Red Rock Indian Band honours spirit walkers
By Rick Garrick
RED ROCK INDIAN BAND—The Healing Walk for all First Nations and Communities spirit walkers were honoured on July 21 at Red Rock Indian Band’s Opwaaganisiniing Traditional Gathering Pow Wow.
“At about six-thirty they did an honour song for us, for all the spirit walkers that were there,” says former Long Lake #58 Chief Allen Towegishig, one of the organizers of the Healing Walk. “I explained a little bit about what we were doing and how and why. We felt tired before, barely moving on, but now after they honoured us, it was like it lifted our spirits and be willing to go again.”
Towegishig says former Biigtigong Nishnaabeg Chief Roy Michano greeted the spirit walkers during the honour dance.
“He encouraged each one of us to be proud,” Towegishig says. “When we were doing the honour dance, he got up and met us and shook our hands.”
Towegishig says the honour dance included jingle dress dancers because the spirit walkers were walking for healing.
“Jingle dress dancers are for healing,” Towegishig says. “So we requested that they dance ahead of us and we danced behind them.”
Towegishig says the seven-day Healing Walk will be held on an annual basis. This was the second annual Healing Walk, which began in Ginoogaming on July 15 and ended on July 21 in Fort William.
“Next year we are going to try to leave on June 24 and try to make it to the Fort William Pow Wow,” Towegishig says. “A lot of people said they were going to join us next year.”
The spirit walkers completed the Healing Walk with a walk from City Hall in Thunder Bay to Fort William on the morning of July 21.
“We did a pipe ceremony, a healing song and we talked with each other [at City Hall],” Towegishig says. “And then we walked to Bannon’s Gas Bar.”
Towegishig says the spirit walkers crossed the Nipigon River bridge on July 19.
“We stopped the traffic for a couple of hours,” Towegishig says. “It was hard walking for suicide [that day], because we’ve been affected and were thinking about what is happening to our people.”
The spirit walkers focused on a different issue each day during the walk. These issues included: Drugs and Alcohol on July 15; Courage and Cancer on July 16; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Men on July 17; Residential School and Day School Survivors and Descendants on July 18; Suicides on July 19; Land, Water and Air on July 20; and Racism on July 21.
“The first day we started off with drugs and alcohol,” Towegishig says. “We wanted to pray for it and create awareness that it could be beaten. We don’t have to suffer our whole lives. I was affected by alcohol when I was young, but I quit drinking in 1975. We thanked the Creator for being sober and we prayed for people still affected by it.”
The Healing Walk was a joint initiative of Long Lake #58 and Ginoogaming, which are both located on Long Lake near the town of Longlac. The spirit walkers walked about 322 kilometres along the Trans-Canada Hwy. to Thunder Bay.
“The [Healing] Walk was very good,” says Cecil Mendowegan, a Healing Walk organizer from Ginoogaming. “But listening to our Elder Allen Towegishig and our Grand Chief [Alvin Fiddler], we need to continue more awareness of all our issues all the time, not just [during] this annual walk, but to continue to have these peaceful walks of awareness of all of our issues.”