Indigenous Peoples FPIC Protocols

PHILOSOPHY AND SPIRITUALITY Our elders teach us that…. The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug were put here by Keeshaymanitou (the Creator) who gave us the four sacred elements of fire, earth, air and water, along with the right to use them and the responsibility to care for them always in order to maintain the sacred balance of life. This right and responsibility has its spiritual foundation from the beginning of time, it continues now , and will exist in what is yet to come. Water is the source of life – a sacred gift given by the Creator to heal and sustain all living beings. Water is alive, and is life itself. All life on this earth depends on healthy water for survival. Water is a relation, we depend on it and it connects us to all other living things in the sacred web of life which we are a part of. All life is within a circle, including people. Because we are within the same circle, we must be careful in reaching decisions that affect the circle. Our decision will travel around the circle and impact on the future generations to come. We have a responsibility to ensure that the future generations can look back at us and say that our decisions today have not caused harm to them in the future. We have a deep spiritual dimension to our connection with the lake and our territory. We have our own spiritual ceremonies and our own ways of spiritual understanding that have developed over thousands of years of lived relationship to the sacred landscape of our homeland. Our people understand that all entities like plants, rivers, lakes, and animals embody spiritual relationships that must be maintained and honoured. The Big Trout Lake, our home lake, is a living system that reaches far beyond its shores. It interacts with the rivers and streams that feed and drain it, the land whose waters flow into those rivers, the wetlands and muskeg which breathe, the rains, the winds, the underground seams and spring sources, the ice, snow