Anishinaabe Nagiidow

I have many things to be thankful for, my family, my strength, the path I have been given has been an enlightening one. I have taken many things from walking this path, I have made many friends, today was a very good day, easier then yesterday, a breath of fresh air compared to a month ago, and tomorrow looks even better. I am very thankful for having the courage to follow my dreams, having the means to provide hope in seeing them though is a blessing in itself, Gichi Manidou has gifted me with a task, a very difficult one. Yet a gift that is to be shared by all my fellow countrymen of the Ojibwe nation, we must look to our children for strength, we must listen to our hearts, we will find our way once again, pray for your enemies to have the strength to understand you, pray for your brothers to have the courage to question who you are, so we may learn how to be better Anishinaabe together. Our ancestors will smile upon us once again if we come together to give them reason to rejoice, we have disappointed them for too long, we have forced them to turn their backs on us, a lot of ceremonies are done in vain because they have abandoned us to our own neglect of honoring them properly, honoring them in how we live our lives is all they ask of us. We have fallen out of balance with one another as Anishinaabe, we have the tools to overcome our sorrows and suffering, we just have to pick them up again, the old ones will teach us how to use them and rebuild what we left in neglect. Things that anger us about each other teaches us how to understand ourselves better, the truth is easy to understand once learned, the task is allowing yourself to understand, then teaching yourself how to understand will come with ease, because we will not understand until we find the courage to do what must be done, the gift of understanding will herald in a bounty of gifts if we receive it with honor. This honor will come by living your life by the teachings of our ancestors, we are not Anishinaabe until we start living as Anishinaabe, being Anishinaabe is not ricing or netting fish, just as gambling and drinking are not respecting who we are. Honestly, humility, truth , wisdom, love, respect and bravery are the components of a real Anishinaabe, its one thing to speak of them, because they have no value until you breath by them, look around outside of yourself, because we alone can not heal a nation. We all have properties of value, we all have gifts that were given to us to share with our people, we have to free ourselves from ignorance, hatred, jealousy, envy, greed, deceit, and haughtiness, these teachings are not our way, these teaching have lead our communities into an chaotic era of uncertainty. The teachings of our people will provide us with direction once again, adhering to these teaching is the first step towards respecting our children and honoring our ancestors, until then our children will not respect who we are, there will be no honor in anything we do, we will continue to be hallow directionless people blaming everyone for our discontentment, because it is up to us now to stand up and say this is enough, I am an Anishinaabe, it is about time I start acting as one.