How Celia won the battle of the bones
If you listen to the voice of your intuition, your inner guide, says Somerset author Celia Gunn, amazing things can happen.
Indeed they can – and do. This year, a Canadian film will be released based on Celia's book, A Twist in Coyote's Tale, telling the remarkable story of how she played a leading role in helping a group of Native American people restore their ancestral burial grounds.
Sharing in a shamanic tradition, it was a spiritual journey for Celia which she describes as "the most profound experience of my life".
The Sinixt, or Arrow Lakes, tribe were the first Native Americans in Canadian history to ask for the bones of their ancestors to be returned to them from a museum. And from 1987-93, Celia joined them in their struggle to have the remains returned to their ancient burial ground.
They were successful, but the film, with a working title of The Bone Game, a docu-drama now being completed by Frog Mountain Films in British Columbia, also highlights the continuing fight of the Sinixt to overturn a ruling made by the Canadian government in the 1950s that they were an extinct people.
In the film, Celia, of Peasedown St John, near Bath, is played by an actress, but appears in an interview at the end.
"For anyone to have a film made about a part of their life is a most amazing thing," Celia told me. "I can't really believe what's happening. It's really exciting.
"The film company have added the option into my contract to go on to make a full-length feature film if they can generate interest through the docu-drama.
"But there are very big issues at stake here, so big that it puts a lid on any egotistical glamour kind of feeling I might have. In these matters concerning indigenous peoples, the most effective way to have any result is to raise public awareness about great injustice, and that can put pressure on the government to do the right thing, much more than any political or legal process."
The film was very important because of the battle by the Sinixt to have the extinction label removed. In 2005, the grand-daughter of the Sinixt head man was the first of the tribe to be born in the ancestral lands in more than a century but, in the eyes of the Canadian government, she did not exist. "And to have a voice when you are considered extinct is extremely difficult," said Celia.
How The Bone Game came to be made is an extraordinary story in itself. In 1993, just before Celia returned to the UK, she had a silver ring made by a jeweller in Nelson, British Columbia, as a gift for her husband-to-be, Anthony Thorley.
Unusually, it was in the design of a prehistoric henge and, when Celia returned to Canada in 2006, just after her book was published, she visited the jeweller, an American, Max Froby.
It turned out that not only had Max and his wife Virginia taken part in a Sinixt protest in 1989, but they now ran Frog Mountain Films, and jumped at the chance of filming Celia's book.
"It's a lovely story, how this film came into being," said Celia, "of how spirit works, and how if you learn to follow your impulses and heed the voice of your intuition, which is your inner voice, the most extraordinary things can happen."
2 Comments
by Cliff Woffenden, Sinixt Territory
Tuesday, January 27 2009, 2:44PM
“Thank you Celia for your contribution to the story of the Sinixt and sharing your very personal journey. Those were heady days when we stood with the Sinixt to attempt to protect their sacred land, Emotions ran high. Even today, twenty years later, I get a lump in my throat.
Reading your account brought back many memories and emotions and it inspired me to complete the work that I am doing on their behalf. Ghost Peoples is now complete, adding another perspective to the dialogue on the Sinixt, As the voices of our people grows in harmony with that of our native brothers and sisters, the governments will find it more difficult to shut the Sinixt out of their rightful place in our history and our present.
This land was their s to care for for thousands of years and I can only imagine how it must pain them to see what we have done to it n such a short time. This land needs the example of their stewardship and we, as a society, need their spiritual guidance to find our way home.”
by Sam Ho'semete, Washington, USA
Monday, January 26 2009, 12:01AM
“Thank you my friend for the recognition, my name is Sam, I am the Tsalaki you spoke of as a medicine man, please understand I am simply a man.
My peoples plight in this land you call America is resplendent in history as one of the greatest hoaxes yet perpetrated upon our fellow humans, by those who live their lives in lies. We live, we breathe, we love, we die, and we are the same as you.
My people, the Tsalaki (Cherokee) where the first of this country to be labeled property of the government, we suffered arrest and importation to prison camps where our spirits where broken, we became numbers, this was after gold was discovered on our lands. Later we where shipped to Oklahoma where the job was finished, our inheritance was taken from my family, and others because oil was discovered upon our new lands. We lost our rights there in Okalahoma, to call ourselves even Indians, let alone Tsalaki for the greed in others hearts.
When I dreamed my part in my Miwok Uncle Rainbow¿s sweat lodge in Northern California so many years ago, as a young warrior, I had never met any of the principals portrayed by this movie, I was shown by the creator of us all times which might be, if we lived long enough to be there to share them. Lord of the rings, oh Frodo? Perhaps I could be likened to Samwise Gamgee I would be honored.
Those times where hard to live through for me, my children where taken from me at gun point never to be heard from for the next 20 years or so¿ taken by a government that seems to require extinction of any who question it or believe in something which is not PC. Shortly before I reunited with Celia, my children found me, my little girl and boy, now adults.
Those horrible years that intervened between my little families dispersal and reuniting I devoted to helping the disenfranchised like myself to maintain our collective spirit, for all they and I had oftentimes was belief in the old prophecies, that stood between us and extinction.
I am an east coast Indian, I do not look like my west coast cousins, I look European, I am not Asiatic like the folks here, so what is outside is hard for a lot of folks, I suffered many types of injustice sometimes from those I was there to help, that is history now and forgivable because the story will be told. When I stood the line for my beliefs I was on my own I had no tribal support, nor did I need any, this was just another stop on the warpath for me, I am proud to have stood with those people, the Sinext, and will consider it sacred ground forever.
The song I sing is a Sinext song, my spiritual brother No Name¿s song, he was a doctor for his people, a dreamer also, and of course a singer. We shared much of traditional worlds between us, as people of the spirit will understand, he passed over and as he did he gave me the song to carry. The song is a sit down song where all are given a brief time at the dance to reflect upon the moment. We sang our songs in the winters sometimes at Klapiouts father¿s longhouse; those were good days, I remember now as one of the few left that can in body. It warms my heart to hear his song sung behind the young actress in the trailer.
I met Celia many times in passing during those years from 1987 on, in meetings and ceremonies; we never really connected until after the war so to speak. I met her in Nelson BC, we never spoke of those times perhaps they where too close to us, also my elders had instructed me to learn about my other traditional culture, the European one, she was a logical teacher; and I was not prone to speak about subjects that where still classified to anyone even her. Any way later I told her much of the story from my perspective when we reunited after so many years, another chapter which will go to the cutting room floor lol¿
Celia I want you to know that my respect for you and Anthony grows greater every day and do I ever have a trip planned for us in the future when you folks come back ho”