This is the sixth post in the NiCHE series Animal Encounters, edited by Heather Green and Caroline Abbott. You can read all posts in this series here.

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Bear Medicine, bear songs – love songs – cave songs – cave hair – den songs – ritualistic scratching – bear scratching
Bears scratching – song and cadence
A full moon
About to burst like a blueberry
And the sun sitting up on the mountain like Gulu (mythical nird)
Mou’in – bear and scratching and Medicine hands – medicine on hands
Sunlight like honey dripping off claws
Claws and raking berries and freezing up after tasting delightful berries
Berry eyelashes
Claws carving trees, mountains, and chests

At Wasapa’ql Iga’taqan near Ge’gwapsgug/ Winpegijuig (Pabineau First Nation) I sit with my back to a maple tree amongst the sarsaparilla and write yet another Bear Story. I think of bear often and fondly. This spot on the Winpegijuig is a familiar place where I took medicine walks with my father. Medicine walk is a term for learning bush medicine and foraging on the land. Food is considered medicine in my circles – when suffering various ailments, I often make for the woods – pine sap for wounds. We’d gather berries, roots, dogwood bark me’goqomgwejg, and he would tell me stories of the old days.

This place he said was Mui’nagati (place of bear). The whole of the forest here is mapped out in Mi’kmaw nomenclature and the names of things are descriptive. I remember the unnerving feeling of first entering bear grounds. The cool tall bracken fern and river grass bore large impressions of bear bodies where they had slept recently. You could feel the gravity of this medicine animal.

The bear is a tutor of sorts that lumbers around the forest eating plants and animals. You can smell them often before you see them. When you are aware of your surroundings and understand their habits, you realise not to startle them and to move around them. They tend to eat what is in their area, meaning their diets shift much like ours to what resources are abundant locally. In my mind there is bear song. I remember hearing them sung, Mi’kmaw bear songs and Anishinaabeg bear song. We trade songs like medicines too. When singing bear song, we mimic bear movements and tether to that bear spirit or vibe. We lay tmawei (tobacco) down for everything we take, and we say a prayer to the spirit of the plant. It is a conscious connection with the earth and our place in it.

Out on the land we examine animal tracks. I know what has travelled by and when. I examined bear scat understanding the bear’s diet. You can find berries and bones among other digested foods. For me bear scratching’s are medicine. I remember my father showing me roots the bear dug. I saw where the claws exposed the white flesh of roots. Gi’gwesuasgw (muskrat root) used to treat ailments like colds.

The bear is a medicine animal. Out in the woods we study through sense and observation. My father said we are scheduled – we were not nomadic – we travel to areas to harvest medicines. An example is weljemajgewe’l (sweetgrass) last week of July (while I currently write this). The resources of Mi’gmagi are plentiful if you knew where to look and at what time. Famine and scarcity are settler myth narratives imposed on us. Just now sitting here writing in Wasapa’ql Iga’taqan I see blueberries. I am reminded that we traveled on this land from area to area acquiring knowledge and nourishment and we still do.

For me the bear has always been a teacher. I remember times on the land with elders when they told me we must observe the habits of animals because they teach us what to eat. When we are out in the woods we come across flowers for example and inspect them to see if other animals ate them. If not, it is an indication that the plant maybe toxic. If a plant has a Mi’gmaw name, it is a good indication that it is a medicine as generically named plants sort of fade into the background having little to no benefits. When we pick a plant, we pray to ugjijaqamijl the spirit of the plant.

When we go out to pick berries in Winpegijuig we often bring along pots and stuff to make noise allowing the bear to know where we are. It is important not to startle bear especially ones with cubs. We also leave small dogs’ home because when faced by bear for example they run to you and bring the animal to deal with you. (sort of like I want to speak to your manager). When you are picking pguman or blueberries for example you need to know you are in bear territory. Blueberries tend to flourish after forest fires. Geweswusg or sweet fern also grows near blueberries, and we often eat berries and seeds in tandem or use the sweet fern leaves as lining in berry picking baskets. Some call sweet fern and blueberry “buddy bushes”. I take my baby girls out to forage, and they sniff out different berries and learn which are edible. I tell them stories of bear or bear medicine as I like to call it – impromptu. A memory will trigger a story and they hear the stories over and over until they become their memories. We explore the woods through our senses. We feel the textures of things and look for indications that we have the right plant. Some are easier to identify than other. I tell them stories about different plants and animals combining to make them comfortable in the woods and knowledgeable.

From my perspective, plant medicine and animal stories/bear stories are not something we as l’nu archive. We do not have a mystical connection to this stuff. We do however have stories and reminders that are embellished to make them memorable. When we are in the woods these stories are triggers and we are reminded what we can eat, where we can make camp, and the point to be in good relation to the earth. Sometimes the hardest thing is moving from community to urban centres void of this knowledge or cultural nomenclature. When in cities there is a different language of survival that makes some folks go right back to community. I sing bear songs in honor of the bear; I include bear in my poetry. Imagining that someday I can become one myself or at least a medicine sage that enjoys delicious berries. Bear is my tutor.

Featured Image: “Ursus americanus (American black bear)” by ucumari photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.