By Xavier Kataquapit
I recently took a long walk out into a beautiful spring day. The weather was pleasant, the sun was bright and the air was brisk and cool. I could still feel the sting of winter hanging on and, to confirm that feeling, I could hear it from the song of a familiar bird this time of year.
The Chickadee was singing its familiar ‘tee-tee’ song. My Kookoom, my grandmother, often pointed out to us children that this little bird was actually calling out the name of the season. The bird changes its tune depending on the weather.
When winter is still lingering with cold winds, the Chickadee will continue its plain one-tone ‘tee-tee’ song. As soon as it senses that warmer weather is on the way, it will change its tune to a two-note song ‘NEE-pin, NEE-pin’. Kookoom noted that this song is actually the name of the season in our Inineemoon, our Cree language. The bird is actually calling out Neepin, the Cree word for spring.
The start of a new spring and warm weather is a sign of hope in every culture. For us on the James Bay coast, it signals the start of the goose hunting season. Even the month of April is known as ‘Niska Peesim’ in our language. Niska is the Cree word for ‘goose’ and Peesim is the word for ‘month’. In case you are wondering, ‘peesim’ is also the same word we use for ‘the sun’.
Every time I look at my social media feed or I get a chance to talk to my relatives in the north, everyone is preparing for the upcoming goose hunt. Families are riding out onto the still-frozen James Bay to find their ancestral territories, which they have been visiting for generations. I’m happy to see that my older brother Antoine and his family are heading north to Lakitusaki or Lake River close to the Hudson Bay coast to the areas where our mom, Susan (Paulmartin/Rose) Kataquapit and her family were connected.
Closer to our home community of Attawapiskat, my younger brother Joseph and his family are going to the far southern shore of Akamiski Island where our father Marius Kataquapit had hunted for many years. Within a few hundred kilometres of Attawapiskat, many families fan out in all directions to settle onto their family’s lands to spend a week or more for the spring goose hunt.
Although it is a dangerous task to head out into the wilderness like this, every family group is familiar with their neighbours and everyone keeps a close watch on one another on the land. Before modern technology, everyone kept tabs on one another simply by taking note and passing along the news from one person to another.
Thirty or forty years ago, it became common for people to pass along information over the air bush radio systems. I remember listening to the static of a bush radio and the distant Cree broadcasts from Elders passing along information about who was travelling on the land, where they were going, how good or bad the weather was and how many birds were flying.
At the same time, they often passed along sad news of people who had passed away or happy reports of a person who had been rescued or assisted during a time of need. Today, I tune into my social media feed to see live video feeds or photos of family and friends at their camps as they send out their digital content over high-speed satellite internet connections.
As northern families are moving across the land, another group of brave young traditional people is also moving far from home to protect the land we call home. In the far south, in the state of New York in the United States, Jeronimo Kataquapit, Ramon Kataquapit and Kohen Mattinas, along with other supporters, are representing their people and their generation in the fight to protect the Hudson Bay lowlands. They are attending the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which brings together Indigenous leaders, governments and UN agencies from April 20 to May 1 at UN headquarters. This meeting will allow these northern Indigenous youth to represent their people on an international level through a forum focused on human rights, health, the environment and development.
Neepin is arriving and across the land, a new generation is working to maintain our culture and traditions as our ancestors have for thousands of years. They are doing it by taking part in the annual spring goose hunt and by also heading out into the world to defend the land we call home.
I hope that our families in the north have a good, safe, and prosperous hunt this year and I wish our youth in the south a safe and successful journey.