to a stateside person with bucks.


Nevertheless, dream on! How about starting this journey in Alberta with a trip to Jasper National Park Dark-Sky Preserve in the winter as part of a dark skies tour? Where the temperature falls to -22 routinely, it would be a good thing I'm not an astro-photographer, like the adventurers whose story inspired me: folks I read about in an issue of Earth-Sky* who have taken mind blowing starry images.*

Credits:
Image via Jack Fusco for the Chasing Darkness project
https://www.jackfusco.com/
https://chasingdarkness.smugmug.com/What-is-Chasing-Darkness/

https://earthsky.org/human-world/stargazing-destination-alberta-chasing-darkness-video?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=b82e8c58ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-b82e8c58ad-394055697

To see the stars glowing like Tesla-fired blue globes, reflecting upon icy water would be an incredible experience. Even virtually, it's a gift to me, these images of a glorious, nearly pristine world. If I was actually there, I'd feel the searing cold in my lungs (it probably would turn them inside out) and feel frigid air demons gnawing at any bit of exposed skin. I'd hear the crunch of the snow under a pair of massively high-tech winter boots. Maybe, in the distance, perhaps I'd hear wolves howling.

Wood Buffalo Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is also in Alberta. Here, nature proceeds as it once did, before the incursion of strangers from the west. This is a place for summer travel, I'd come prepared for the onslaught of insects and prepared to see plants and animals I've never seen before.

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/256

"Wood Buffalo National Park is the most ecologically complete and largest example of the entire Great Plains-Boreal grassland ecosystem of North America, the only place where the predator-prey relationship between wolves and wood bison has continued, unbroken, over time."

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/nt/woodbuffalo

I’ve always wanted to travel back in time, and this park would offer me a window into the way the land was before Europeans arrived. Wood Buffalo Park is the only breeding ground for the magnificent Whooping Crane, a species on the edge of extinction.  Perhaps I'll imagine myself there in spring, when they arrive, calling to one another with their beautiful whooper voices!

The Wood Buffalo which lives there is another species under extreme pressure, a marvelous relic from the Pleistocene. This buffalo's woodland life style is different from the plains animal with which we down from south are more familiar. 

And then, because this is an imaginary travelogue without budget or schedule, I'd fly to Yellow Knife in the Northwest Territories and see a modern frontier city perched on the edge of the Great Slave Lake. After a few days of people, I'd be ready to begin my voyage into the North Slave, the land of the Tlicho, the tribe from which Sascho and Yaotl come.

Here, in a land of stone, water, and ever-dwindling forests I'd follow the rivers, muscle my way across portages, while following the ancient trails, like Sascho and Yaotl, on their way to Great Bear Lake, to see a body of freshwater even larger than Great Slave, a veritable ocean. Of course, this would take a very long time, a lot of supplies and a lot of willpower--even on a fantasy journey. Perhaps I'll imagine I'm back in time, in another body in another world, making my way north with a family group, working my fanny off as women always do, carrying and cooking and minding kids.

An easier way to reach Great Bear would be to make the whole thing modern, to imagine floating the Mackenzie to Tulita, then, where  the Great Bear River empties, turning east and traveling along that tributary to Deline. Here I could make a pilgrimage to the home place of the famous Sahuto'ine Prophet, Eht'se Ayah.

In March of 2016, Great Bear Lake and the surrounding area became the largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in North America. The people of Deline are now self-governing, their charge to protect the lake and to preserve their ancient mystical connection with it. The old ones believed that beneath Great Bear's surface a massive heart beats. This is a great magic, one which "gives life not only to the surrounding area, but to all the natural world."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/great-bear-lake/

Standing on the edge of this astounding place, for the grand finale, I'll conjure up a display of the aurora borealis, those shimmering spirits of ancestors, who remind us of how astonishing it is to be conscious and to be able to view these incredible wonders of our earth.

Even, in this case, if it's only a Canadian journey of the mind.


~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com/

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/waldron

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Juliet+Waldron?_requestid=8289443

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=Juliet+Waldron&pageNumber=2

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=juliet+Waldron

My Facebook Page 

Sedna, a Dark Tale For Winter Solstice

Amazon

Kobo

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

For this blog, I will travel north, far above the lands of the Athabascan peoples, into the land of the Inuit.

Sedna is the Inuit goddess of sea creatures, of primary importance to the Inuit people whose food source was the seal, fish, and whales which once abounded in the Arctic Ocean. Her story is a dark one, filled with mixed signals for any modern reader, especially if raised on cleaned-up versions of these often strange and bloody stories. 

Every human group created these origin tales in ancient times, and what is now formally designated “mythology” comes from stories told around campfires where small family groups rested after their daily struggle to survive in a world which seemed indifferent to their presence.   The Inuit, like other northern human groups, were nomadic people who followed the game that they relied upon for food, clothing, and shelter. They hunted along the sea shores and across the ice.

Men and women filled different roles in this society—the men hunting and making tools, the women doing almost everything else. Sedna is supposed to have been both beautiful and accomplished. This meant she would have been able to clean what the men caught, prepare food from the flesh and prepare hides and gut to make clothing, containers and shelter. 

There are many versions of this story, but Sedna is supposed to have rejected all the suitors who came to her. Her father, tiring of this, (or food had grown scarce--depends upon which tale you read) told his daughter that the next young hunter who came looking for a wife would become her husband. And sure enough, almost at once a handsome stranger presented himself, one who promised to be a good provider and give Sedna furs, warm blankets and plenty of food, both fish and meat.   

Sadly, after Sedna went away with him, her new husband stripped off his human disguise and revealed that he was not a man at all, but a Fulmar. Instead of a warm home, she was expected to live in a rocky stinking nest and eat nothing but raw fish. The nest stank because the Northern Fulmar has a reservoir of oily nasty smelling fluid in its gut, which it can spray at will upon the birds which prey upon it, or upon men at sea who anger it.   

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/northern-fulmar

When her father at last came to visit, he found Sedna in despair. Angry, and frightened too, that this shape-shifter had taken his daughter away under false pretenses, he waited beside her on the windy  rocks. When the Fulmar returned at night, and while he was still in his bird shape, the older man killed him. He and his daughter fled in a skin boat, but the other Fulmars, learning of what had happened, pursued them.

With their mighty pelagic magic, the Fulmar raised a great storm. The father, now fearing for his life, decided to save himself. He pushed Sedna overboard into the icy Arctic water, hoping that the Bird Spirits would be appeased. When Sedna tried to climb back into the boat, he chopped off her fingers so she could not hang on. As her fingers and blood fell into the water they became seals and whales and walruses and all the other mammals of the sea.

Sedna, transformed in this great storm of magic which surrounded her, sank to the bottom of the ocean, the Adlivum, which is the Inuit underworld. Here, in a new fish-tailed, flipper-handed form, she now rules both the dead and the wide ocean, giver of all life. It is Sedna ("The One Down There") that Inuit Shaman call upon for help when game is scarce and the people are starving. In trance, they descend into the watery darkness to visit her, to soothe her by combing her hair and massaging her wounded hands. They beg her to release the sea mammals who hide in her hair. 

    

https://www.deviantart.com/badgersoph/gallery/

Sophia Kelly Shultz-explore her magical artwork here

What can we make of this ancient story? Here we have a female heroine who commits the sin of pride, who suffers and dies, and is transformed. She becomes Mother Ocean, sometimes angry, sometimes peaceful. When she is happy she sends her animals, to feed the people. If people disrespect her, she will withhold her gifts; if children do not listen to their elders and play in dangerous places on the sea ice, she is likely to snatch them away, down into the dark underworld.  

At her most abstract, Sedna reminds us, we spiritual travelers, that there are "nourishing gifts to be found in the dark, cold places that we most fear."*

*Goddesses Knowledge Cards of Susan Eleanor Boulet, text by Michael Babcock  



~Juliet Waldron

All my historical and fantastical novels at:
Kobo

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(mythology)

 http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Sa-Sp/Sedna.html

http://www.polarlife.ca/traditional/myth/sedna.htm

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-goddess-of-the-sea-the-story-of-sedna

Tlicho Spirits

Amazon

KOBO

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

I have to define them as "spirits," because the Tlicho didn't have "ghosts" as the dominant cultures imagines them until after they made contact with Europeans. Digression: during the last 300 years, though, they've taken on some new religious beliefs, in their case, Roman Catholicism. Along with that, I think, came the sort of 'ghosts' that I've read reported in books written by recent researchers into the culture. Those modern spirits are just like ours: the restless and sometimes violent echoes of the bad, the mad, or the murdered. 

Before the Europeans brought their sometimes sad, sometimes scary spooks, the Tlicho could hardly be called "spirit-poor." An almost endless number of supernatural beings inhabited their everyday world, but in ways it took me a while to get the hang of. Mostly these beings are not angry or bent on vengeance. They are simply part of the fabric of the world the Tlicho observed. Staying right relationship with nature, staying in balance, was a central thought in this world view. This careful observation of the world around them, led them to see their position in relation to their environment as a thread woven into a greater fabric, part of which was a vast host of unseen--but--undeniably present beings.

Pre-contact, they were nomadic hunters whose survival depended upon the weather and the movements of animals, so they paid close attention to every detail of their surroundings as they moved about the dè--modern Canada's NWT.

Yearly, they traveled across an immense territory following the annual migrations of birds, fish, and caribou. Their prey, however, was not a simple commodity. The animals collectively and individually had spirit, just as the men who hunted them did. If a hunter disrespected the caribou, they might walk another path the following year and not come the expected way.

It was believed that the caribou willingly gave their bodies to the hunters. As one should when given a gift, the giver should be gratefully and politely thanked. This was done with certain prescribed rituals (which the Tlicho saw simply as "rules of behavior") for the sacrifice of their living bodies. Those gigantic herds were not just food animals, but fellow beings, in relationship with their Tlicho hunters, emanations of the "Great Spirit," all beings going about their business as instructed by the first great Tlicho magician, Yamǫǫ̀zha.*1

Over centuries, The People walked the same trails and canoed the intricate network of waterways. The landscape itself, from forest to tundra, was filled with a species of entity which I first learned about in long ago Latin classes, supernatural beings which the Romans referred to as "Numen." These spirits of place might occupy rocks, trees, camping spots, waterfalls and lakes, all of which frequently had a "power" or "powers" associated with them. 

Small tokens of respect are still left after camping near one of these places, or after fishing, or even simply as one travels past a sacred rock or waterfall. This is called "paying the land." According too Allice Legat: "People leave on site something they value and use, such as coinage, spruce boughs, or rosaries. A student gave a pencil because it was important to her success in school." Further, "...if human beings ignore rules and do not show respect, they will probably have a difficult time because these entities may withdraw their assistance."* (from Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire.)  (*1)

Spirits could sometimes be malevolent. One kind called "weyèedii or 'animal-beings' were "regarded as dangerous, and consequently, always avoided. Through dreaming and the acquisition of ı̨k’ǫǫ̀ or “medicine”, sometimes “power,” “knowledge,” or “luck”, a person could prepare to deal with the world," and the varied powers which inhabit it.(*2)

Spirits of earth and rock were not invulnerable. In order to explain the "continuing death and decay" in the toxic areas which continue to exist around the polluting Rayrock Uranium mine, Elder Romie Wetrade told a story.* Rayrock, he said, used to be called "The Happy Place," because hunters who traveled through the area felt liking singing. When the mine opened, however, in the 1950's, the happy spirits were driven away by blasting and other human activities. The closing down of the mine has not brought them back, either. Displaced by the tearing up of the earth and breaking of rock, these once joyous spirits are now presumed to be fading, homeless wanderers. The very character of these spirits requires a "home place." 

Spirits could be wind or water as well as rock. One modern story I read concerned a wind coming up so heavily that a gathering of elders and teenagers was trapped beside a lake when their float plane could not take off. While the campers waited it out, an elder told them stories about the wind, "in the boreal forests and on the tundra and on large lakes." When the stories had been told, another elder "built a raft, placed burning spruce boughs on it," and pushed it out onto the lake.  As he did so, he asked for "calm winds and a safe journey. It only took two hours for the wind to die down..." so that their journey could safely continue.  (*2)

Where I stand is holy

Holy is the ground 

Forest, mountain river

Listen to the sound 

Great Spirit circles all around me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ-tNr6nW5E

~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com/
Now mobile friendly!
See all my historical novels, Ricardian, Mozart Collection, American Revolution,  Pennsylvania Victorian and historical fantasy @ 

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Juliet+Waldron?_requestid=1854149

*1

This Tlicho story reminds me of the "The Crab Who Played with Sea" in the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling. Here, all the animals "played the play the great magician taught them at the very beginning." Kipling probably borrowed this notion from the indigenous people of India where he did military service. 

~In Europe, all through the 19th century and into the 20th, many historians, artists  and literary figures avidly collected, studied, and wrote and made collections of "world-wide" folkloric traditions. To me, all these tales of every nation appear so intertwined--culturally altered echoes of common themes-- that they must be part of our common "out of Africa" psychic past.

~In Miyasaki's Spirited Away, there is a character who befriends the heroine that is a wandering spirit. In this case, it is that of a river which was relegated to underground channels when a city built over it. This seems to be a Japanese version of the Rayrock story of the way things sometimes happen with displaced spirits. This particular spirit has managed to stay positive about humans, which is not always the case.

*2
https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/walking-the-land-feeding-the-fire

Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire, Knowledge and Stewardship Among the Tlicho Dene 
by Allice Legat

 
*3 
From The Tlicho Nation homesite:
https://tlichohistory.ca/en/stories/tlicho-way-life

Spirits Can See Red

Residential School Escape

Coming of Age in the Wilderness

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fly-away-snow-goose-canadian-historical-brides-collection-book-8-juliet-waldron/1127581811?ean=2940158604010

http://amzn.to/2jZPtIR

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/752162

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• 
  
• Christine Cayedeto, Aged 9, disappeared from her front yard in 1986
• Tiffany Maureen Skye, 19, disappeared August 8, 2011; she was Bloodvein First Nation;
• Annie Pootoogook, 46, an renown artist from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, was found dead in the Ottawa River, September 19, 2016 
• Rose-Anne Blackned, 24, mother of two, found frozen in the Val D'Or, Quebec, on November 16, 1991
• Olivia Lone Bear, mother of five, her body discovered nine months later, June 25, 2018
• 
  

Besides the fact that they are women, what else do they have in common? The years of their deaths/disappearances are different, as are their ages.

All these women are indigenous, some from the US, others from Canada. According to the U.S. Justice Department, indigenous women face murder rates--on some reservations--as much as 10X above the national average.

This shameful statistic is caused by a long standing inequity in the law. If a native woman is assaulted by a non-native person on tribal land, they will not be prosecuted, because the tribal police may not arrest or prosecute a non-native person. This has, very simply, created open season on native women. Rates of homicide and disappearance of native women and girls, apparently for the sex trade, appear to be ever-growing. Spikes of violence are now occurring in the oil rush fields of the U.S. and Canada where transient workers come and go.  

If an indigenous person is accused of killing a non-native person on the reservation, he may be prosecuted twice--by the tribal authorities and by whatever state in which the crime was committed. You may say that the fact that this remains law here in the 21st Century, is nothing more or less than institutionalized racism. However, solutions remain difficult, for the problems are many and complicated. 

Tribal police are hesitant to give state police any assistance or make it any easier for non-native law enforcement officers to come onto their land. Add to this that the tribal police are generally underfunded and that the territories which they cover are enormous. Next comes the poverty, substance abuse, family disruption (among these, the residential school system) and lack of work on the reservations, which exacerbates the tragic history of the people who live there. Racial violence is now embedded in indigenous bodies, descendants of brutalized survivors. 

Violence is an often-unacknowledged part of our European American past. Most of our people fled injustice, starvation, and sectarian violence in their lands of origin. This ancestral violence, likewise planted in our bodies (and, it now appears, in our very DNA) has been, in turn, visited upon the original inhabitants of North America.

There's 500 hundred years of bad blood between immigrants and indigenous people.  It's unsurprising that European Americans and 1st Nations' meet and sometimes clash in the border towns where  indigenous people must to come in order to find work or get supplies. Some of these cities/towns appear to have resident gangs waiting to abduct young women for the sex trade.

In an effort to raise awareness of the issue, several art projects have been created. One is The Red Dress Project. This began in Canada and is a public art commemoration of the Aboriginal women known to be missing or murdered. Canadian Jaime Black (Metis) began the project in 2000. 

Jaime Black explains: "Red is the only color spirits can see. So (red) is really a calling back of the spirits of these women, allowing them a chance to be among us and have their voices heard through their family members and community." 

A few of the  organizations trying to raise awareness of these Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women using both civic action and art may be found @

https://www.facebook.com/groups/walkingwithoursisters/about/

Native women’s Association of Canada

https://www.nwac.ca/

This group is designed to raise awareness about the Missing/Murdered Indigenous Women crisis in Canada—violence against women, girls and two-spirit persons.

Sisters in Spirit vigils continue to be held across Canada every year on the 4^th of October.

The home site of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women:

 https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/

https://www.facebook.com/mmiwusa/

Meanwhile:

Tylena Walkalong, 14 years old, last seen in Billings Montana, August, 2018

Talelei Oldcrane, 12, disappeared June 17, 2018, Billings, Montana

Valencia and Valentina Haswood, aged 16 and 14, last seen in Sawmill, AZ 08/18

Khadijah Britton, 24, abducted at gunpoint by an ex-boyfriend, Mendocino, CA, 02/07/18...

European North American women like myself have made limited progress towards equality under the law, but aboriginal women and women of color have been left behind.  We must remember the names of these lost sisters and hope that their spirits, though battered, will find their way home when they see the red dress. 

We must "Pray for the dead, and fight like Hell for the Living."*

~~Juliet Waldron

See All My Historical Novels @

julietwaldron.com

* Mother Jones

Another view of the Red Dress Movement in this powerful article:

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/terese-marie-mailhot/dont-hang-a-red-dress-for-me_a_23019892/