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Mike Pierre – Transformation as Creation
By Chanda Hunnie
Guiding the Pack
Mike Pierre has worked on environmental issues that affect First Nations for the past ten years. As a research associate for the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER), Mike has focused on various topics including environmental monitoring, research, and education. His commitment lies in working for people as well as the environment, a responsibility that involves all of the earth’s creations. He believes that all beings are equal and in an effort to live by this belief, he seeks to maintain sustainable relationships – the true expression of respect.
A member of the Long Lake First Nation in Ontario, and descendent to a line of chiefs and medicine men, Mike was not always in touch with his Aboriginal cosmology.
The son of residential school survivors, Mike had to live his early life removed from his traditional Cree and Ojibway upbringing right. His parents lost the ability to speak their native tongue and therefore were not able to teach Mike which effectively disconnected him from his heritage. Growing up in Winnipeg in the 1970s when racism was overtly prevalent, Mike continued to feel alienated. Mike found himself in a position where neither culture accepted him, including his own. His family back home denounced him as a ‘city boy’ claiming he was attempting to be white. What followed was his refusal to acknowledge his ancestry.
But something occurred when Mike was 25 years old and attending university that was life changing. In the spring of 1997, like the flood water that had surmounted the prairies, Mike was overtaken by a renewal that would affect him profoundly. While in premedical studies, Mike chose to partake in four weeks of health and Aboriginal courses. Every day he participated in sharing circles and learnt traditional teachings and healing. Finding a community of belonging for the first time, everything finally started to have meaning. Mike began to dream and the visions were prophesies that further evoked a life path of a higher order.
A Name in the Service of Creation
Mike was given the name Mashkodebizhiki Inini, Buffalo Spirit Man. The name one receives acts as a governing framework where each name reminds us of our strengths, weaknesses, and of our role of service to the people. For Buffalo Spirit Man, this meant a service to respect all Creation – things alike and unalike. The challenge that ensued was clear; you cannot give what you do not have.
Buffalo Spirit Man immersed himself in the freedom his new found release provided. He became a Skaabé, a worker or helper, at ceremonies including the Sun Dance – a very powerful and sacred ceremony. Occurring during the summer months, the Sun Dance tests and strengthens one’s faith, mind, body and spirit. Fasting for four days and nights as a means to demonstrate their worth to the spirit world and earn what they are asking for, dancers seek guidance and healing from the ceremony.
As Buffalo Spirit Man’s roles transformed over time – from dancer, to fire keeper, to dragger of buffalo skulls, piercer and whip – he received another name, Gi Mangizid Ma’iingan, Club Foot Wolf. With it came a lot of responsibility.
Club Foot Wolf reveals, “I said if I got the help I needed to heal, I would work for the Creator’s children. I now have to live up to my end.”
When one’s service is to all Creation, present and future, your purpose must take into account the health and sustainability of the earth’s life support systems. Any thought towards the well-being of all creatures, and realizing the interconnected web of life it provides, ties one to their actions, or inactions.
The teacher of this lesson in humility is the wolf.
“Each member of the wolf pack has a role. There are caregivers, protectors. There is a shared responsibility, as well as equality, among pack members. All members work together, each with a role that contributes to the well-being of the group. Alone a wolf will not survive, as a collective, every wolf receives the benefits of the other gifts.”
“As a human family, we need to do that to get through these difficult times,” explains Club Foot Wolf.
The challenges are many – the ongoing destruction of Canada’s largest forest, the boreal forest, home to over six hundred Aboriginal communities, has led to widespread wildlife extirpation, loss of biodiversity, water pollution, and increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Communities that depend on the forests for their livelihoods contend with an array of subsequent environmental, economic, social and cultural consequences.
Communication is essential in working together as a national and international community Club Foot Wolf admits. Input from indigenous peoples is also important as Indigenous Knowledge (IK) possesses a holistic, ecological approach necessary to understand and maintain the web of life that sustains us.
Mike Pierre has embodied his responsibility wholeheartedly and recognizes to do so is to transform continually, renewing the ways he thinks about himself and the world around him. He is an educator, a storyteller, a facilitator; he is a person to emulate. He discloses the ease at which the seven teachings can be learnt – love, respect, courage, honesty, wisdom, humility, truth – pointing out, more importantly, that they take a lifetime to live.
After ten years with CIER, Mike is transforming again. Establishing his own consulting firm and taking on the role as Winnipeg’s Comprehensive Community Initiative Project Coordinator, focusing on the needs of urban Aboriginal peoples of Winnipeg, he is adamant in continuing in his growth and ability to offer the guidance he was shown as a young adult. Mike’s objective is to make something work for the long—term – socially, culturally, environmentally, and economically – doing his best in making sure the needs of all Creation are met.
