I honour these women every year:

I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was in Peterborough, Ontario. It was snowing and Loreena McKennit was playing a concert. The news trickled in all afternoon and evening, and what we were hearing was sickening. When Loreena McKennit took the stage, she played solo surrounded by candles, and we kept vigil with her for a while and then later at the war memorial, because there was no other place in town to greive women who had been killed by men.

That was 15 years ago, and I’ll continue to remember that day as long as the women of our families, communities and nations continue to suffer violence at the hands of men.

I ran into my old friend Simon Brascoupe today at a meeting I was facilitating here in Vancouver. Simon is a man of many hats: he has taught at Trent University, University of Manitoba and Carleton in contemporay Aboriginal economic development; he has worked in Chiapas and on international indigenous rights; he is a sometime federal government public servant, currently with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada; and he is a well known artist in Canada, working with print and paint and anything else he can get his hands on.

Over Thai food at lunch today he told me about the Iroquois Hair Comb Education and Art Project. Simon’s passion for this topic seems out of all proportion to the subject, until you realize that what he and his artistic partner are doing is nothing less than revitalizing an important and lost art which is integral to Iroquian culture. Not only that, but through the course of this work, they are discovering that hair combs are very important personal, spiritual and community objects in indigenous societies all over the world.

Hair plays an important role in Iroquian history. The Peacemaker, a man who brought the Great Law of Peace to the Confederacy, combed the snakes and tangles from the hair of Tododaho, an evil and deadly Onondaga wizard who stood in the way of the peace. With his hair ritually combed, Tododaho consented to the Great Law and the peace took root amonst the five nations of the Iroquois confederacy. Simon told me a version of this story where the hair then transforms into the roots of the pine tree that became known as the tree of peace. Given this story, you can see how combs would take on great importance.

More on this here and here (with video).

This is great. Central casting could not have picked more perfectly.

I’ll stop crying now. Ow. My ribs hurt.

The Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network Library