Good Medicine – Natasha Jones, Guest Blogger

We all need good medicine.

And it comes in so many forms. From traditional smudging medicines to healing plant medicines, from time spent with family and treasured friends to good teachings. From drumming to time spent with Mother Earth.

All important and all to be honoured.

I’m honoured to count myself amongst a group of strong Indigenous women who I call my friends, and who I could also call my many mothers. I’m the youngest women amongst our group of drummers and so many of these women have passed on so many good teachings and good medicine to me. They’ve shared their good medicine many times over and I’ve always shared mine with them.

We gather together regularly to drum and sing but recently we all felt that a special gathering was calling to us. We gathered at a place called Wigwam Point. It is sacred place for the Mi’kmaq people in our area but our group is not just Mi’kmaq women. Our circle is for all Indigenous women and I’m honoured to share a circle with strong Mi’kmaq, Innu and Mohawk women.We are all different and so unique. Each of us brings something special to our circle.

We are always happy to gather together but this past Mother’s Day weekend we spend time with each other amongst Mother Earth with a purpose. We had special work to complete – we needed to finish repairing our big drum.

We call it our drum but it isn’t our drum. It’s the community’s drum. We are merely the drum’s caretakers.

The big drum is mostly viewed as a men’s drum but we have no men’s group and so we care for our drum like a mother cares for her child. We will continue caring for our big drum until such a time that we are no longer meant to hold it. Maybe we are meant to pass it along. Maybe a strong women’s group is meant to drum it. Maybe it will be the men. Maybe we will keep it for years. Until we know, our drum will stay with us and we will care for it.

And so we honoured our big drum on Mother’s Day weekend by finishing it with seven beads on each strand that connected the drum to its base. We chose seven beads because of the number’s importance in our teachings. Seven is a sacred number – we have seven levels of creation, life occurs in stages of seven’s, and there are seven districts in Mi’kma’ki (our home – K’taqmkuk is part of the seventh district Unama‘ki).

We were honoured with the presence of an Eagle while together and we all felt blessed to have been such given a beautiful day.

We shared in good strong medicine that day.

We prayed, sang, drummed and rattled. We feasted, laughed, shared stories, and sat with Mother Earth. We leaned on each other’s shoulders to find comfort from any stress or sorrows we carried. We gathered with love and compassion.

We shared in the good medicine of Mother Earth and we were good medicine for one another.

I feel we always will be.