First Nations Tribal Journeys | Standing Together 2017

Tribal Journeys to We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum 

First Nations Hosting Standing Together 2017

Public Security on McColl Magazine

STORY ANTHOLOGY

State-of-the-Art On-Site Net Washing Vessels

Two more On-site Net Washing Vessels joined the Badinotti fleet on the waters off North Vancouver Island in 2018, "We ordered two more vessels to work out of Port Hardy and Port McNeill in the waters of the Broughton Archipelago," says Kevin Onclin, CEO at Badinotti Net Services Canada Ltd.. On occasion they will be found on west coast of Vancouver Island.

The new acquisitions are made based on the performance of BRAVO II earlier this year. "BRAVO III and BRAVO IV will be the same design as the first vessel with the exception of some mainly cosmetic tweeking in the overall design," he says.

These vessels are delivered fully equipped at a cost of over $2 million each. The first arrived April 1, and the second arrived May 1, 2018. "These boats are operated by 3-man crews, and will be put into service 7 days a week. Each of these vessels has two crews working 7 days on and 7 days off or 8 days on and 6 days off."Crewing these vessels will not be a problem. We have recruitment underway and it means some new jobs for people qualified to operate with tickets for Under 15 Tonnes SVOP." The company has hired the odd 60 tonne skipper.

The vessels are designed to meet new demands for net cleaning in the oceans surrounding Vancouver Island. "They go out and clean nets. There is a huge demand for the these units since the farms sites require regular cleaning of their nets. The companies want to keep nets clean, and keep the fish swimming in clean water.

BACKGROUND
Badinotti Net Services Canada Ltd. in Campbell River, B.C., took possession of the first 40' catamaran, in January 2017, designed specifically to clean nets on the open sea. The Bravo II was the result of two years of research and planning based at Badinotti Net Services years of on-site net washing operations. "We were looking to custom build a boat for on-site net washing that would maximize the efficiencies for the machinery, equipment and crews," says Onclin.

The fleet of BRAVOs came out of a two-year project with concentrated planning and preparation. "We are very satisfied with the performance of the vessel. We selected a catamaran design to create a stable safe working platform for the crews and machinery including a crane, since most of the hours of operation occur at the farm sites as opposed to travelling to and from sites."

The BRAVO II is a 'cat' built by Armstrong Marine, Inc., which designs and builds a variety of welded aluminum boats in Port Angeles, Washington. "Armstrong Marine were selected primarily due to their expertise in catamaran construction."

Beginning in 2011 in B.C., the fish farming operations have been moving away from the use of antifouling paints (copper based) to keep the nets clean on fish farms. By 2017 most farm companies have completely eliminated the use of antifouling coatings from their operations. The traditional business model for the net service business, which relied upon dipping or coating of nets, had to adapt and reinvent operations to keep pace.

Badinotti Net Services wanted to provide eco-friendly methods to clean aquaculture nets on the west coast, allowing fish farmers to deploy clean and repaired nets for longer periods with no anti-foulant. The BRAVO II crews do not use anti-foulant or chemical cleaning of nets when at sea.

To provide optimum service in this changing market, Badinotti'snon-site net washing vessels are driven by two 480 horsepower diesel engines, moving from site-to-site at about 10 knots.

Badinotti Net Services added the department of On-Site Net Washing (OSW) over three years ago, "in order to respond to our customers new service requirements. On-site net washing we believe is a long term sustainable business model and although some farm companies are washing their own nets internally, for us, the OSW is our core business and focus. Consequently we believe we can deliver a cost effective service for the farm companies."

Jane Ash Poitras Awarded the Order of Canada

See Canadian Art for the story

In Memory of Marcus Alfred; Second Video Features his Dad, Wayne Alfred, Two Important Alert Bay Artists of the Potlatch Tradition

Art of Marcus Alfred from Malcolm McColl on Vimeo.

The Art of Wayne Alfred from Malcolm McColl on Vimeo.

Goodbye Winter . . .

This dude is crazy!! Want to try this pic.twitter.com/ThBDrbGHZS

— Viral Videos (@appearance) April 7, 2017

Tim Rundle, Creative Salmon Organic, Champion

Organic Champion of the Year award

​Tim Rundle, General Manager, Creative Salmon Organic, was honored on April 5th, 2017, with the Organic Champion of the Year award at the Canadian Organic Trade Association’s (COTA) awards night. Held in Vancouver this inaugural year, the event celebrated the contributions of organic agriculture and aquaculture producers across Canada – including west coast aquaculture representatives, Tim Rundle from Creative Salmon and Justin Herny from Northern Divine Aquafarm. 

Rundle, who is also the Chair of the Pacific Organic Seafood Association (POSA), was recognized for his involvement in the organic seafood community and his role in the development of the Canadian Organic Aquaculture Standard published in 2012. Rundle also sits on the board of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.

The Organic Champion award highlights the commitment and implementation of organic growing procedures, sustainable planning, and innovative product development in the agriculture and aquaculture industry. Under Rundle’s leadership, Creative Salmon has continually demonstrated their dedication to achieving and upholding a high standard of organic farming – an important step forward for the organic aquaculture industry.

“It is an honour to receive this award, and it signifies some recognition of the efforts being put towards Organic Aquaculture,” said Rundle. “This was the first year for the awards put on by COTA, and shows that aquaculture is starting to be recognized in the greater Organic community.”

Creative Salmon, based in Tofino, is North America’s first certified organic farmed salmon producer, achieving the certification in 2013. The company raises organic pacific Chinook and is committed to ensuring they are producing a healthy and organic food source. Low-density salmon pens, environmentally friendly net cleaning, and sourcing sustainable fish feed are just some of the ways the company meets the requirements of Canadian Organic Aquaculture Standard.

Rundle also attributes their success to the collaboration between the members of POSA, which includes fellow BCSFA members Taplow Feeds and Cargill Aqua-Nutrition Canada/EWOS Feeds. POSA members have endeavored to spread the message of organic aquaculture through tours and providing educational materials to distributors, restaurants, and consumers.

“The award was really about the work with the Pacific Organic Seafood Association in continuing to advance Organic Aquaculture Standards in Canada and it was acknowledgment of the efforts put into making this happen,” said Rundle.

The award is an initiative by COTA to encourage and support the production of high-quality organic products in Canada. The recognition of Creative Salmon and POSA underlines the substantial progress that the organic aquaculture industry has made, and will continue to make in the future.

WOW MAGIC

What kind of sorcery is this pic.twitter.com/i1FEPHR2bv

— Comedy (@itscomedyVines) March 24, 2017

Stop Debasing Democracy with Stupid Phrases

TTC Rider Denies Sitting on His Feet "That would be assault"

SNL VS Trump

US ELECTION IN A NUTSHELL

If I'm elected President, you're going to jail

Superman Rides a Bike

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Life In the Wind, a Musician, and a Tradesman (and an Artist)

Randy dabbles with paint as well

By the time Randy Dakota was well into his fifties, he had experienced the highs and the lows of life and come a long way to find the balance between. The highs came two ways, as a highly paid builder of infrastructure and professional pipefitter, as well as his skill as a musician playing in front of thousands of devoted fans. The lows found Randy living in streets (through two winters!) in Edmonton, Alberta, where his idea of home was found under a bridge or beneath a parking garage, where a feast became snared rabbit obtained in the river valley.

(“It is delicious!”) He made snares from broken guitar strings. He cooked rabbit over fire and on a barbeque. He used McDonald’s Restaurant condiments to spice up the meal.

Until landing in this peculiar estate, Randy was living a pure Canadian’s dream in Yellowknife, NWT, during the 1990s, earning large wages pipefitting for mining operations. On a given two-week break from the working life Randy would depart the north to join top-flight blues and country musicians to play lead or bass guitar and sing many of his own songs (for he is an accomplished songwriter). He played in Guam, Finland, and elsewhere in the world.

The life he made for himself in the north was percolating, and in it he was able to do most of what he wanted, including drugs and alcohol,. If life couldn’t get any better, well, a few turns of the screw would soon make it worse, then worse, then much, much worse progressively forming habits two or three. The slide onto an urban trap line began after his common-law wife in Yellowknife announced she was pregnant and hit him hard by announcing the child belonged to somebody else. This announcement caused him to depart job, city, and territory to live on the road.

He went south to find a band and live in a suitcase in hotels where he played across Canada. As time went by addiction grew into a ticking time bomb that threatened to blow away everything. And blow it did on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 when a crisis occurred. They played in the band for the promise of a large New Year’s Eve paycheque and after the event members of the band awoke to find cheques that were worthless, while the leader of the band stole the entire hotelier’s payment. This loss was doubled by the tragic reaction of a close friend and band member when friend and fellow musician met desperation and betrayal by committing suicide.

Randy looks back and sees the picture clearly today, but at the time it was incomprehensible. Randy’s mental outlook sank into depression, which he vividly recalls was triggered by, “doubting if my dream of a life in music was anything but a nightmare.” His own crushing depression ensued and Randy decided to ‘step off’ stage. He abandoned the musical profession by selling an expensive set of Stratocaster guitars and amplifiers and all of his equipment and divesting of other worldly possessions. He checked out of society, not in stages, but like it was some kind of hotel; he left all at once. He leapt full-time into a life of triple addiction and burned through his will chasing cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.

He played a battered guitar on the mean street corners, and in the underground stations of Edmonton’s Light Rail Transit system, and arranged himself a cost-efficient accommodation under a bridge (says he became a troll), and later, a parking garage under the high-priced real estate of the valley, and got wrecked on everything he could lay his hands on while enduring all-Canadian seasons in the bare comfort of whatever hovel he managed to scrape together.

Perhaps the lonely years spent in hotels as a musician had equipped him for such a crash. At first he depended on friends by sleeping on their couches and supplying them with a share of the drugs, and as the clock turned backwards and backwards the need for drugs grew more selfish, and, as the rapidity of progression into addiction increased to terminal velocity he was mainly left alone to face his demons or escape them by getting smashed.

The 1990s became a faded memory of moments of glory on stage and a terrible sadness found in between. Life became an uphill struggle, trudging every step to the next, spending it all if possible within an inescapable ‘maze’ of addiction. Music has been a driving force in Randy’s life, “It is genetic,” ascribing this inheritance to Métis heritage, as he later learned, “My mother’s brother was a gifted player,” who became well known in Winnipeg as a singer songwriter and guitar player.

He learned about this lineage later in life, where he came from, including that his great grandfather had been Canadian voyageur, a courier de bois (runner of the woods). “I saw a picture of him and asked my grandmother why he had crease marks on his forehead and sides of his face. She told me the markings came from pulling York Boats upstream,” from the leather strapping to pull heavy watercraft upstream and portage over land. This true Manitoban Canadian had earned these distinctive facial markings by the work he did for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He carried mercantile trading goods from Winnipeg to Norway House and back, one long arduous voyage every year.

It turned out Randy has the purest form of Western Canadian heritage there is. Important details like family history were missing from his youth, by the fact he was adopted out by his biological mother, whom he did not meet until he was 37 old. And the close relationship with an adoptive family was interrupted by the period spent snaring rabbits in Edmonton’s river valley, and, before that, addictive behaviour.

Randy was raised by adoption into a family, and this wasn’t half bad. “My father gave me a trade as a pipefitter. He taught me a lot,” and was always generous to his adoptive son. His mother could not have children so they adopted Randy and his sister. It had been a normal childhood spent in a family environment and he felt nurtured far more than deprived, it was a good family environment and he feels he was blessed by it.

Later the nurturing away from addiction came from detox facilities and treatment centres and creating art as therapy, and the 12 step program that helped him to fill his medicine pouch used to form a powerful spiritual foundation, including later a faith in the Living God, his Higher Power.  SEE Angelique Merasty Levac

Creating expertise in First Nation housing in Canada

A key goal for Sylvia Olsen was to establish a national First Nations building Inspector program in education, an accredited course in housing management, and Olsen was involved with Nancy Hamilton at Vancouver Island University (VIU) in developing the curriculum for housing managers to become certified First Nation housing inspectors.

Olsen knows there is a patchwork of regulations in First Nation housing. There is no national building code on-reserve and regulations about housing are done reserve by reserve. What are the main impediments creating national standards for building inspections and housing departments on Indian Reservations in Canada?

Obviously first and foremost it's money. Building codes and related inspections and enforcement are done reserve by reserve. There is no cash to pay for education and salary of qualified building inspectors. It is the opinion of people like Olsen that it's time to bite the bullet, for government to implement a wide-spread national blitz to create housing codes for First Nations equal to the National Building Code of Canada. Olsen believes that some will continue to refuse, and it will take more time and effort, but it requires something other than the piecemeal approach.

"What will force it is new home ownership coming on reserve, a trend that is occurring amongst both young and old who are getting private mortgages." Olsen suggests they will be concerned with protecting the assets they have purchased. "Band offices by and large have no capacity to do it, managing properties does not take priority in council and Bands often lack administrative capacity for managing residential and commercial real estate."

It takes doing the legwork on training to build capacity to administer codes, including those which apply to people with mortgages for example.

Development of housing is done amid a lack of qualifications where building inspection may not be entirely desirable by Band Councils, which is ultimately why the regulatory approach has to be national.

Olsen was finishing a Ph.D on housing, and continues to teach and consult on Aboriginal housing around Canada, was a course facilitator with VIU, where the university has had very active students from around B.C.. Housing managers are taking the course. Some started and found it was more to handle than they thought, and others have remained dedicated to the present program.

They are delivering the course over about three months on-line, and VIU is receiving interest right across the country. Olsen says VIU has been persistent in delivering the program. She has been across the country to numerous reserves, witnessing housing managers improving housing in First Nation communities. She has traveled to distant points, including northern Ontario for two months where portfolios of Bands contain every housing hurdle imaginable.

Olsen comes by her experience in First Nation housing from more than three decades living on Tsarlip Indian Reserve near Victoria, B.C., “I met my husband and moved there when I was 17 years old and I raised my family there,” she says. “It's a very nice place to live. I worked in housing at Tsarlip beginning in the early 1990s.”

The creation of accredited courses was initially pursued by the First Nation National Housing Managers Association (FNNHMA), now defunct. Olsen was a founding member of FNNHMA in 2006. She worked in provincial and national Aboriginal housing committees over the years. She immersed in the study of First Nation housing based on the history of Aboriginal housing development in Canada. Olsen has other interests, is a storyteller at heart, was a writer-in-residence at Carson Graham School in North Vancouver, B.C.. “I am a member of the Victoria Storytellers Guild.”

Olsen worked with Mike King a Housing Manager of Beausoliel First Nation in southern Ontario since 2000, and Nancy Hamilton at VIU Distance Education Department. King says, “We work-shopped the idea of a housing managers certificate program with CMHC when we started in 2006. We received funding from CMHC to visit housing trade shows and conferences, get a website established, and start developing a proper job description for housing management.”

King says, “It's really all about property management on-reserve. Property management comes into it because the area of responsibility grows when you consider the tens of millions of dollars in property management we are discussing. It involves rents, mortgages, and asset management. A lot of these administrative functions are being done on a part-time basis." Much more is needed to be done.

FNNHMA may have folded but success was in the wind for Olsen. They developed the program at VIU. The first module of certification was piloted in three locations around B.C., in 2008/09. Fifteen students took the course in Nanaimo, and other classes were held in Terrace and Kamloops. She was initial facilitator teaching the course in the hope that along with certification, a complete curricula including finance, administration, communications, and construction management would be developed. Once it was all put together, VIU would work to encourage national certification.

The Atlantic provinces received pilot programs. Pilot courses were delivered in Moncton and Halifax. They were coast to coast with the program and there was strong interest in Quebec Aboriginal housing for working out the language questions to certify in Quebec. Organizers have always felt the urgency to get the program going is on a national basis.

VIU rolled out a full-time program and the way it stands is VIU delivers B.C. First Nations Building Inspector courses in a Full-time Certificate Program. First Nations Building Inspector is a program designed to provide participants with specific skills for successful employment as a Building Inspector.

VIU dedicated resources to developing a unique program. The Nanaimo-based university applied for program funding as an exceptional school. At the same time they recognized it was a First Nations initiative. One of the main battles was to establish appropriate financial remuneration for certified housing managers.

“Finding the wage for certified housing managers is one of the challenges. You have precedents out there but a great deal depends on the financial state of the Band.” Even so, “Across Canada we have some of the most amazing people working in housing management on reserve,” and, Olsen noted, “The force of their expertise and a certification process will help make housing management certification a national reality," eventually.

Housing on-reserve is changing. “Lots of people are working to resolve the structural issues in First Nation housing. Poverty remains the main problem in housing. Another problem is that housing remains entirely government-run,” whereas other social activities like health and education have been taken over by the First Nations. “Aboriginal housing will eventually be,” she says, “under the direct control of First Nation leadership.”

Some of the emerging leadership came from FNNBOA, "It's been a long time coming," said Richard (Bud) Jobin (who passed away in 2015), regarding education initiatives to certify housing management officers in First Nations. Jobin had said, "We have supported them from the beginning." Jobin was director of FNNBOA and was working for a over a decade to arrange education of First Nation building officers qualified for housing inspection.

FNNBOA focused its effort with people like Nancy Hamilton at Vancouver Island University to make the housing management and inspection skills transferrable to the mainstream economy. FNNBOA was dedicated to higher standards, and Jobin believed they needed the inspector course at VIU to deliver transferrable skills. Jobin had noticed that the province of B.C. was supportive of FNNBOA in the process of seeking national standards for First Nation housing professionals.

FNNBOA Winter 2014 newsletter contained a stark reminder of the necessity for change in First Nation housing standards, "Cold winter weather in Canada conjures up images of skating on outdoor rinks and tobogganing. Unfortunately, it also brings fire losses and deaths, especially in First Nations communities. This happened recently in Pelican Narrows, Sask., where two boys died in a house fire. Fire deaths among Canada’s First Nations people are the highest in North America. The fire incidence rate is2.4 times greater per capita than that for the rest of Canada, the fire damage per unit 2.1 times greater, the fire injury rate 2.5 times greater, and the death rate 10.4 times greater."


Freelance Writing by Mack McColl

Grace Dove, Canadian Actor

Kukwtsetsemc to the #Navajo nation for having me as a guest to your community! 🙌🏽🌵#dreamersjunction pic.twitter.com/oH7hgr6yXP

— Grace Dove (@_gracedove) March 4, 2016

Grace Dove - IMDb 

In Australia as elsewhere

@Matt_Cooke86 NACCHO Health News : Sugary soft drinks 'killing the Aboriginal population' https://t.co/I3vpRl7QAk pic.twitter.com/HhEr260iO6

— Aboriginal Health (@NACCHOAustralia) February 14, 2016

Veterinary Services, Another Missing System in First Nations Communities

Official statistics on the number of dog attacks within Canada are non-existent. There is little argument however that most of these attacks seem to afflict First Nation communities. Municipalities and provinces have the legal capacity to deal with animal control issues. Winnipeg City Council introduced a ban on pit bull terriers in 1990. Ontario have had a province wide ban on the breed since 2005. The city of Calgary have a dangerous dog bylaw which is not breed specific. Edmonton require all dogs considered to be dangerous to wear a muzzle. It is just common sense. Why then did Lance Ribbonleg from the North Tallcree First Nations reserve, Alberta get mauled by a pack of dogs  November 16, 2006?

He was just five years old when his flesh was torn from his body in a vicious attack by man's best friend. He died before paramedics could get him to hospital. RCMP Sgt Ryan Becker interviewed at the time of the attack said it wasn't unusual to get a number of complaints about stray dogs, "Usually it's because they are starving." Whilst some evidence exists that dogs have been kept by First Nation people for centuries, there is also little argument most of the breeds less favored by European settlers died out. Officially the Canadian kennel club accepts 143 different breeds of dog as Canadian pure breds, we can find four from the First Nations, which makes this is a European problem. It is as Veterinarian Dr. Richard G. Herbert said as he discussed at a Treaty 3 meeting in Ontario, "a man-made problem."

Throughout Canada people are still living poverty stricken and brutal lives and they are being denied basic fundamental rights. Children and animals are suffering but rarely will you see reference to the fact. Roaming dogs are a common sight on First Nation reserves and people are regularly in danger from feral or stray vicious dog attacks. Its just common sense that there needs to be a veterinary infrastructure within reserves. Veterinary infrastructures are scant in third world countries, but this is Canada. The modern Canadian veterinary infrastructure provides animal care and disease prevention strategies. It creates a good structure for population control via access to spay and neutering programs as well as the foundations by which humane societies and dog wardens/animal control officers can control animal populations. It also enables the country to maintain its place in the global market selling livestock and animal goods, and therein lies the problem.

The true reason for the absence of an Aboriginal Veterinary program seems obvious. It is because the Indigenous people are denied basic rights and recognition from many veterinary legislations and regulations, and services.

A common assumption among non-Indigenous people which is supported by factually incorrect and often dismissive historical accounts is that Indigenous people did not endeavor in agricultural pursuits. In reality they had been farming for countless numbers of years before European settlers arrived. Lies were perpetrated early, when British born historian John Hawkes moved to Western Canada in 1884 and wrote that, "The Indian was not a natural farmer. He was born a hunter and a warrior." Archeologists have uncovered plenty of evidence of farming in Canada. As early as 1100 AD corn was being sown north of Winnipeg near the Red River.

It is the exclusion of Indigenous people from federal and provincial commercial laws that has always prevented them from having a successful agricultural footing. The lack of an Indigenous community veterinary infrastructure prevents economic development, prevents the sale and public consumption of livestock and traditional foods. Indigenous Canadians are prevented from reaching globally acceptable standards of food safety because there is nothing in place to ensure the health and prevention of diseases in livestock. One result of this is extreme poverty, unmonitored and unresolved canine overpopulation and health crisises.

Blue a 13-year-old Husky cross was mauled to death by two feral dogs on a reserve in New Brunswick January 4th 2010. His owner Caroline Ennis pleaded with police and provincial government as well as other organisations for a better system of animal control. She was told there was little hope anything would be done to resolve the situation. On Caroline's reserve there were an estimated 450 starving and feral dogs despite there being less than 2,000 residents. An RCMP officer walked out of her home in astonishment when her husband asked, "what if this had happened to a child?" The SPCA in New Brunswick would not provide assistance in her request for better dog control because they stated, "they have no jurisdiction on First Nation Reserves."

It should not be the case that First Nation communities must suffer the negative impact of feral dog overpopulation. Despite Canada having a number of wild animals such as bears, cougars, wolverines, etc., dogs remain the most dangerous with the most fatalities. Research indicates that statistically First Nation children on reserves are 180 times more likely to be mauled to death by a dog. This is based only on confirmed and reported cases however health Canada officials record very little of true extent of the problem, and why? Is it because they do not want the public to know? No funding is made available to change the situation for Indigenous people. Which is why a three-month old baby was stolen from his crib by a starving dog on a Northern territory reserve. It is also why in a 10-year period there have been 25 unconfirmed fatalities in relation to dog attacks of which 23 were children under the age of eight.

Medicine Wheel a North American phenomenon?

Medicine Wheels an ancient mystery

It is widely held that the Medicine Wheel represents harmonious connections to all creation and all created things in Indigenous American spirituality, and, in the context of modern society, the Medicine Wheel is believed to be a major symbol of interaction for all manner of living things.

The stone Medicine Wheel is by and large believed to be a North American phenomenon, there being Medicine Wheels found in various places the Canadian plains, especially Alberta, as well as northern United States. There are Medicine Wheels that date back several millennia. There are Medicine Wheels measuring 12 meters across and much larger.

In the discussion of a modern "Indian Medicine Wheel," the term Medicine Wheel was apparently, "first applied to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, the most southern and one of the largest in existence," says Wikipedia.

These unbroken circles of life found predominantly in Alberta and southeastern B.C. where most of the Medicine wheels are known to exist, points to Southern Alberta as a central meeting place of Medicine Wheel ceremony.

The mystery of the Medicine Wheel is compounded by the lack of written record describing a purpose. Two primary theories are: 1. the medicine wheels have astronomical alignments; 2. specific rituals/ceremonies are long lost.

If Medicine Wheels are indicative of Indigenous American spirituality, the fact is basic understanding of their significance is not shared by non-Indigenous people.

In reality the Indigenous people of Northern America were less intrusive in the design and construction of monuments (compared to their brothers and sisters to the south) whereby Medicine Wheels were arranged stones on the earth, practically invisible at ground level, and while they may have been observed throughout the world in various renditions, they contain peculiarities in North America that render them unique to the continent.

Medicine Wheels were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground from a centre, often a cairn, while the surrounding would be an outer ring of stones, and in certain variations there might be "spokes", or lines of rocks, coming out the centre cairn, but again, in no set pattern.

In many instances a Medicine Wheel contains the four basic directions in the layout, but different wheels may have different numbers of 'spokes,' and there is a great deal of variation in the way the spokes may be arrayed.

It is commonplace to interpret Medicine Wheels as having ceremonial or ritual purpose, and some believe there may have been dancing within them, while others say they contain astronomical significance, and others say Medicine Wheels are organized around spirit animals.

"At the very least, a Medicine Wheel is a sacred space, and given to interpretations of direction or animal energies. Each wheel is built by placing a small object that stands for the animal or energy in each direction around a circle. The circle can be as small as a hand or as large as the earth. The object can be an animal fetish, a feather, a sea shell or a special stone," says Wikipedia.

The online information source continues, "Balance is created by the equal presence of all four energies acting at once. In The Path of the Feather, the Medicine Wheel is built with the shaman's stones and their animal or spirit carvings."

There are websites declaring that by creating the Medicine Wheel, the endeavor seeks to make a physical manifestation of the earth's energies. "It is a sacred alter which evokes the powers of the earth."

The reality is that ancient rituals in the construction of the Medicine Wheel are hidden or long forgotten, but most likely they involved the hunt, rites of passage, puberty, marriage, death, and the interpretation if astronomical events, including the position of the stars, changing of seasons, timing of eclipses, schedule of planting or animal migrations, and the connection of the living with the spirits of the deceased.

In fact there are stone circles found from Florida to England. They were definitively places of great ceremony, possibly great gatherings, found some distance from habitations. Perhaps they were places of burial or ritualistic temples, sometimes they were astronomical devices, but they always were sacred. Medicine Wheels were built on sacred sites, intersections of rivers, mountain tops, a central plain. Indigenous nations have different animals and meanings of the directions in the spokes.​

Freelance Writing by Mack McColl

Dangerfield's First Christmas

He's healthy and thriving

Dangerfield Mack McColl Dec 1, 2014

 Dangerfield at two weeks

Dangerfield and Dad

McColl Magazine Since 2012 runs stories and news feeds various categories

Getting along fantastic (up until day 16)

Alive since 2014. And we are very happy about that around here

Dangerfield Nov 16, 2014

 Home on his birthday