This story opens with a dreamy narration by Coulee Ross that moves into a conversation between Coulee and Jamie-Leigh. Through auditory exploration, Coulee lands us in a world where all beings inherently belong. In the follow up conversation, they look at how ongoing colonialism challenges the narrative of belonging and how reciprocity and kinship are salves we can use across time and space.

SPEAKERS

Coulee, Jamie-Leigh, carla

Welcome to On Belonging, an audio series to connect us. On Belonging explores why so many of us are feeling called to find a deeper sense of belonging, whether with our ancestors or to the land where we live, and beyond.

These powerful stories and conversations are an invitation into the lives and landscapes of the guests worlds offering pathways towards remembering and finding more belonging.

You are about to hear a story from Coulee Ross. It is followed by a conversation between Jamie-Leigh and Coulee.

Shuski called to me, my head craned in an embrace. I raised my arms in exultation stretching into the expanse of Suski's wide embrace. This is our daily ritual, grounding me into the reflection that I, Mortuk, am but a tiny, tiny speck.

My kin Aya moves to me, our eyes into law as Schiski dances around us. Our souls have known one another for countless cycles of the bow floor. With an assured look, I fill with excitement. As my being begins to shine, a glorious adventure awaits us.

With powerful strides we bound through difficult terrain with ease, feeling the rush we meet from the towering shoulder of Pesa. I spread my arms wide, beaming a bright smile at Pesa as a chill rushes my bones at the sheer magnitude of their presence. I float here, a speck frozen, wrapped in the timelessness of this moment falling until Eswi rushes out to meet me. And with playful position, I tuck into a roll landing alongside Aya in a crouch. The war in the fall in a rustling of leaves, triumphantly Eswi beams brightly illuminating the high plains of our bodies flicked with sweat. In this pause, I feel a pulsing rhythm below me and move to place a listening hand upon the wolverine's spine the Valnoor is calling our aid. Woven from being to being in an endless channel of interconnection. We can hear the wounded cries and our kin, amplify we follow the path humming and resonance, clearing a great distance and arrive to see Ru foot maimed in a steal tooth trap in tandem, Aya and I place a palm on Ru and open the other upwards in ritual. The shackle begins to flicker, in and out, in and out of view. In and out. A shimmering veil until it vanishes completely. A moment later, Ru leg, stand un-marred and white. They shake before breaking into a full run. Howling playfully up at Eswi I sit upon Eswi's damp lap under the attentive gaze of both Aya and Eswi. And take a deep breath feeling their love and care wash over me. Another breath my nose fills with scent. Fresh and wet as a softness beneath me, tugs me gently down. Another breath. Down. I'm heavy and light.

[alarm beeps]

Wow, that dream felt so real.

Hello, I am the name of Coulee. I am an Indigenous person living on the West Coast. These are not my lands and territories, I've been an uninvited guest here for almost 10 years. I am a Cree Metis. I am an artist of so many different forms, storytelling has been just this beautiful, kind of culmination of all of my artistic gifts and calling that spiritual practice. So it's been really beautiful. And I feel very honored anytime I'm given the opportunity to continue to share stories. So I'm willing to be in some kind of limelight. In order to continue to do that.

I kind of want to, like start broad and then maybe or start more technical, I guess and start with like, making the piece and some of the creative choices you made. Anyways, can you just give me an idea of how and why you made some of your creative choices like you know, never calling a mountain a mountain and instead using like, names for all the more than human kin. And some other choices that you made, right?

Yeah, I think the episode even the the whole the choice for the whole theme of the episode was a very, very much on brand as far as like, where what I do with storytelling where like each story I create is so vastly different. It's like totally uncharted territory every time. I'm like such an explorer in that way. And a pusher of edges, which I think is also good medicine. As a person who tells stories and works often with Word. The only language I speak is the English language, unfortunately, but that's how colonization has worked out for me. Semantics are something I think about probably way more than your average person. They're deeply interesting to me. And I often feel as though especially with the English language that it is a spell and invocation. And often one that like, we're not really aware, necessarily, like, of the capturing of, and I think we just like very unconsciously use language a lot. And I think about words like "belonging," which, like, by its very use of the word suggests that we don't innately belong. And I think, a very interesting language trap that is unique to the English language. Because I'm sure like, I don't speak Indigenous language, I've taken some Cree lessons, but I'm sure that the language doesn't actually directly translate in Indigenous language because the universe that I believe in, that I feel connected to, and not that I'm not a part of what the English language has created our capitalist society. But I feel like that universe you innately belong. So there's no word for the idea that you wouldn't. I was like, Yeah, I really want to take this concept. Because we accept words and their meanings, and we don't really question them, especially in our culture. I was trying to do my best with storytelling to break some of those standard forms that we also don't question. And so it was like, okay, so if we're talking about belonging, as something that's innate, that doesn't even require a word, that there isn't the opposite of not belonging, that it's like as innate as oxygen, we just do we just breathe, we just are a part of this web. What beings would send that message of being a part of this web? And so I thought about different beings for a long time, I was like, oh, maybe grandmother spider. That would be cool. Or maybe like the spark, that grandmother spider drops down in, like, following it through different incarnations. And then I landed on a Sasquatch being. And that felt pretty, right. And then as far as the story world creating, there was all kinds of things like, how would a Sasquatch participate? That would be so much similar to ways that we see other beings in the web of relation participate. But how different would they also participate as a very conscious, aware, articulate being, that are so different than the way that human beings and, and language was clearly going to be one, again, with language and its power. And its like the ability to capture. I was like, Oh, well, no, no, no, like, we're not going to make a mountain of a dead thing with our word, we are going to greet it by its name. It is our kin, it is alive. And so it was a really bold choice in making an audio story, because with a visual story, maybe the listeners would have a bit more of some anchoring. In an audio story where this being is interacting with different beings, but we are not giving them place names, I think it really invites the listener into something that is just like very different and even discombobulating, I did share this story at a little storytellers, gala that I was a part of, after I told a story a personal story about an interaction I had with a Sasquatch. In my life. I shared this little sound bit that I created for this episode. And I noticed that it is like a little bit discombobulating for people, which I love that: edges, trickster energy. So yeah.

cool. Definitely, like a lot of the themes coming up across a lot of our episodes in this series is yeah, that like kind of false — or not false because it's real, that we experience it, but that sense of duality around belonging and that, you know, we do, a lot of us really do believe that belonging is inherent, but that we've also created and implemented systems or like Empire, you know, whatever you want to call it, that isolate us from that sense of belonging or that feeling of belonging and, you know, I listened through your piece quite a few times and like, each time I felt like I got a different, like understanding of a piece of this feeling that I feel and experience. It's like really visceral representation. And yeah, like, you know, I don't need the visuals to be anchored because I was just really in my feeling body when I was listening. And yeah, this visceral representation of that connection, and belonging, as a part of kinship with, like more than human world around us. And there's this moment where, and I didn't write down the names, but the creature is stuck in a snare, right. And for me, that really brought up like, how hard it can feel, under certain systems and how isolated we can feel under certain systems and how those systems like, enact violence on us. But it, and it can make us feel like we don't belong. And it also like, really like, and then, you know, the resolution of that piece, or that moment, is like, belonging is innate, but it also relies on us taking care of one another too. So for me listening to your piece I hear or I felt that, like, reciprocity was a really big part of belonging. And you have to see yourself as a piece of the whole or see yourself as the whole.

Yeah, I think reciprocity is a practice that is just so beautiful. And, again, it's like pretty innate, within Indigenous ways of participating within the whole. So I think it's a part of my storytelling, because it's a part of what's centered in my awareness all the time. And certainly a part of the storytelling when we're talking about beings that aren't as bound by this kind of tool. That is, like, just like even the language difference in calling a mountain a thing, versus addressing that being by its name, they seem like small gestures, but they're so radically different paradigms. You know, same with reciprocity, like just a radically different paradigm of participating. And it just, it boils down to, if you are practicing holism where you're, like, connected, and not separate to the whole web of relation, then the affliction that falls upon that creature, you're not separate from that, you're invested in the betterment of your kin. Which is almost the opposite of what capitalism teaches us like, you know, so again, like I recognize that some of these like recipes that are just natural for me to put into story are like completely discombobulating for people that really believe in capitalism and colonization.

Yeah, and curious if you can, like share any practices or, or even like experiences or times for you where you found a sense of belonging, even in times of chaos or isolation?

Oh, it's storytelling time. I just put my hands together and gave my Thomas smile Okay, when we first moved to Victoria, our landing here was harsh, A. F, oof, like it just like a chasing dreams, dreams just being like, you know, totally not coming true. Very devastated. We kind of like, made our rookie selves here. And we're like, really not feeling in a very good way, like life had kind of kicked us around and we were licking our wounds. So not feeling super confident, connected, you know, very much feeling pretty wounded and kind of lost, even. We have done a fair amount of wild foraging and we just like to be in the outdoors, obviously like a natural way to be, and we wish we could kind of spend more time than we do even. And so we have made plans to take a friend out foraging, and we were really trying to find some Morales. So we were looking at old burn patches, and we kind of scouted a few out kind of out by Sombrios. So that was kind of the mission. We were up early, it was early spring, there just been a rain for a couple of days, it was sunny. So like conditions were right. And we headed out. And we were trying to find this old burn patch for hours. Like we left the house probably at five in the morning, to drive out there and get out there early enough. And once we arrived to Sooke to pick up our friend, we realized, oh my gosh, we left our dog, we were so tired. We just left her at home. That's so sad. And like she's my shadow. So it's very rare for me to leave her kind of ever. And it was like that is so peculiar, like why did that occur? So like, the magic of the day had already kind of like, began, kind of like leaping itself around our day. And so we failed as far as the burn patch was concerned. So we pivoted around lunch. And we're like, hey, let's just go find some mushrooms. So we jumped in the car. And we were looking for some Alder trees because it was spring oyster season. And so we drive we drive we see some we pull over, but it's a pretty deep like, kind of drop off. So we're like, 'hey, that's a bit too steep for us to feel like we can safely get down. Let's keep driving.' And then we find another little patch of Alders we can kind of see. And so we pull over. And there's a reasonable, like descend down into the forest. So we're like, let's do it. We pull over, we begin kind of like pushing some bush, there's this little kind of crappy barbed wire fence, we have to climb over and we're walking for about 25 minutes and my partner's spots, some oyster mushrooms, and some dead Alder trees. So he's like, Hey, look over there. And so we all kind of see them off to the right, and we start walking over there like yay, we found some. And then immediately, we seen this like, collection of feathers. That's like, it just looks like a bunch of weirdly arranged feathers hanging from a tree. And we stopped and we're like, what is happening? Like, what are we looking at? And then the head from the collection of feathers turned completely around? Because it was an owl. We looked up. We were like, Oh my gosh, okay, this is a living collection of others and an Owl being very interesting. And we were kind of at a distance. And then we kind of all from our different vantage points just kind of stopped and looked at it for a while because we were very confused. We were like it's daytime. Why are we seeing an owl? Why is this owl like not moving? Why is it hanging upside down from this tree? Is there something about owls that I didn't know that they sleep like bats? Why don't I know this? You, so all these questions are going through, we're very confused. We're trying to process information and we're looking at this owl. And then we all realize at the same time it's stuck. This owl is stuck in the tree. And so, you know, the story of how it got stuck is pretty easy to imagine, it was raining. You know, as I said a couple nights before storming, it appears the owl was maybe hunting and then had gotten its claws kind of stuck deep into like a crevice of some tree branches. As it was probably trying to catch some little kind of critter. And then like slipped down further and further with the rain. And so we're like okay, what did we do here? We decided okay, and luckily the two other people were with us, because I'm five foot one and a half, and these people are six foot five. So fortunately for us, they're very tall, which was good because the owl was still pretty high up in the tree. So together they wrapped their jacket around the owl and then kind of wiggled it up and then set it down and then quickly ran away, because it's an owl. Owls are scary, right? Like they are predator birds. They're huge. The Owl was as big as me for sure, again, was about probably five foot one. So we quickly just ran away. And then the owl didn't move. And it didn't move for a while. So we're like, Okay, this owl is in a bad way. So we decided to take the owl to Wild Ark. So we weren't getting reception out there. We were calling and calling and calling there like an animal like a wild animal rehabilitation center. No reception, no reception. So we wrapped the owl like a baby in jackets to kind of bind its wings and feet like worst case scenario. And then the two individuals, the tall ones were carrying the owl, they did gesture, they asked if I wanted to carry the owl. And ultimately, my tiny animal instincts kicked on. And I was like, I'm touched to be a part of this moment. But no, I'm also aware of that, guys, so I am feeling good on that. So we wrapped this precious owl, like a baby, and they were carrying it like a baby, like a newborn. And it was just kind of like looking at us. And like so peaceful. And we made our way back to the vehicle. And we made our way to Wild Ark. And we were singing to the owl, because it was a rough way, it was closing its eyes and kind of nodding off. All of us were crying. Because it was just so, it was so clear that we were being like, orchestrated, you know, we were being like almost puppeteer and guided so strongly that whole entire day, from forgetting my dog at home, who would have deeply upset the Owl. She's very peaceful. But it would have deeply distressed this already and stressed Owl. And we were essentially called by the universe to be in that place at that place in time where the owl was just tired enough, it had fought the tree for so long to try and get free. And it was just hard enough and just dehydrated enough that it didn't fight us. And all of these elements perfectly came together. Like why did we go to that random spotted forest? You know, and everyone in that group also was Indigenous, which was like another like, oh, wow, this is a cool factor. And so we brought the owl to Wild Ark. And they told us like the owl was in a pretty rough way. And they told us it was a barred owl like B A R R E D. So anyways, we left and to some Indigenous creation stories, the owl is like a heart bringer of the end of your journey to go back up to fighter. And so I made a joke about how because we saved an Owl, we all just like got a different life. Like we all just leveled up, we like you know, one extra life. And we're all going to live now to be 200 because like obviously. And we called a couple of days later to check in on the owl. And they said that it was massively dehydrated and they got it on IV. And it bounced right back. It was eating solid food and they were actually gonna release it back into like the area we kind of rescued it from the next day. And so, yeah, it was saved. But yeah, things like that. Yeah, there's no really denying the magic of life in moments like that. Right, even despite happenstance, despite the devastating realities of colonization and being broke, and having your dreams dashed -- like you're still... yeah, and that is in that moment, you know, all that mattered was that we were being called upon.

Okay to bring it back to your piece, to your story. One piece that I really like, appreciated is that there's this jump out of the like, I'm gonna call it the dream world. And I really love that it doesn't actually really tear you. Like it takes you out of the dream world. But it doesn't tear away that innate belonging that you were bringing forward right? Rather, it seems to point to the need to remember our belonging in this world. And that we can take that belonging we feel in like a dream world or in our whatever, more spiritual connection, and we can bring it here, too. And so can you speak to the ending a little bit more and why you chose to do this piece, like as a dream sequence and at the end have that sort of awakening, abrupt feeling of awakening, but staying still, that felt so real? Because it is real, right?.

Yes! And if you listen carefully, there is like some of the sound element that has been carried forward into being awake now. I'm not drawing a clear line between this was a dream, and this is reality. I'm kind of trying to blur the lines a little bit. But yeah, so you know, those books and stories that you can read. And you're, and you're kind of always guessing the whole time, like, the writer has not made a clear stance, like they're not working so much in binary, there's like many possibilities still. And you're like, Oh, I'm not quite certain if this is the direction, or if this is what they're saying. Or it seems like they could be saying this, or this or this. I love that so much as a listener and a storyteller. And so I knew I had an opportunity to do that with this story. And so I'm not necessarily saying that this was a dream. But I'm not saying that it wasn't either. And, like, even like, some of my intention is to suggest even that what we assume is like a dream, which is like, our bodies go to sleep, so that our bodies can rest. And our consciousness just kind of goes into sleep mode, like our computers. I'm testing that there's all kinds of veils, that especially human beings experience, like the veil of connection, for example, like we, we are often not seeing and again, like a lot of this is because of colonization, but we're not seeing and experiencing and feeling innate connection with ourselves and with our, with our kin with the natural world. And so, I do see the human experience as being very veiled. And I'd see like, the experience of being like a Sasquatch being is very free and unveiled. And so I was kind of playing around with like, oh, well, what if like, sleep is the portal. And, you know, we become our more true selves. You know, and not linear time bound veiled human selves, but are more like, and I don't want to say evolve necessarily, because we're all moving together collectively, but definitely, like, an unveiled being, you know, that is free... and so, and then y which would you call a reality? Would you call, like truly being aware of your existence and participation in the web of relation reality or having the blinders on?

Mm hmm. I mean, that's like maybe, maybe both and neither.

Yeah. So I was kind of playing around with either and all of those ideas and wanted it to kind of land however it landed for the listener.

Okay, so what's your relationship to belonging feel like today or these days or in your current space and time?

Hmm. So good question. Ah, yeah, I don't know? Sometimes it feels like the Sasquatch being And then sometimes colonization, especially capitalism really gets its talons into me. And, it really pulls me away from feeling safe. And feeling connected. It's so powerful. It's like, yeah, and I'm sure, you know, many people have had this experience. But yeah, it's just a very capturing system, capitalism. So, and I have been since the summer kind of like moving from one work contract to the next. And haven't found, like the right security as far as a financial situation, it's been super challenging to actually feel centered, and safe.

Is there anything else that you want to say about belonging or your peace or this experience?

Well, I really enjoyed creating this story. Yeah, it was really great practice for myself as an individual, exercise as a storyteller. And then I did mention, I got to share it as part of another little story time . Which, that just, flowed together organically. And it brought me back to this little story about my grandfather, which he was such a treasure as a being. So it's been really nice to sit in story with him for the fall, as I've been creating this story, it's been really nostalgic, and charming. And often I find the fall season actually can really carry those feelings pretty strongly for me. It's been extra special to sit in this story and what this story has offered, offered me and where it takes me.

It's a beautiful piece. And I think the way that you approached it makes it so I mean it feels universal, even if the characters or the landscape is like to this part of the world, it still feels very universal. Even though you're drawing from your experiences here on these territories, it's still, it's still really, really accessible and feels interwoven into a lot of the other stories we're hearing too. So thank you so much for the work you did here and the storytelling and also your incredible production abilities. It's so beautiful to listen to.

Thank you. Yeah, the foley room soundscaping. That is a happy place for me. I have to say.

Yeah, well, thank you again, for this and we're just really really grateful.

Thanks for listening to On Belonging. This episode featured Coulee Ross, with music by the r.a.p.

On Belonging is curated by carla joy bergman and Jamie-Leigh Gonzalez, with tech support by Chris Bergman. The show's awesome theme music is by AwareNess. On Belonging is a Joyful Threads and Grounded Futures creation. Please visit groundedfutures.com for show notes, transcripts, and to read more about On Belonging.

Till next time: keep working, keep listening!

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These transcripts were generated in Otter, and lightly edited by our team.