Healing Ground, Part Three in Healing Ground

Sorry to be so slow to continue this chronicle. I've been out of town. Here's part three. Part four will finish it up:

Nancy, known now as Christie, had been looking for them, as well. It wasn’t easy. Much of her information was incorrect and a lot of her time had been spent unraveling all the knots. Christie’s adoptive mother had been told that Christie’s birth mother had died while giving birth to Christie and that Christie’s older siblings had been placed in foster care, as well. Hitting dead end after dead end, Christie finally tried a long shot: she wrote to the Red Bank Band of Chippewa, seeking permission from the tribal council to write to the newspaper.

Christie explained in her letter that she didn’t think her mother was a member of the Red Lake Band, but that her great-great-grandfather was enrolled with the Buffalo Point Band during the 1800s and that she wanted to know her ancestry because she felt as if she’d been “reading a book that was missing its first five chapters” and she couldn’t wait until she found “out how it began.”

When life happens in mysterious ways, it is impossible to think that Divine Providence does not factor in. How else to explain the coincidence of Gidget’s friends suddenly deciding to drive to Red Bank the next day, each thinking the other had business in town? While there, they picked up a newspaper, which coincidently ran Christie’s letter seeking information on her parentage. They remembered the story their friend Gidget had told them and put the two together.

Gidget wasted no time in contacting Christie, asking her if she’d been adopted and if her name had been Nancy. At long last, Gidget introduced herself to her little sister. Their meeting banished any doubts: Christie was the spitting image of Lorraine, her mother. She met her half-siblings’ father, and she met her biological father. But it was not until the Pow Wow, held seventeen years ago on June 1st , 1996, that all of the living children of Lorraine Lightning gathered together for the first time in decades.

Pow Wow is a time to celebrate the growing season and Mother Earth in Warroad, as well as a time of honor and healing. Many families combine their family reunions with the ceremony and the people of Warroad are no different. They fully acknowledge that life is a process of struggle and victory and a Pow Wow is a time to mark the process.

The town’s name tells their story, derived from its Indian name, Kay-Bay-Kah-Nong, meaning “end of the trail”. The Sioux and the Ojibwe battled over its fishing and wild rice, with the latter as the victor, thus the name “war trail” which eventually became “War Road”.

The battles are long since over and the ceremonies today celebrate understanding and peace and healing. The Ojibwe (also known as the Chippewa) elders were the first to arrive at the Pow Wow to be held by the lake. They set about their work, cleansing and blessing the ground and lighting a sacred fire that would remain lit throughout the weekend. Participants would arrive the next day, called “camp day”.

The children of Lorraine Lightning did indeed belong to the Ojibwe tribe, and a special ceremony had been planned for them. It was time to welcome the girls back to their fold of their tribe or “band”.