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For the fifth year now,
we are organizing this Peace Mission on the Saint Lawrence River.
It's a way to discover the spirit of our ancestors,
and to discover ourselves, to know our limits,
and to know our strengths.
And it's important that we recognize
the limits and the strengths of the other.
And while we're travelling together,
we form a unity
that allows us to recognize each other
and to know each other.
It is fantastic, what we discover
about the path that we have to take together,
to repair the damages that have been done to the Mother Earth
over many generations,
but also the damages that have been done to our subconscious mind,
which make it hard to recognize each other
as sisters, as brothers,
grandmothers and children
who are together,
part of a same human family.
And our interrelation becomes richer
when we are together in the same journey,
the same struggle,
and when everyone brings his talent
to help the other, to be a medicine for the other.
I love you, my dear!
I love you too, daddy!
Hello, my name is Marianne,
it is my forth year in the Peace Mission
on the Saint Lawrence River.
I learned to communicate with others
during the Peace Mission,
and to get closer to my native origins.
I had ancestors that were indigenous:
Micmacs,
Abenakis,
Maliseets,
Nipissing,
Inuit...
As I am from two different nations,
my father being born as a Micmac
and my mother, as a Nipissing,
I find myself caught a bit in between.
Proud to be member of the First Nations,
but also proud to be of mixed origins.
There is some white inside me and I'm proud of it.
I think that the French that crossed the Great River,
were not people without courage.
These people were proud, had a lot of courage,
so to descend from them makes me kind of proud.
How to put it in practice, the Two Row Wampum?
I think that it is by accepting
and loving the others' differences.
Not to judge what we don't know,
to put it as something to be worried about.
What we don't know might scare us,
but it's not because it is different that it is not good.
The Wampum teaches us
how to accept those differences,
and to appreciate them in the other
as forming part of a whole.
I accept everyone with their differences
and with the same view, the same curiosity, the same love.
Because I have a lot to learn from these people,
and they have so much to teach me.
To start again this wheel
of transmission of knowledge
from people who are from this land,
such as the Anishinabeg, the Mohawks,
the Innus,
the Abenakis...
all the First Nation peoples have this knowledge
that was kept away from us by the colonization
the industrialization,
and the propaganda
of all governments and corporations.
So, to return to our human nature,
we need to retrieve our roots
and to develop them,
so we can grow
and thrive, flourish and give fruits.
Every year,
we go to Quebec City and we plant a tree,
with the permission of the
National Battlefields Commission,
to symbolize the reconciliation.
And eventually, so that the children who planted this tree
can bring other ones one day,
to play under this tree,
and to beneficiate from its shade and from its fruits.
And so that the tradition perpetuates,
because there is something that grows
and which, if nourished,
will give to everyone
who see this tree,
a reminder or the courage of our ancestors,
but also of the courage of this new generation
which is waking up,
ready to make an effort
to get together,
to reconcile themselves.
Because...
today we are encouraged to sit on our couch
and to watch TV.
But travelling like this, this is where we rediscover life.
We don't let the cinema make our movie,
we are actors on our own.
We are the ones that are ahead of the parade,
and we lead this parade for all of us.