Beatrice Lavallee on Spirits and Spirituality
First Nations elder, Beatrice Lavallee talks about her grandmother’s spiritual heritage
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I always often talk about my grandmother and Mrs. White (*inaudible) one of the first, one of my first teachers. She’s the one that showed me many things about who I was and what we were all about. I guess one of the things that I remember, you know, very much was that she’d always pray and she’d always be smudging. And that was almost a daily activity. And if there was a storm coming, again out would come the smudging, out, she’d pray again. And in the spring time when the first berries were out, the Saskatoon berries or the choke cherries she’d always be saying thank you prayer. Always thanking the Creator for the gifts that he’d given us. The gifts of food and I’m a little girl standing there waiting for her to finish praying before I can eat these berries. And that was, you know, my early recollection of some of the things she used to show me.
Also the respect for mother earth she called it. Geegoweno (**phonetic). Geegoweno (**phonetic) meaning our mother. And she told me that the things, our mother in her kindness and loving way, she supplied us with herbs to heal when we were sick and things that we used to pray with, the sweet grass. Uhmmm the willows for the sweat lodges and the poplar tree for the sun dance and the rain dance. All of those come from her she used to say. She’s very kind to us. She supplies us these things that we use when we pray.
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