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Indigenous Arts & Stories - Map of the Sky: Home

Map of the Sky: Home

2014 - Writing Winner

This is separation. A land connection split at the roots. You feel it as strong as a magnetic field, pulsing louder with each stride and heartbeat.

Read Kally Groat's Map of the Sky: Home

Kally Groat

Victoria, BC
Metis
Age 24

Author's Statement

The poetic form used is a glosa, in which four borrowed lines from another poet are used as the last line in each stanza; the sixth and ninth lines must rhyme with the borrowed line. I used part of Rachel Rose’s poem Sestina of the Geographic Tongue. Rachel Rose is a Canadian author, so I thought it fit to use a fragment of another Canadian voice.

I come from an ancestral line that was very rooted in this country; my great grandmother was an Alberta Cree woman who married a mountain guide (the Moberly’s). This story has inspired me to dig back to my roots—no matter how separated I grew up from them— because I feel I need to pay homage to my bloodlines. It’s important to recognize the inherent disconnect with the past that is part of our heritage and created the landscape that is our Canadian history.

These families were forced to leave their homes, and a few years ago, the symbolic return back to Jasper was a landmark in my family’s history. With this poem, I am just beginning to explore the relationship with my family’s past, and I hope that through writing, I can keep knowledge of this heritage alive.


This is a road map. This is a map home.
Here is where the village river drifted
over my grandmother’s bare feet. Here is her street
where the wind dropped bone grit in the throat. Here is the star.
Sestina of the Geographic Tongue– Rachel Rose

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Map of the Sky: Home

In September, 1907, the creation of Jasper Forest Park initiated secret legislation to remove any private land owners in the area of the new park. Seven Métis families were forced to leave their homes, including the Moberly's. A century later, the descendants of these families embarked on a week-long pack ride from Grande Cache back to Jasper, to symbolize their return home.

Map of the Sky: Home

Suddenly, this land. Pressed into your palm 
from a stranger is a piece of paper that says: 
this is mine now, not yours. You, drifting 
through time and space like a lost moon
forced to discover uncharted lands. An atlas 
of stars web the charcoaled sky; a map that carves 
your path with each step. Loss of home scarred    
on the land, a burning with the planets. Distance
marked only by the number of footprints in the dirt
where the wind dropped bone grit in the throat. Here is the star   


that guides your departure: cold breath of the blue
Alberta sky, the snow-capped Rocky 
Mountains you call home. Here is where glacial 
slate rivered towards the valley, a body of water 
too big to cross, too heavy to swallow. This is 
the song line between your old life and new: this trip.
This is separation. A land connection split
at the roots. You feel it as strong as a magnetic field, 
pulsing louder with each stride and heartbeat.   
Here is where the village river drifted.


Dust chokes your lungs, this path a distance
from home. You crawled on horseback in moon-
light, iridescent bulbs against shadows
of memories: of the dove-tailed log cabin, homestead;
the mountain land and spruce fields where you built
a family. Now, words at the mouth, sweet with thistle and milkweed, 
tongue-pressed and swallowed whole, a voice freed
from the unjust unfamiliarity. A symbolic redemption.  
I will one day drink from the creek water that trickled 
over my grandmother’s bare feet. Here is her street


and here is her land, two generations
later. An ancestral line as thin as a spider’s
web: scattered resilience in the starscape. 
We followed mapped constellations to guide 
us, side-saddling along the ochre earth— 
the roots, soil and stars— descendants of blood and bone
here to reclaim what was yours, we are your shadow. 
Welcome to Jasper, Rocky Mountain Cree. Here
are the celestial fireflies in the sky to light your way: 
This is a road map. This is a map home.

 

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