“Planting a Seed for Tomorrow”

Xahw Chakash was thousands of kilometres away from his native Chiapas, but he felt like he was with family.

The Mayan chief was in Waswanipi several weeks ago learning about the Cree way of life, sharing experiences and hoping to establish a long-term bond between the Native peoples of Mexico and Crees. Here’s what he told us…

“I was really happy to be there, to share with the people. I was really happy to meet the authorities and the band council. They welcomed me there. I am really honoured by that.

I learned about their life, about other Native people’s lives. We talked together and exchanged on their situation and on our situation, the way we live in Chiapas and what we have to face day-to-day.

But I found that it’s the same situation. What we’re living in Chiapas, in Mexico, is almost the same situation, it’s the same issues, the same needs, as what the Crees are going through here in Canada. I found that we have the same suffering.

There are some differences, but they are very little. It’s the same cause. There’s no respect for us, there’s no recognition.

Thanks to the band council, they are looking for other ways to organize themselves as Native people at the international level, the national level and local level.

It’s really important at these levels to exchange our experiences, our ways of life in each country, and even in each community.

We had conversations and we decided to have a formal agreement of mutual cooperation to exchange experiences with our brothers, the Crees.

I hope we’ll be able to work together to build a new life and to recuperate our Native knowledge.

This is a first step for the future with our Native brothers. It’s like planting a new seed for tomorrow so we can share.

Not only in production or commercialization — we can do many things, we can work very seriously to reinforce our cultures, to protect our language, our own education.

Every day there are problems emerging. These problems create needs and we have to find solutions, and we can find solutions with our brothers to share mutual support. Through these types of agreements we can visit each other as Native people.

It was not true what the white people told us, that we were exterminated, that we didn’t exist any more. I see we keep building our history. They’re going to teach us many things – our caves, our sacred water, our mountains.

We have to take care of our mother nature and the father sun. We have to respect each other. We’re going to a new humanity. Thank you very much…

In Waswanipi, they are talking about their way of life, and they told me I couldn’t come here to live because it’s too cold. But I saw I could survive here, I could share with my brothers, I felt like in my own family. It was like my brothers.

I feel it’s the same society. I learned other ways of life, how they live, how they survive in the bush. I can live in the Cree community. It’s the same environment. I could share directly in the community.

I saw how they live. I really wanted to see the community. They gave me traditional food. We went house to house visiting.

Thanks to the team that organized this, Diane Cooper and the band council. I want to thank them for this visit. They let me meet a lot of trappers and hunters. I was really honoured. I’m sad I had to come back because I wanted to stay. I felt like a white man because I couldn’t communicate with them.

But I brought a friend [points to Catherine Lussier from the Institut nationale de la recherche sociale] and she helped with the translation. I send greetings to the communities. Thank you.”