Guest Post: David Bouchard on "Seven Sacred Teachings"
If you haven’t read our recent interview with Métis author David Bouchard yet, then head on over there right away! In the interview we talked only a little bit about his recent book Seven Sacred Teachings of White Buffalo Calf Woman (More Than Words, 2009), which he co-wrote with Dr Joseph Martin, is stunningly illustrated by Kristy Cameron, and has an accompanying DVD with music by Swampfox, and for which Swampfox created seven flutes out of seven different woods, each in a different key.
David considers Seven Sacred Teachings to be one of his most important works to date. The seven teachings (Humility, Honesty, Respect, Courage, Wisdom, Truth, and Love) are universal to First Nations peoples, and are the strongest link between First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities. Read on to find out more, for in this post David explains in more depth the background to this fascinating and ambitious project, which brought together six languages: English, French, Ojibwe, South Slavey, Bush Cree and Chipewyan.
The Aboriginal people in Canada have had to deal with many negative experiences over the past century and more: but one of the golden, shiny spots from coast to coast in our country is the spirituality that remains intact. If you go into any one of our schools, any school from coast to coast in Canada with Aboriginal kids, you’ll see posters or writings on the walls that refer to these teachings. Different people call them different things. Among the Ojibwe people they’re called the Grandfather Teachings, amongst the Lakota and Dakota people (who used to be called the Sioux), they’re called the teachings of White Buffalo Calf Woman. Among the Dene of the north and their cousins the Navaho in America, they call them the Dene Laws.
But the teachings are very, very constant and I thought it would be wonderful to take those teachings and express them through art and in different languages in a top-quality book. So I started working on the project a few years ago. At around the same time, I came across a young artist, Kristy Cameron, a Métis of Ojibwe descent. I just loved her art, and I talked to her about doing the book with me.
In our culture, there are seven sacred directions – the four of the medicine wheel (East, South, West and North), and then Up, Down and Within our Hearts. Each direction has a teaching associated with it, a colour that we associate with that teaching, and a trait that we associate with the colour; each direction has an animal or a bird that we think of as being representative of that teaching. So I put all of that together and then I said, “Well, if we’re going to do this, we can’t do it on a cd as a cd’s too small, so we’ll have to do it on dvd. So the dvd has me reading the whole book in English and then in French; then it’s read in Ojibwe, Chipewyan, Swampy Cree and in Slavey. Those were the people I was able to share my vision with, and have them say we want this in our language. The Slavey people said, “We’ll translate it, and we’ll record it for you, and we’ll buy a book for every member of our community.” And that’s what they did.
And then, of course, there’s the music: because every direction has both a tree and a musical key associated with it. So I thought, well, what we’ll do is we’ll have the best flute-maker in the world create a flute out of that wood in that key. So, for example, the basic of all notes is the note C; then think about how everything starts in the East where the sun rises: and the color with that rising sun is yellow. And when you see the sun, you know how small you are and it teaches you you’re nothing, you’re really nothing, you’re a grain of sand, and it reminds you to put your head down like the wolf does and understand that the whole is much, much more important than you are. It teaches us to be humble; the wolf teaches us humility, and the colour yellow represents that teaching – and the trembling aspen, in the east, reminds you that it shakes with humility. Swampfox made me a flute in the Key of C and then he dreamed a song that we recorded, so when I read the book, you hear him playing the song in the key of C on a trembling aspen.
The book itself is also very unique. When we published it, I knew it had to look special so the dust jacket has no coating; it looks like paper but actually it’s coated on the reverse so that it’s tough enough to endure. Then when you take the dust jacket off, the book cover is cloth: it’s very humble. When you open the book, the paper is thick so it can endure but there’s no coating at all. I wanted it to have a spiritual feel about it. We paid a little extra to have the edges ragged so it would look and feel hand-made and special.
We released Seven Sacred Teachings in Ontario. We had a huge Powwow. When the school board in Ontario saw what we were doing, they felt it was important not only for our First Nation children but also for white children to understand what we have to offer, what we are as people, and a little bit more about some of our customs and traditions. So the Ontario schoolboard in Fort Frances bought a copy of the book for every child. That is wonderful! And I had a chance to go there and celebrate with them this book that spoke to something in our lives that’s so very, very positive.
Thank you, David – it’s a privilege to have been able to welcome you to our Blog. And for those of you who, like me, are captivated by Seven Sacred Teachings, watch this video too:
May 26th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Good post! My daughter learned these values at her school and came home with materials about the teachings.