Indigenous Program
Matthew Dyck
Indigenous Program Coordinator/Outreach Worker
Last week I had the pleasure of collaborating with the Richmond Museum for their annual Doors Open event happening June 5th to 12th. Their team filmed me smudging and sharing what I had learned from my ancestors, as well as some of my own personal insights about the practice. My video and the videos of other participants will be accessible on the Museum’s Website.
The smudging video will also kick off our Clear the Air campaign to which you can read more about below:
Life on our Earth Mother has become increasingly challenging, leaving many of us feeling overwhelmed and burdened with a long laundry list of uncertainty. From Covid-19, economic instability, politics, terrorism, human rights violations, environmental concerns, inequality, racism, and misinformation, the list continues to grow. Because of our lack of discernment, we’ve allowed information overload to create invisible barriers of mistrust. These barriers have not only divided our world but have minimized the square footage for any common ground. Combine all this with the day to day societal and domestic pressures and you have a population of overly tense, volatile, and easily triggered people.
Our planet and its inhabitants have become sick and are in desperate need of medicine to help heal their troubled minds, hearts, and spirits. Negativity is everywhere and it’s time to Clear the Air. Many Indigenous peoples in North America have burned sage for centuries. Sage is strong medicine, which is used in ceremonies and for removing negativity.
Our mission is to take this medicine into our struggling communities and Clear the Air of negativity by smudging the locations of our leaders, healers, first responders, educators, support workers, and anyone who could use some positivity.
We hope our actions will inspire our Indigenous brothers/sisters everywhere to do the same.
Like it or not, we are all connected, we can no longer allow irrational beliefs, personal biases and opinions to divide us. It’s time to Clear the Air.
For more information about how we can help you “Clear the Air”, please contact our Indigenous Program Coordinator, Matthew Dyck matthew.dyck@ccssociety.ca