The Tree That Would Not Disappear

I have spent more than half my life in British Columbia. For my spirit, this is home—but for my soul, Ontario will always be my homelands.

For more than half my life, people from various Nations in BC have asked me, “Oh, you’re not from here, are you?”

Eventually, I started answering, “Why? because I have a neck and you don’t?” 😂

Humour became my way of carrying a question that was not always easy to hear. Although I am Indigenous, I am Anishinaabe. My language, stories, ceremonies, and ancestral memories come from different lands and waters. I could live here for decades and still be recognized as someone whose roots began elsewhere.

When I saw this golden tree standing among the evergreens, I recognized myself.

It belongs to the same forest. Its roots drink from the same earth, and its branches reach into the same sky but it carries a different colour. It does not need to become evergreen to prove that it belongs.

This land has become home to my spirit. It has held me, taught me, and given me room to grow. But Ontario remains my homelands the place my ancestors walked, where my language was born, and where something deep within my soul still recognizes the land.

Maybe we can belong to the place that holds us now while still carrying the place that first formed us.

This tree reminded me that belonging does not require sameness. I do not have to disappear into the forest to honour it. I can respect the Nations whose territories I live upon while standing fully as an Anishinaabe woman.

Sometimes being the only one of your kind does not mean you are in the wrong forest. It means you carry a colour from another homeland—and your presence adds something beautiful to the land that now holds you.

— Waubshki Migisi
from the heart of Loon + Sturgeon 🪶