Enchanted Forest. Huge trees down. People were searching for fire wood. One woman picked up a giant felled tree and dropped it like a stone. It shattered and made a loud boom that echoed throughout the forest and scared the others who were in the distance. I went to look. I did not know what had happened. Some branches were as big as a houses. I easily picked one up. When I removed it off another, I saw an old totem pole underneath. I looked around the debris. The trees were all decaying old poles.* I dropped the wood and jumped back. Somehow I thought it was not right for me to be touching them. Then I looked closely at the figures and I saw a wolf carving.
“Look,” I said, “it’s my wolf.”
The woman beside me looked on. “You should take it and save it,” (she meant from the fire).
“No I can’t. It would be wrong” I said.
But she told me, “it’s okay…if it’s your animal you’re allowed to take it off the decaying pole.” **
Warily, I approached. I suddenly had a chisel in my hand and with trepidation I began to remove the old wolf from the pole. I felt very strange, but I continued. It came off easily and crumbled a bit in my hand, it was so fragile. Instantly, I put it to my face and began to dance. I held it on each side of my head with my hands. Others began to gather around me and some made sounds, cheering or “oooh”- ing.
I wanted to see the mask on my body. There was a window or a dull mirror in the enchanted forest, seemingly attached to nothing. I looked into it and could see the sides of the mask sticking off my face. I pushed them back onto my ears and now the mask adhered to my face without me holding it. As I continued my dance others danced with me. Then I then heard the voice of an Aboriginal man saying, “at first when I saw this, I was upset.”
He was watching it like a video and his voice was overtop of it.
“It seemed to disrespect the pole and the nation that carved it. But then I heard what it was all about.”
Here he explains that the dance was about a baby god, an infant deity, and the girl who fell in love with him, (a female dressed as the infant was dancing the god role and I danced as the girl).
“She is joined by the spirits who are helping her and him unite,” (other female dancers-also in masks-who flanked my sides). I could not see the masks of the other dancers, but they were all from the decaying poles. All the dancers were women.
“When I found out what it was about, I felt better about it,” the man said.
* Totem poles of Alaska and the West Coast of British Columbia were traditionally left to decay naturally into the ground on which they stood, symbolizing the natural life/death cycle of all things. It is only since the 1900′s when Europeans started collecting and showing poles in museums, that they have been preserved and restored.
** I have no idea whether this has any bearing in fact, but I suspect not.
(Totem photo © 2009 J. Noade)
