Ay-hay, nitotem. Sit with me by the fire awhile. Let me tell you a story—one the ancestors placed in my heart when I was young and full of hurt, and one that’s kept me walking straight even when the winds of sorrow tried to bend me.

Long ago, before the town came, before the hydro dams took the breath from our rivers, there was a boy named Kīsikāw, which means “He Who Comes From the Sky.” He was born during a thunderstorm—his first cries were swallowed by the roar of the heavens, and the old ones said he was destined to carry lightning in his heart. But that lightning—it’s a dangerous thing, êkwa—because it can burn just as easily as it can shine.

Kīsikāw grew up in a house where love was a quiet, broken thing. His father, wounded by residential school, carried pain like a second skin. He didn’t know how to be gentle. His words struck like fists. His silence cut deeper. And his mother, she tried—oh, how she tried—but she was drowning in her own grief. The boy learned early that some wounds don’t bleed on the outside.

When Kīsikāw was older, he carried that pain like a bone knife tucked under his ribs. He judged quickly, he rejected before he could be rejected, and his shame made him sharp. People saw him as cold, but really, he was just trying not to break apart.

Then, one day, an old woman named Nôhkom Iskwew came to him. She had eyes like the still waters of Pimicikamak, deep and watching. She said, “Grandson, the hurt you carry—did it make you stronger, or just harder?” He couldn’t answer. “You carry the hurt of generations, but you have the chance to be the one who lays it down. Be the one who breaks the chain, not the one who binds it tighter.”

He sat with that. It didn’t make sense at first. How do you heal by opening old wounds? But she told him: “When you were judged, did you not cry out for understanding? When you were cast aside, did you not long for someone to accept you, as you are? Then be that someone.”

And slowly—like the river thawing in spring—he began to change. He learned to listen without defending. To forgive without forgetting. To speak from his heart instead of his pain. He chose to be gentle where his father was harsh. To love fiercely where he was taught to be silent. He became the man he needed as a boy, and in doing so, he healed not only himself, but his children, and their children too.

So I say to you, kîsikâw pîsim, sun-child: be the one who breaks the cycle. Choose compassion over cruelty. Choose to be medicine, not more poison. You are not what happened to you—you are what you choose to become from it.

That is our way. That is the power of pimâtisiwin—the sacred life. Carry it gently.

John Gonzalez
Standing Bear Network