The Dream

The dream means something different to me as I reread it and contemplate the layered messages that are now apparent. This is what happens when we engage in sharing stories; the current environment we are in shifts, and we are then able to learn in a different space and place, one that connects us with stories that are waiting to be heard. What a story may teach us depends on where we are in our life journey. I believe this is at the heart of Indigenous worldview (at least for me). I strive to create safe spaces to engage in ways that allow others to understand Indigenous ways of knowing in a meaningful way. I think of Coyote and how he has helped me safely unpack my own struggles with understanding Eurocentric concepts and worldviews as well as how he has helped me understand my own worldview. This brings us back to the concept of having to balance in two worlds and how hard it is to dwell in a space and place that one does not understand. I consider the dissonance I felt when I first started visiting Coyote in our interstitial meeting place and understand that learning to dwell in place and space can be difficult and uncomfortable for non-Indigenous learners. I wonder what Coyote’s role could be in helping us engage in place and space in a meaningful way. Tuck & Yang (2014) discuss the importance of understanding creation stories that belong to a place but, more importantly, how people become a place. I think about my relationship with Coyote and how he has become the interstitial space where I learn best. Or perhaps we have become the interstitial space where we visit and neither of us exists in that space without the other, and therefore the space would fail to exist if our stories were not intertwined. Coyote’s role is important in many Indigenous nations, and without Coyote we would be missing an important historian that shares with us stories about our histories, philosophies and ways of knowing (Archibald, 2008). In fact, Coyote works hard to ensure we understand our connection to the land, place and space around us (Archibald, 2008). Maybe it is not physical space that we need to dwell in to understand the importance of Indigenous worldview but an in-between space where Coyote can help us understand the importance of belonging, connection and the importance of story as a worldview. Maybe Coyote is the key to my worldview, as he allows me to address my sense of (dis)placement in a way that feels like I still belong to home. Connection to land and the stories it holds is a critical component of Indigenous ways of knowing, and through engaging with Coyote in our interstitial place of gathering I have found a way to connect.