I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon’s path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon’s light. I didn’t know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I’d talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven’t done that in a long time, me.” -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119.

We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can seem something I’ve not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to makes sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us.

The beliefs of Native people are no less powerful or important just because they focus on a different “form of magic.”

Compared to Americans, Canadians are often more gentle in their approach to things. They’re much more apologetic. There’s less room for conflict.

People will say that Canada, unlike America, was not birthed from violence. But I want to say, “What are you talking about?” It’s just not true.

The history needs to serve the story, not the story the history. But at the same time you can’t stray too far.

We all fight our own wars, wars for which we’ll be judged. Some of them we fight in the forests close to home, others in distant jungles or faraway burning deserts. We all fight our own wars, so maybe it’s best not to judge, considering it’s rare we even know why we fight so savagely.

You are a hookimaw. Happiness is not yours to have.

Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things.” -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce.

America seems to celebrate its more violent past, but Canada doesn’t like to recognize those things. The willingness to accept the existence of violence separates our two countries.