Water Heart

When I find out about the Kearl Mine tailings leak I cannot breathe or see straight — I am no longer standing in that room with its halogen lights — I am at the water’s edge, where I go when the dam breaks on my heart and I can no longer hold space for the human world — that place at the water’s edge where we always are, where I always am.

All is dark. I am small. I am at the water’s edge. All around me is the sky and the sound of gentle, still, water. It is night. I am so focused on what is in front of me that I hardly see the outline of trees – dark silhouettes swaying in the quiet, still air, standing watch – ancestors. Mountains rise through the night sky – a far off horizon, tucked heavily behind the deep waters stretched out in front of me.

The Kearl tailing ponds leak is worse than anyone wants to see and as bad as everyone thought it would be – and the fight for who needs to clean it up, to what extent, and how is still in debate. The tailings leaked onto muskeg and forest, a small lake, and tributaries of the Firebag and Muskeg rivers.

I have been having dreams of these waters for over two years now – dreams where the spirit of water reaches me, declaring her sovereignty and need to be honoured, cleansed, and protected. She told me there were threats to her wellbeing, and of how deeply tied she is to our own, the Dene People.

Dusk light imbues the air with a soft glow, and stars carpet the sky above. She fills the air, the space – the wholeness of my mind. I am hardly breathing, in reverence, in awe of her beauty – her terror.

She does not speak like we do – and when I am with her, I do not either. The beingness that I am fills with the sound of her thousand voices, every one of them twinkling – like ice crystals, or the aurora singing across the night sky. I feel I will burst with her communication, this vibration, a frequency more than an uttered sound.

I listen, breathing through fear, adamant that I will honor the beauty and grace of this visit. She tells me that there is much work to be done to honour ancestors who lived long ago – who spoke medicine into the world, and conversed with the waters, and plants – the sun, the moon and stars.

The land feels alone now, she tells me. With making prayers to her, feeding the fire, feeding the land, she, too, is fed. The earth is so hungry for our compassion, the water so eager for our attention and dedication.

We are taught, as Dene, that there is a coming time when the world will grow challenging thanks to the changes brought to our shores by a foreign people long ago, and my dreams tell me that these waters are inherently connected.

Here in the quietness of dreams I see that she is the heart of everything that is – the heart of this lake, the heart of this land, the heart of these waterways. It is her. All is water. She simply is. She is the water heart – a heart to everything that is. I see the mountains, myriad streams and rivers flowing and flowing and flowing. In and through and around each other. I see a crest, a great headwaters – one side flows all the way to the ocean – the other to our heart waters, and all I hear is “the head and the heart connect. The head and the heart waters must always stay connected.”

My Great Grandfather, George Blondin, was known as a gatherer of sacred stories – Medicine Stories. As I find myself poring over his writings, over and over I hear the same thing – the metaphysical and the physical are connected. They are always connected. And when we divide ourselves from spirit, from our intuitive selves, from our dreams and the dream world – from the spirits of the Land – then we lose ourselves, slowly, inch by inch, year by year.

I believe, if I believe anything, that these dreams call me into action, into awareness. They remind me that this current moment in human history offers an opportunity for felling our own destructive narratives. They remind me of the myriad opportunities we have to re-create, re-imagine. To live from an invigorated soul.

And the only thing, I am told, that we would have to do to find ourselves in a future where we are collectively living in a further developed, further colonized, existence, is nothing. All we need do is leave everything as it already is. To wake up tomorrow, and go to work, and live as if we have no other options.

To wake up tomorrow, and go about our work, as if we do not dream. As if dreams didn’t exist.

Cassandra Blondin Burt is a two-spirit Dene journalist, artist, and plant medicine maker living in Chief Drygeese Territory, Akaitcho Region, Denendeh.