Praying with the Geese
While traveling in eastern Canada a few years ago I had the opportunity to meet with my old teacher and friend, N’Tsukw. Now in his mid-eighties, he is the last of my original indigenous mentors who is still alive. N’Tsukw is an Innu (called the Montagnais in French and Naskapi in early ethnographies), a branch of the original peoples from Quebec, Labrador, and Baffin Island. To honor the elder, I offered a sacred pipe/prayer ceremony in his honor. We sat on a bench in his ba