my english name is karen bannon i'm from trout lake and my clan is a white fish the teachings that i'm going to be doing right now are the medicine wheel teachings and the medicine wheel is divided into four different compartments and when i use a medicine wheel i don't draw solid lines to separate the four parts of the circle i use a dotted line because to me that dotted line represents how all knowledge all relationships everything is all interconnected and interdependent and the relationships are all over so um the top of the circle is the east and to the right is south to the bottom is west and to the left is north and there are colors that represent each of the directions where i come from east is represented by the color red south is black west is yellow and north is white in many other communities and other nations they don't use the same color system that we do and that's okay the way that we are taught how to use a medicine wheel is dependent on each community each nation of people and for us this is a way it makes sense to us right now it might change next year next month but this is the way it makes sense to us right now okay so east is at the top and red is at the top and there are five circles that we're going to be using in these teachings and we may not refer to them all in this first set of teachings but in the smallest circle the inside circle the most inner circle it's about the four aspects of self the four parts of each one of us and to the top it's about our spiritual lives to the right it's about our emotional lives and to the bottom to the west it's about our mental our psychological part and then to the left to the north it's about our physical part the next circle is the four aspects of our collective lives through the east it's about our cultural life to the south it's about our social lives and to the west it's about our political lives and to the north it's about our economic lives the way that we provide food shelter and clothing to ourselves our families our communities our nations the next circle the third circle from the inside it's the four rascals now these rascals are also a part of each one of us we all have these four rascals but culturally we are taught to deal with these rascals in often very different ways the rascal to the east to the top is feeling inferior and we've always we've all felt inferior at some part in our lives it's it's um that's the rascal that when you feel like you're not as good as the next guy the other person is way prettier than we are or dresses better or has a nicer car that's the rascal feeling inferior the rascal to the south is jealousy and again we've all felt jealousy at some point it's a way that we deal with the jealousy that's different the the rascal to the west is resentment and resentment is about anger that has not been dealt with and it's anger that's been turned inward and stays within us and it [Music] makes things very very difficult for us makes things very difficult difficult in our relationships the rascal to the north is not caring and that's about not caring about your family it's not caring about the land it's not caring about any of the animals it's about just not caring except for oneself and that's the rascal that brings about things like greed where you try to collect and hoard and just keep and keep and keep instead of sharing okay these four rascals we have to learn how to live with them or else they can take over our lives and destroy our lives they can destroy our relationships so we have to learn how to deal with them and one of the ways that we do do that is by acknowledging their presence in us okay we don't call them evil they're we call them rascals because we have to learn how to live with them so um um later on another session can be about the four rascals and we can spend about a half an hour to do that um the circle the outer circle is the four life givers to the east it's about it's the earth to the south it's fire to the west it's water and to the north it's air and each one of these life givers are also are also teachers and we can learn so many things from each of these life givers and again that's a session on its own that we will we may do eventually the circle the second circle from the in from the outside sorry is a circle of the four oh this is a relationship circle it's about the things that are important for healthy relationships so to the top of the page the circle relationships are about respect to the south relationships are all about rights in this relationship in any relationship what are our rights opposite of that to the north relationships are about responsibilities what are our responsibilities in our relationships in each relationship that we have to the bottom to the west relationships are about reciprocity it's about the give and take and every relationship so for example if you and your partner have a relationship where you're doing all the giving and your partner is doing all the taking that's not a very healthy relationship and we have to find some way of balancing that so that's what reciprocity is that there has to be that balance in the give and take in relationships so i want to start this session by talking about our relationship with the land and what are our um what are all the different ways that we show respect for the land okay so we can talk about things like in our relationship to the land it's really important for us not to litter if we have if we have garbage in our hands we put it in the garbage we don't just throw it on the ground we don't throw it in the water we take it with us and take care of it in a proper way also when we're out on the land and we see garbage it's good for us to pick up that garbage and take it to a place where garbage is disposed of in the old days we didn't really have to worry so much about that because everything that we used came from the land and when we when we were done using something we would either use it for something else change it a bit and use it for something else or else we put it back on the land or in the water in a ceremonial way and today it's um it's very different a lot of our things are plastic and cellophane and we have to deal with that in a very different way than our people had to deal with things that was that they no longer used so when when we do this exercise of what are the different ways that we show respect for the land we can fill up at least four flip charts of a list of ways that we show respect for the land one of the ways that we show respect for the land is to listen to the land we acknowledge the land as our first teacher and i like to tell the story about when i was working with my little grandson when he was about three years old and he always came in the bush with me when i went harvesting and he often carried the tobacco for me and he often was the one to put the tobacco down well this one time we went into the bush and we were um collecting willowed willow trees and willow branches and so he carried the tobacco but he was running up on the trail ahead of me and i saw this really nice clump of willow trees beside me so i called him back and i said shane can you come back bring the tobacco so he comes running back and he just stands there and he looks up at the willow trees and he just stands there and for some reason i didn't say anything i just waited so and then he turns to me and he says no no kukum these trees aren't ready to die yet come on let's keep going so off he went and i just followed very quietly and just really thinking and then he's calling me he says kukumku come hurry so i catch up to him and says kukum these trees say you can cut them down so i said okay can you put the tobacco down and he said no no kukum they want you to put the tobacco down so he hands me the tobacco and and he says and they also want you to tell them what you're going to use them for so that's what i did as i was as i was thanking the trees for the gift of their lives i told them what i was going to be using them for but i always remember that that was my first lesson of somebody hearing the trees communicate with them and since that time i've learned and i've learned that yes i have to be quiet and i often have to be still and since that time many many times i have been in communication with different relations on the land and then i after that happened with my grandson i spoke to some elders and i told him about it and i s and i asked him um is this is this what i'm supposed to be doing and he said yes of course he said when you're putting tobacco down that's a time for your prayer that's a time for you to ask for permission to take them and if they're not agreeable to that they will let you know and so that that was um that was a huge lesson for me and that lesson i pass on to you as i'm sure your elders do okay i want to give another example of how we show respect for the land and that's about the language that we use and even if we use the english language we can still use the language in a very respectful way so for example when we're meeting with mnr m r talks about natural resources they say natural resources and sometimes they'll say renewable natural resources or non-renewable natural resources and those words are very foreign to us the words that we use when we talk about the land when we talk about the animals and the birds and the trees and the grass and the rocks and the fish the insects the snakes and reptiles all of them are our relations and when we refer to them all together we see all our relations and even in our ceremonies we talk about all our relations because that's what the relationship is about when we say all our relations that already presupposes there's a relationship there when m r says natural resources that's a very different relationship that relationship is based on ownership so um following the same example one m r talks about the trees they talk about what they get from the trees like lumber and they they talk about the chips and they talk about the pulp that they make from there and they call these products so for us when we get a gift from a tree that's what we call it it's a gift when we get hide from a moose and from that hide we make moccasins we make mitts we can make snowshoes we make drums there are so many gifts from a moose hundreds of gifts from the moose i could do a whole day workshop on gifts from the moose and that's the difference that both the words that we use gifts and not products it's a very different feeling even we get when we use those words when we say all our relations it's a very different feeling than when we say natural resources it's a very different feeling that we get when we say gifts than when we say products so and and that's what the importance of language is we call the land our mother in our language we call the land ning our mother some sometimes we say kimaman our mother in english in m r words they call the land environment they call the land crown land they call the land estate they call it all kinds of words that takes away from that relationship of the land being our mother the words that mnr uses that's in the english language those tend to disconnect us from the land and the words that we use reconnect us to the land they continually connect and we connect us to the land and that's the important thing that's one of the most important relationships that we have to work on is our relationship to the land okay so um to uh the south in the relationship circle it's about our rights and so again we can go through a long list of rights and so off the top of my head i can say that we have a right to live on the land we have a right to be on the land we have a right to harvest from the land we have to we have a right to raise our families on the land we have a right to be educated by the land we have many many rights on the land okay but hand in hand with rights our responsibilities so we go across the circle to the north which is about our responsibility and for every right that we have there's a responsibility the responsibilities part of the circle we can add everything that we talked about in the respect okay so for example we have a responsibility to to take care of the land we have the responsibility of not throwing garbage on the land picking up garbage not to pollute the land not to pollute the water or the air we have to take care of the land we have to be caretakers not just takers we have responsibilities to teach our children we have the responsibilities to teach each other we have the responsibility to remind one another because we're we can be forgetful so for every right there is a responsibility or maybe four or five responsibilities for every right that's what that's where our ceremonies come in ceremonies are a way that we show respect for the land but it's also a responsibility that is culturally ours we have to learn what those ceremonies are and we have to learn the purpose so um one of the main things about ceremonies is we have to learn to be grateful gratitude is very very important in our culture and everything that we do on the land has to be done in gratitude okay and the flip side of gratitude is humility one of the things about the circle is that no part of the circle is more important than another part so that we as humans being in the circle of life we are not more important than the the beaver or the moose we're not more important than the mosquitoes or the snakes or the frogs okay we are all a part of the same circle and it's our responsibility to understand that and appreciate that and to teach that the west part of the relationship circle is about reciprocity and reciprocity is about the give and take in any relationship when i take from the land i give something back and sometimes that giving is in the form of tobacco sometimes that uh giving is in the form of a drum song maybe if i've killed a moose then i will sing a song to that news the first thing that i do when i kill the moose is i cut the bell off and i hang it on a tree all different parts of the moose has to be used we can't waste any part of it all of it has a use for us it's a gift to us there are many different ways that we can show reciprocity we must understand that we have to teach what we know but we also have to understand that all our lives we have to be learners we will never stop learning until our last breath we share what we have with those who need it and we are caretakers not takers okay so in the reciprocal relationship we remember that we are also we also have to be grateful and also humble in this first session about the madison wheel the first circle that we talked about was a relationship circle and in anything that we do after this we'll refer back to the relationship circle we can do a different session about the four aspects of self and at the same time work with the four aspects of our collective lives that's that would be our next session the session after that can be about the four rascals and we could spend a whole session learning and teaching about the four rascals and then maybe another session about the four life givers and um as we go through these five circles it becomes uh it'll become very very very real to us it'll show us the very practical side of using the medicine wheel as a teaching tool and as a learning [Music] tool