This event is sold out.

In this session, Cree knowledge keeper Marilyn Dykstra invites visitors who have completed the two years of Full Moon teachings to return and continue their commitment.

The winter solstice has returned, signalling that it is time to focus on our spiritual growth as our first mother, the Earth, deepens her sleep for regeneration. We will experience the longest night, but that darkness will carry us toward the light. The easiest way to see that light is to reconnect with natural law, with the medicines and with the light within ourselves.

Medicines are not external to us; they live within each person.

Emotional growth is medicine because it creates a healing movement. As we look back on the past year, we can ask ourselves: “How have I put the teachings of the sacred pipe into practice?”

Through this reflection, we find regeneration and discover new places to grow. We commit to ourselves, to our Wahkowtowin relations and to our healing. In difficult times, we do not run away. Like our creature teachers and allies, we stand and face the storm. They know that even when the water is frozen, medicine still flows within all living beings. Let’s practise allyship and grow together.

Method of teaching

The session will use Indigenous pedagogy and will include traditional tea and the burning of traditional medicines. Participants will explore their relatedness and interconnection with human rights and balance.

This workshop is part of a monthly Wahkowtowin and Ways of Being series led by knowledge keeper Marilyn Dykstra. Each month, we will explore a variety of moon, pole and tea teachings in the Inninewak (Cree) tradition.

Wahkowtowin – which translates to kinship – highlights how relationships, communities and the natural world are all interconnected.

Participants will discover and reflect on their connections with each other, with balance and with human rights through teachings and a traditional tea.

Traditional helper Peyton will support the teachings while she continues her learning journey within Wahkowtowin.

Marilyn Dykstra

Marilyn Dykstra is a status Bill C31 First Nations woman from northern Manitoba. She has been immersed in a working matriarchal system that practised Indigenous ways of thinking and being since she was born. Alongside her family, she has participated in many peaceful social justice movements.

Marilyn uses her matriarchal knowledge as a foundation for her work in the Indigenous community, which has been ongoing for over 30 years. She still follows her matriarchal teachings, but she has also spent her life learning traditional knowledge and passing the teachings on.

She is a pow wow dancer and knowledge keeper, and she carries the responsibility of a bundle. She happily participates in naming ceremonies, sweats, pipe ceremonies, moon teachings and more.