O’Brien’s Bridge: Under The Flagstone: Fairy Tales As A Bridge To Ancestry

An hour with Indigenous, cultural activist Kakisimow Iskwew and Tad Hargrave digging into the deeper layers of indigenous memory held in story through the tale of Feshtus O’Malley.

COST: $25. 100% of proceeds from session will go to support the important work being done by Albertan Indigenous, cultural activist Kakisimow Iskwew.

Note 1: This intro session is included as a recording for free to those who join us for the 6 Week Online Briar Rose program which we are running in January of 2025. You can find more information about that here…

https://meetingmyancestors.com/digging-roots-2/ 

Note 2: Not for children under the ages of 13. This is designed for adults.*

Description: 

We live in a time when many people of European descent are waking up to but feel cut off from their indigenous, folk ancestry that suffered waves of colonization from Rome to the Holy Roman Empire, famine, disease, war upon war before washing up on the shores of what would become known as North America.

There seems to be no way back to the forgotten wisdom those people held and so the only place to find it seems to be in the traditions and practices of other, still intact (or more intact) indigenous peoples.

In this session, we’ll be making the case that more of this memory survived than we’ve been led to believe – much of it in the form of common folk and fairy tales you likely heard as a child or watched as Disney movies. These stories are more memory than metaphor. These stories are seeds of living culture.

In this session, you’ll be:

• Listening to the story of Feshtus O’Malley
• Hearing a poem from Seumas Heaney of Ireland
• Learning three of the biggest roadblocks to understanding old stories
• Learning three levels of learning old stories
• Hearing one of the older stories in European folklore and enjoy a brief but rich discussion on it.

Who Are We?

Natalie is a Metis Cultural Educator who helps guide Indigenous people reclaiming their culture to connect with their living teachings around art, food, language and connection to spirit. As an Indigenous woman, Natalie seeks to bring her traditions, stories, and culture to life.

She lives in Northern Alberta on an off grid homestead where she offers traditional skills and Indigenous arts focused classes. Sharing on topics such as brain tanning, moccasin making, beading, traditional Metis silk embroidery and building relationships with the land. Natalie is a caretaker to a family of Indigenous horses who she shares the land with.

Every year, she offers culture camps and Wasakam Indigenous food sovereignty camps, where she shares food sovereignty skills such as foraging, butchering, food preservation, and caring for the land. Natalie hopes to connect her community with the skills, arts, language, stories and culture of her culture.

Natalie graduated from Harvard University (ALB degree). Before studying at Harvard, Natalie attended Lethbridge College where she studied Renewable Resource Management where she explored her passion for the land, plants and animals of her nation’s homeland. Natalie supports her community to build relationships with our plant relatives through plant camps for Indigenous Nations, Universities, and Community Groups. 

Learn more about her work at: https://meetingmyancestors.com/

Thankyou for the beautiful work of Caeona Murdoch on these photos