Co-existing in a harmonious way with Miranda Saddleback

By Laura Mushumanski

(ANNews) – Miranda Saddleback is the co-founder of Mother Tongues Network and director of community engagement, cultural affairs, and web development, where she helps preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages across Turtle Island by striving to provide accessible and interactive Indigenous language learning resources.

Helping people – this understanding is deeply rooted in nêhîyaw pimâtisowin, a Cree way of living and being. These harmonious ways of being, knowing, and understanding are what makes our nêhîyaw sister, Cree sister, Miranda, feel at home. She was taught them at a young age by both her parents, the traditional ways and values of how to walk in a good way.

“Everything that I learned growing up, I put that into everything I do…You always have to have a good heart, mind, and soul, be good and gentle. That energy goes into it…this is an Indigenous way of life, Plains Cree traditions I grew up with – four body people – I carry that with me. I pass that onto my son, I passed that onto the clients I used to work with, even the people I work with [now].”

Four-body people is a Plains Cree reference. The root of nehiyawe – a Cree person comes from newo – is the number four, making up the four quadrants of the medicine wheel: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. These are part of the understandings that Saddleback grew up learning, “I owe it to my father and late mother – the traditional values that I walk with… I didn’t get here alone.”

For Saddleback ceremony is everything, teaching her how to live in a harmonious way – how all that reside on Mother Earth can co-exist together. This understanding came from her late Mother; she taught her to “always treat people like it is their last day – with unconditional love, doing it out of kindness of your own heart” and how this transcends into everything we do as good relatives.

“What really makes me feel at home – my mosoms, my uncles, my kohkoms, and my aunties would say in ceremony, ‘when we are here in ceremony, it feels like we are back at that way of life. It feels like home, we really get to start living, we’re finally here in the real world… Up there there’s money and borders… but when you are in ceremony you feel that realness again,’ and that makes me feel full.”

These teachings and the knowledge that was passed down to Saddleback comes from the heart and teaches her how to be gentle with everything that she does. “I try to say things in a way that can’t be exploited and remember that it’s out of my hands; I leave it to the Creator. I say to the Creator, ‘I want to share this beautiful thing with my ally, I want to share these beautiful things with my friend, but I want them to respect it in a good way,’ and have that in my mind, body, and soul. That’s kind of how I communicate.”

Everything that Saddleback has engaged with, has always been tied directly to the ways of life she was taught. “I didn’t know that this was tied to social work in a sense, because it was just the way of life – nehiyawewin, Plains Cree, a traditional way of life. That’s how you are, and you help people. You aren’t expecting anything, you just do it with the kindness of your own heart…that’s how I grew up.”