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At the time of the Fourth Fire, the history of another people came to be braided into ours. Two prophets arose among the people, foretelling the coming of the light-skinned people in ships from the east, but their visions differed in what was to follow. The path was
not clear, as it cannot be with the future. The first prophet said that if the offshore people, the zaaganaash, came in brotherhood, they
would bring great knowledge. Combined with Anishinaabe ways of knowing, this would form a great new nation. But the second prophet sounded a warning: He said that what looks like the face of brotherhood might be the face of death. These new people might come with brotherhood, or they might come with greed for the riches of our land. How would we know which face is the true one?
If the fish became poisoned and the water unfit to drink, we would know which face they wore.
And for their actions the zaaganaash
came to be known instead as chimokman—Vne long-knife people.
The prophecies described what eventually became history. They warned the people of those who would come among them with
black robes and black books, with promises of joy and salvation. The prophets said that if the people turned against their own sacred ways and followed this black-robe path, then the people would suffer for many generations. Indeed, the burial of our spiritual teachings in the time of the Fifth Fire nearly broke the hoop of the nation. People became separated from their homelands and from each other as they were forced onto reservations. Their children
were taken from them to learn the zaaganaash ways. Forbidden by law to practice their own religion, they nearly lost an ancient worldview. Forbidden to speak their languages, a universe of knowing vanished in a generation. The land was fragmented, the people separated, the old ways blowing away in the wind; even the
plants and animals began to turn their faces away from us. The time was foretold when the children would turn away from the elders; people would lose their way and their purpose in life. They prophesied that, in the time of the Sixth Fire, “the cup of life would almost become the cup of grief.” And yet, even after all of this, there is something that remains, a coal that has not been extinguished. At the First Fire, so long ago, the people were told
that it is their spiritual lives that will keep them strong.
They say that a prophet appeared with a strange and distant light in his eyes. The young man came to the people with the message that in the time of the seventh fire, a new people would emerge with a sacred purpose. It would not be easy for them. They would have to be strong and determined in their work, for they stood at a crossroads.
The ancestors look to them from the flickering light of distant fires. In this time, the young would turn back to the elders for teachings and find that many had nothing to give. The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward; rather, they are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who brought us here. Their sacred purpose is to walk back along the red road of our ancestors’ path and to gather up all the fragments that lay
scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings—all that was dropped along
the way. Our elders say that we live in the time of the seventh fire. We are the ones the ancestors spoke of, the ones who will bend to
the task of putting things back together to rekindle the flames of the sacred fire, to begin the rebirth of a nation.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)