Freedom

 His name was Freedom and he began to walk out of the building, a wooden man now alive and full of energy and thought and the occasional compliment. His steps were lanky and rough but after about 2 minutes they were determined and loosened and creative yet inept. “I must get back home,” he thought, and he was ready for the walk to the land of his people, the land where he was chief and loved. His face was still wooden however and it had a deadpan expression, an expression of journey and of soul and of forgiveness and a face of the land which created him. He has to warn his people of the disaster that the Europeans’ bring in the form of blankets which contain smallpox and virus and disease. Freedom had a long way to go before reaching his tribe. He remembers his days as a trader, trading tobacco and sage and eating peyote for the spiritual rites of his religion. He would hand younger tribes folk mushrooms and what we know as “mescaline” and they would journey in the forest and envision a land where everything was equal. Shaman. The fish in the stream, holy, the dirt on the ground and the flowers on the trees, sacred, and looking up in the sky, which was created in the beginning of time, as their evolution began and they would look up and think how their ancestors looked up right into this sky and prayed and it was the same sky and stars and peacefulness that they looked at centuries ago. Keep the faith alive through drumming and chants and ensuring the women of the land were safe, even after their husbands may perish in war and disease, they would still be taken care of and treated with fertile respect and love. Family. Freedom was the creator and he allowed his people to enjoy themselves in dance and ritual to acknowledge the past and fallen and be appreciative of the land which gave birth to them. The tribe does not care about the woes of today, they care about the ritual which has been passed down from generation to generation and conceived by their people ever so long ago. Freedom progresses freedom and belief and values for a younger generation to be instilled upon and remember and finally, to speak like a story when they are older and they have little tribesmen of their own to keep the heritage alive and speak kindly of birth and land and the spiritual journey in which began life. Freedom knew about quests, he was finally free from the restrictions of wood and people glancing at him every day in thought and in laughter. Look at the big Indian, splattered high school children as they walked by. Freedom stood his ground. He set up camp somewhere in a marshland and did not have a compass, nor food, no real direction, only the spirits guiding him through the forests, back to his land. He slept for about two hours and it was still dark so he woke up and continued forward. He eyes were beginning to crack open yet he could see as clear as the day in the nighttime fog and he heard bears running up mountaintops away from hunters and friends of hunters hunting for blood just to say that they hunted. A bear shot down and Freedom had tears in his eyes. Smiles on the hunter’s faces as they checked the teeth and paws and claws and, with a rifle under their arm, went back to hunt some more. They left the bear behind as well as a hunting knife so Freedom saw this as opportunity. He skinned the bear and wore the skin as a headdress and started a fire and ate the flesh and thought about the hunter’s laughter. He didn’t eat the flesh, but rather danced over it so it could maintain eternal life. The bear perished into the soil the next day and Freedom was warm from the pelt he dissected. Now remember, this is a time before Wayne Newton and Tori Amos, where Freedom walked and spoke to the spirits in his journey. The sun was shaded by the treetops and Freedom was worn out and warm and anything was possible. He positioned himself on a path that was made by his ancestors and he followed it along the trail where he would pick nuts and berries and eat them and he sometimes ate bark to freshen up. Freedom found a little creek, Peace Frog Creek, he named it and he bathed and drank the fresh water and looked at the fish swimming between his ankles and calves and pelt. This all happened before the Indian Act. Before the dependence on the Ministry of Indian Affairs. Before an apartheid. Simplicity is life and all that happens is the result in the belief of the spirits. Freedom struggled up the path and knelt to the ground and bent over and kissed the leaves and grass and fallen trees in the forest. He saw a vision of his children and his tribe and they were in trouble and had no more food to eat and he stood up and began to run. He ran every which way and stopped and spun around and ran some more. Freedom is fast. Freedom runs in our veins and in our mindset, in our dreams and in our homes, in our ditches and in our books of legends and heroes and myths. Freedom lives and he is coming home. The sun was at it's peak in the middle of the sky and Freedom continued running until the sun went down. He lay in a farmer’s field beside the forest and looked at the stars again and thought to himself, I am almost home, I will make it; I will honour my land with its chief of the land. He slept but was awoken in a flash of energy, and kept running. Freedom was hungry but soon he would be fed by his family and his tribe. Freedom stepped on his land and looked around and a bit of vomit curled up in his throat and he swallowed it back down and then a gush of vomit poured out his mouth and through his nose and on his feet and calves and chest. Freedom looked at his land and all he saw was high rises and dwellings and bars and churches and a veterinary and a legion and all this new, civilized, nature destroying construction. Freedom was trapped in the wood for decades and at this point of our calendar, Freedom’s land was swallowed by development and money and business and greed. They destroyed his land and pushed his family onto cheap, worthless reserves to symbolize property and nature that was literally worth nothing in the bank’s eyes. But they were paid for their land, so the casinos could take your money. So the journey meant nothing, Freedom was reborn and then cut down ever so quickly. So he turned around and took out his hunting knife that was left for him and he cut his throat and the blood spilled onto the moss and caterpillars and dirt and rust and stems and leaves and even, the ants which wished him good luck. He knelt down with life still in his head and he kissed the ground and he was gone. Freedom was gone, he got sucked up into the ground and Freedom was never seen again. His body was back as one within the Earth and as a grave marker there was a wooden sign, a seven foot native Indian and it exploded and pieces of wood went all over the place and got sucked into the earth. Years later, Freedom’s resting place was turned into condominiums for the rich and wealthy and they smoked cigars and read magazines and laughed at the wooden native Indian in their store and now, only in our memories, Freedom lives.