“There are so few notes,� the pianist Leon Fleisher said, �but so many implications.� The setting was a recent master class at Carnegie Hall. Fleisher, the master in question, was leading four young musicians through the mystical landscapes of the late sonatas of Schubert. He was speaking about the Andante movement of Schubert�s B-Flat-Major Sonata, but he might as well have been describing Bach�s �Well-Tempered Clavier,� or Brahms�s Intermezzos, or any other music in which a smattering of notes conveys a world of feeling. �There are so few notes, but the implications go back billions of years,� Fleisher went on. �You have to be like the Hubble Space Telescope, which sees stars as old as the universe. The stars are dead, but their light is reaching us just now.�

To heal the “internally directed hatred, internally directed violence” (Highway 158) is a process. A process to break the silence and detach oneself from the vicious cycle. To be free and free in spirit one must face the place of pain and liberate oneself from the sore spot. Highway suggests first to unlock and release the anguish pouring out the poisons in a form of autobiographical or autoportrayal theater.

Charlette knew the healing power of his tool theater. He believed that this lack of cultural identity was at the center of the native youth crisis. For Charlette, culture was the aim and at the same time the push to draw people forward. He knew to respect the ceremonies and the pedagogical force that was at the heart of all ceremonies to point to the question of who we are. He knew that the essence of the ceremonial healing theater must follow this path of traditional rituals and ceremony leaving entertainment behind. When asked what is the difference between theater and ceremony and ritual he answers without hesitation “None!” (Charlette).

The term ceremony/ritual, used by Charlette, is a loose philosophical term. In our materialistic, money centred world we search for a place to belong. According to Charlette each person is a spirit entity. It is ridiculous to be spiritual on this earth because we already are a spirit. What is important is to know that one is a spirit and to learn how to be a human being. Since as a human we are mortal we can never answer all the mysteries that surround us. In this limited time one can learn about oneself: Who one is? Why one is here? What is ones specific gift? To exist as a human is itself about ritual. Ritual is life itself. Free from the idea that ritual is religious, the actor working on the body, the mind and voice is an incredible ritual. A ritual journey towards an understanding of this precious life.

There are three types of circles; the talking circle, the sharing circle and the healing circle. All circles start with a prayer and the ritual smudging. There is a feather to be held by the one talking and the rest listen. The feather goes around the circle with its own time. No one talks without the feather. They listen. If it is a talking circle the participants talk openly on any kind of subject or issue. Each person will share and voice out. The circle values just speaking the truth from the heart. If it is a sharing circle one person becomes the focus and is allowed to speak on something that has specifically happened. The subject is limitless. One allows oneself to share while the rest listen. When finished the others will speak as a response.

The healing circle is formed when one is ill either physically, mentally or emotionally. A person is placed at the center of the circle and the circle prays for the person. The person asks for healing. Poundmaker and Charlette both believe the grandmothers and grandfathers are present in circles to guide and help the participants. Nobody controls the circle. Charlette asserts that “the circle controls the circle. You get that many people and that many spirits sitting in a circle, depending on the prayers and where everybody is at, they can be incredibly powerful” (Charlette).

From the talking circles Circle Of Voices has developed a working process to create a script. The personal stories are transformed into a theatrical story. After the talking circles are established the professional writer comes in and becomes a part of the circle. The playwright and youth participants get to know each other and slowly open to each other. Then an interview process takes place between them one and one. Taking down all information, they discuss the play, the structure, plot, storyline, characters, and everything. Meantime permission is asked from the story owners to use their story in the final script. Then the playwright goes away for three or four weeks to write and comes back with a working draft. They spend another week in talking circles. Once a final script is drafted, COV has a permission to change it during rehearsals. The rehearsal process, directed by Charlette, breathes life into the script.

�If you build it, they will come� was the project theme of this First Nation of 800 people in two remote Quathiaski Cove communities near Campbell River. The �it� was a 40-foot long cedar canoe unique to the band. The goal was to involve the youth in its design and construction and use the project as a catalyst for promoting culture, good health and self-esteem. The need for such a project – fun and culturally based – was made pressing by increases in youth crime, suicides, high school dropouts, substance abuse, alcohol consumption and smoking brought about by the devastating collapse of the local fishing industry, and also by the rapid passing of community elders and their knowledge of language and culture. The canoe – named �Lekwiltok� after the legendary �unkillable� seaworm of Cape Mudge We Wei Ka legend – is scheduled for an official launch May 1. The community hopes to take the canoe on a journey to a First Nations regatta this summer in Cowichan. �It really has brought the whole community together and become a source of excitement and pride,� says Cape Mudge Community Health Representative Patricia Wilson.

When you look at the pre-Christian version of “soul,” you see that what they meant wasn’t so much a soul that was a different substance infused or injected into the body. It referred to a quality in a person who was able to use surplus energy for the benefit of others, not needing to get it all for himself. I came to the conclusion that “soul” is really our way of thinking about not devoting all of one’s psychic energy to maximize oneself in any form, whether it’s getting comfortable, rich, famous, or wealthy. Some of that energy is also devoted to somebody else’s or something else’s well-being, or advantage, or goal. So that kind of thing is “soul” as far as I’m concerned. That’s the leading edge of evolution, where you don’t need to consume all your energy for your own purposes, but you can devote some of that energy for something that will benefit others, including the planet.

How the Coast Salish squared off

Coast Salish eating contests were as personal as the ones Jacobs entered. The difference is that only one person or one team ate, and it was always the guests. The object was, literally, to eat the host out of house and home. Drop by my house at the right time, and this could take less than 15 minutes – which was of course, the point. The eater�s boast: �My power can consume everything you own.� The host�s implicit reply: �I am so rich, I have so much food, that I can feed your eating power until it can�t eat any more��which is a serious malfunction in an eating power.

�All of a man�s property and his wives and children might be forfeit if he lost in such a situation,� writes Marian Wesley Smith, in her 1940 ethnographic study The Puyallup-Nisqually. Smith notes that it was not just the amount of food eaten that was extraordinary, but the style with which it was eaten: �After consuming the food and while eating, the person showed no extra puffiness nor bunches on his body or under his clothes.�

So when three old men came to challenge one of Smith�s informants at a feast, they talked and joked among themselves as they ate four entire meals apiece. They stopped short when he still had a half a side of beef left, and blamed their defeat on the watermelon he�d served for dessert. Too much water. Three years later, they came back for a return match. After an entire yearling steer, potatoes, rice, beans, bread, and fruit, they conceded defeat. There is no record of what, if anything, they lost.

Then there�s the story of the old man who, in his youth, had boasted of his eating power around some white settlers. When challenged, he sat down and ate two sides of beef�a cow, in other words�and washed it down with a barrel of water. �They were satisfied,� Smith�s informant says.

I would have been more nervous than satisfied watching a man of normal size eat a cow�calmly, chewing well as he went, possibly making jokes and taking side bets, showing no signs of discomfort. The barrel of water I can accept, somehow. But where did the cow go? The Puyallup-Nisqually people who talked to Smith in the 1930s would have said that the man�s power ate the cow. That�s at least as reasonable as the idea that it all fit in his stomach. Of course, physics tells us that the cow and the man are both just collections of atoms, which is to say tiny bits of matter and a whole lot of empty space.

Maybe Coast Salish power eaters knew some way to restructure the food so it became immensely compact. Maybe not. But if a cow disappears into a man, and the man does not blow up, like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python�s The Meaning of Life, then I, for one, would like an explanation. If it isn�t the stomach, what gives?