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Dear Friends, I have been writing for Indian Life for around 16 years, so I often feel like I am writing to friends, even though I have not met many of you. For the March/April issue, as I could not pull enough creative thoughts together to write anything. My father died of COVID-19 in January, my last living aunt died a week later, and that same week a friend here collapsed unexpectedly and died. She had recently been to my house sharing some Christmas baking. She had looked...
When you go to West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, there are many attractions. When I was a teenager, I went on the roller coaster that goes upside down and twists, while rushing forward at high speeds. When I reflect on this teenage experience, I remember it as fun but a little tense. Then about six years ago I went on the roller coaster again because my daughters, who were teenagers at the time, went on some rides and somehow, I went on the roller coaster with my wife. When I...
Depression, anxiety and the Bible don't really seem to go together do they? I mean, the Bible is supposed to be a book of hope and depression/anxiety are very dark places, which we often don't like to admit we suffer. God's Word is full of stories of people who actually underwent much anxiety and depression. Since these struggles are part of the human experience, shouldn't they be documented in God's Word, the ultimate history book of human experience? What makes the Bible so...
I asked my 4-year-old grandson for the highlight of his day. He said, "Growing tobacco." Where he heard this, I'll never know. Here are other unfiltered thoughts from children: Jeanie said, "People are composed of girls and boys, also men and women. Boys are an awful bother. They want everything they see except soap." Reminds me of the thief who stole 30 bars of soap. Forgive me, but he made a clean getaway. A five-year-old was peeking into a baby carriage and saw twins. He...
It was kind of an awkward situation. Yeah, it was... Milly and I are gospel musicians who have been in slow motion since the start of the pandemic. I guess most musicians are in that mode-no dates, no gigs, no tours, no music sales-just slow! So we decided to do the online thing and put together a one-hour live Facebook® concert once a month, starting back in November 2020. The first two concerts went not too bad until the January event. That was sort of like a borderline...
When I'm having a bad day, I'm glad I'm not alone. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge England, a loose shoelace, a lack of handrails and a marble wall conspired to give one ill-fated patron an Inspector Clousseau moment while bringing a shattering conclusion to the earthly pilgrimage of three Qing dynasty vases. Mr. Flynn's misadventure began when he ascended the wrong staircase, pivoted, and tripped on an untied shoelace. "I couldn't stop myself," he said. Hurtling...
There's a dog in my neighborhood that has been tied to a chain for many years. He is a gorgeous shepherd with long black hair. He wasn't approachable; his neck was one big scar, and he had no hair there from the pressure of his collar. The last few months the dog has been running free, his ribs are showing, and he was a pretty pathetic sight. I tried to coax him into my vehicle with food so I could take him somewhere to get care, but he wouldn't let me touch him. I decided I...
Many of my fellow Indigenous People, Native North American People, and other people groups that have been victims of oppression and injustice have struggles with the issue of trust. Our journey of life is filled with many aspects that cause mistrust or broken trust or no trust. How do we recover from such a dilemma that truly does affect every aspect of our lives and weighs down our hearts? In fact, breaks our hearts. With my upbringing, which included being a Sixties Scoop...
After the political animosity, the protests, riots, killings, fires, floods, and COVID19, I need a break. Even though I did not lose my home or a loved one in the past few months, I feel the weight and stress around me. I get frustrated with the lawlessness and saddened and stressed by other people's losses across North America. (I don't keep up with the rest of the world.) Jesus warned His disciples about difficulties coming when He told them, "At that time many will turn awa...
5 is finally here. Most of us would agree that it couldn't come fast enough. 2020 felt like our mothers gave us a gigantic Time Out. Each morning I woke up to find my wife waiting with a thermometer. She wouldn't let me out of bed until she took my temperature. I was raised on Fahrenheit, so it was confusing. "37 degrees? Shouldn't I be dead?" "No, she said, "it's Celsius. You're fine. Give me a kiss." Next, I adjusted my mask and we trundled off to the kitchen for breakfas...
When children are small, it is easy to make them happy. They are thrilled with every gift. A teddy bear, toy cars, a doll, candy and small toys in a stocking, they love everything. They are excited, happy and grateful. As we get older we expect more. Sometimes we expect too much, and instead of being happy with our gifts, sometimes we are disappointed. We preferred more, or better, or something different, and the gift we received wasn't what we wanted. Years ago an old woman...
One of the constants and givens of living life is change. Most of us don't like dealing with change, but there are always a few who will absolutely thrive on it! I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Indian Life Ministries has come through a lot of changes over the years to survive and continue as the newspaper entity that it is. We have had to do some fairly significant morphing to keep going. Many of our readers wouldn't see those changes. You just continue to appreciate a...
When I was young, I spent many years volunteering at a Navajo Indian Mission in New Mexico. It was one of the happiest and most rewarding times of my life. At times it was also frustrating and heart breaking. The missionaries were good people but after 20 years they still struggled with the Navajo language and culture. They were becoming tired and burned out. Everyone is familiar with the "mission barrels." Well-meaning people all over the world send used clothing and...
Have you ever had a close call with disaster? I mean, so close that you could have died? Maybe the situation happened so fast that you didn't even have time to blink, but you knew as you walked away that you really shouldn't have been breathing. Maybe you've had such close encounters so many times you can't even remember them all. Maybe you're so used to living on the edge that death doesn't scare you. Scripture states that we are living in the valley of the shadow of death...
I have come to realize over the years that we Indigenous people are historically event-oriented people, rather than time-oriented people. Our worldview is for the most part the opposite of the European or western worldview. This has caused so many conflicts over the years. The settlers came with a worldview focused on an individualistic and for-profit approach to life as opposed to a communal and sharing approach to life with the Indigenous People. When we look at the Word of...
To avoid my ho-hum attitude associated with taking earth and its marvels for granted, I try pretending. What if I lived in a distant galaxy and came to visit earth for the first time? What would I think of it all? I began my series on miracles with our atmosphere. I take it for granted. I breathe it in, walk around in it, view distant stars through it, and ignore the fact that without the atmosphere I would cease to exist. Flight is another matter. I have never lost my awe...
"There's darkness down there," our four-year-old granddaughter whispered as she peered down the stairs. She was right. Bright spots on planet earth seem scarce these days. I love cheering people up. In April, 2020, during COVID-19, I told my wife, "I'm pretty excited about my car. We just got 43 days to the gallon." But life can drain our joy tank. A few years ago, we made a can't-miss-investment in a hotel. The bank foreclosed. Thankfully, I invested in some airline stocks. O...
"Two For the Price of One" is always an attention-grabbing offer. It's hard to ignore getting seconds free, just because you wanted firsts. "Two-for-One" works well for retail, but not for reflections in a mirror. Here in prison, I get an opportunity to look in a mirror only when I receive a shower. The shower has four slim windows so the officers can look in, for security reasons, and on the outside of one of those windows is a 6"x6" acrylic mirror. The convenient mirror is t...
The windshield was cracked. Not just a hairline fracture but a spiderweb that had the potential to make Spider-Man sit up and take notice! So I got it changed. Such a difference-from the gravel-battered glass of yesterday to the clear, shiny drivability that I could now experience. It reminded me of how God's Word talks about His forgiveness in Isaiah 1:18 (NIV). "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as...
We had plenty of rules when I was growing up. No throwing cheese into the ceiling fan. Stop pouring ketchup on your pancakes. Obey your parents, that it may go well with you and that you may live past Thursday. Mom taught me other rules too: Love God with everything you've got. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Make the bed when you wake up. He who starts the day cleaning his own messes will learn responsibility and make a fine husband one day. Through the years...
Many times I have heard non-Indigenous people say that they wish Indigenous people would "just get over it." Just get over all this talk about residential schools and financial payments from the government, and just move on with life. Most of the people who say this already have an established career, or sense of stability in their lives. These aren't people who are necessarily well off financially, but they have managed to make strides with their homes and their jobs and...
In my last article, I began a new series about God's miracles that are all around us. I still think about that thin atmospheric line protecting us from the cold blackness of outer space. Life is fragile, yet so abundant! We usually think of miracles as a healing or something supernatural and extraordinary, but to me, as I think of that thin line, even a mundane banana is a miracle. How did we get such things as bananas onto this planet? We didn't. That is the miracle! As leave...
I don't know about you, but I am finding that we are living in a day and an age that is full of inconsistent information! Everybody is sure of something but nobody's stories seem to agree. Contradictions fly at us from our TVs, cell phones and our laptops. How do we know what to believe? How do we know who is telling the truth? Yesterday, I was visiting a man on a local reservation, and he was certain of a very important truth. He told me that Jesus is the way, the truth and...
I saw my neighbor, Rose, walking to her mailbox and hurried to catch up with her. Rose and I were "friendly" but not "friends." We didn't visit each other but we'd talk a few minutes if we met at the mailbox. "Hi, Rose. I haven't seen you for a while. How are you?" I asked. When you ask people how they are, they usually say, "I'm fine." Except that isn't what she said. "My hair is getting thin. My eyes are bad, and I need new glasses but I can't afford them. My hearing is gett...
It was early September, and as the first green tree morphed to yellow, the thought came to me, "Here we go again-pretty soon the snow'll be flying!" In Cree we'd say Kiiyipa wii mispoon. No matter how you say it, there's no getting around the changing seasons! It also brought to mind the passage in Genesis 8:22 of how the seasons came to be. It came out of God's promise made to Noah after the worldwide flood was over. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold...
