What do you find when you go looking into closets?
Yesterday?
I found a lot of odd socks.
I love finding a lost sock. There’s something profoundly wonderful about reuniting two socks that I loved but were separated by circumstances for far too long. They bring joy to me all the way down to my soles.
One odd sock that I stumbled across today was the validity of a story my Nanny has always told.
You know we’re partially Indians donchaknow? The Black Mitchel’s. My grandmother was an Indian from New Brunswick.
We never really took my nanny seriously when she spoke about this.
Then today my sister told me all about an encounter she had where someone from New Brunswick spoke about the ‘Black Mitchel’s’ - a really pigmented indigenous family there.
My nanny didn’t know her heritage and her culture because both groups abandoned her grandmother.
It was seen as a disgrace on both sides I guess.
I know that’s a while back, but I can’t help but think that I was missing something. Something got lost there in shame and embarrassment.
And it’s a damn shame because for my adult life, this whole troll thing?
I’m a fucking shape shifter, a trickster. Coyote and Crow and Anansi are my people.
But I guess that’s what the ‘Indian Act’ was designed to do - separate people from and destroy indigenous culture.
How do you claim your heritage?
How do you relate to your ancestors and the land?
I wonder what the Black Mitchel’s think about their lost cousins?
Maybe bringing these odd socks back together might just be healing for everyone - right down to their very souls.
