The Seventh Fire Project: October 2013

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Ma'iingan: A Poem for Wolf

As we gear up to launch another year of the Seventh Fire Project, it seems particularly fitting to publish this original poem here, marking Michigan's first pending wolf hunt on November 15. This hunt was to be voted on by Michigan citizens, but that referendum was undermined by political maneuvering on the part of our state politician, initiated by our own U.P. senator, an act of disloyalty towards Yoopers that I'm still shocked at.

As we speak, Wisconsin is in the throes of it's second wolf hunt, scheduled to last until February or until all 251 wolves in the hunting quota are killed - that's one-third of the population of wolves in the state of Wisconsin. The DNR has already closed the wolf hunt units in the north, as all the wolves that can legally be killed (plus one) have been killed. And the hunt only started a little over 10 days ago.

Image from http://www.turtlehurtled.com/how-wolves-became-dogs/

MA'IINGAN:
A POEM FOR WOLF
A. Cree Dunn

We reach out
   and run our hands
      through your thick
          and heavy fur.
Closing our eyes,
   we press our forehead
      to yours.
We romp with the pups
    and play chase with you
       through the forest.
Our breath in the cold
   mingles with yours.
In the rivers of your song
   we swim to the stars.
And when we look
into your knowing eyes
       your wild spirit reminds us who we really are.

Biography and Contact Info

A lifelong inhabitant of the Northwoods, Aimee Cree Dunn has taught Indigenous environmental history and Traditional Ecological Knowledge for the last 10 years at Northern Michigan University's Center for Native American Studies where she coordinated the NMU Indigenous Earth Issues Summit since its inception in 2008. Her areas of primary research include Northwoods and international Indigenous environmental issues, traditional ecological knowledge of the Anishinaabeg, forest history, and human relationships to the land throughout time.

Aimee has worked with all ages, from young ones to elders, leading folks out into the woods to teach about various usages of plants and re-connect people to the woods of which we are all a part here in the northern Great Lakes country. She offers outdoor guiding, environmental workshops, and place-based event planning through her business, Spirit of the Wildwood LLC.

Various of her works on the above topics and more have been published in Honor the Earth: Great Lakes Indigenous Response to Environmental Crises, Green Praxis and Theory: The Journal of Ecopedagogy, Amber Waves of Green, Green Horizons, online articles for Northwoods Wilderness Recovery, as well as in Voice on the Water: Great Lakes Native America Now, an anthology published by the NMU Center for Native American Studies with funding from the Michigan Humanities Council.

She can be contacted at adunn@nmu.edu or 906-227-1397.