Sasha taqʷšəblu (tock-sha-blue) LaPointe, I have walked around with you for hours this morning, eating with you, sitting with you, and carrying your book Red Paint through the forest, by the water, and along grassy trails.
How captivating a story is when it takes place in areas right around us, when we learn how people are connected to the land we’re on through their grandparents and great-grandparents. Places we all know flow through the story.
If you haven’t yet come across this book, this is the story of a woman still connected to relatives and ancestors, still connected to the land, but bridging two worlds – the disappearing world of village and culture, and the modern world of aloneness and disconnect – and navigating her purpose, path, and feeling of where home is or should be, while carrying the decimation forced on her lineage by invaders and the traumas forced on her by individuals.
I am drawn to learning about people’s lives, but not from history books that are cold. This book picked me up and carried me along, as I walked alongside another woman who is currently walking this earth, at the same time that I am navigating how to live in this modern world. I don’t have the hardships she has had to carry, nor do I have the living and the spiritual ancestors she walks with each day. Or do I? Has this modern life taught me to be clinical, like a blank slate unaware of the people all around me who have gone before and continue to watch out for me? Hmmm.
To all of you who, like me, continue to search for your home in this life, who feel no ancestral link, who don’t even know your grandparents, who know nothing of your people who came before, or where they lived or how they lived. We are that new displaced global culture, so many of us alone in the world until we marry, live in a house, and have our own kids, but wondering if we will be all alone again and when. No village of relatives, no stories passed down, no dances, no shared spiritual elements bonding us, no relatives tucking us in bed at night, no sitting around a fire making things together and talking about life. I think we all long to live the way our forebears lived – together. I know I do. I missed out on grandparents, aunts, and uncles being ever-there for me. I missed out on girls of the family making things together, braiding each other’s hair, cooking, talking about boys, talking about life, and laughing together every day. I missed out on being one strand in a rich fabric of people all woven together and being there for each other daily, through generations of children and grandchildren. Something in my soul longs for that every day of my life. That’s why I love Orcas Island – it’s the closest I can get to living in a village of extended family.
I felt like I had seen this book before, then realized as I was searching YouTube that Sasha taqʷšəblu has been here at the Orcas Library for a book talk! That’s it – I saw the signs before it happened but didn’t make it. If you, too, missed it, here is the livestream recording of it…
I am returning this copy of the book to the library right now, so come check it out…
