Will you help us tend to the fire?

Editor’s note: This column was originally published as a newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future updates about our Firekeepers fundraising campaign through the month of December.

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ᑖᓂᓯ ᓂᐚᐦᑰᒫᑲᓇᐠ ᐁᑿ ᓂᑑᑌᒼᑎᐠ᙮  
tânisi niwâhkômâkanak êkwa nitôtêmtik, 
Hello my friends and relatives,

A few years ago, I had the privilege of receiving some teachings about iskotêw (fire) from my nêhiyaw (Cree) culture. Since then, my relationship with iskotêw has deepened.

One Elder that I’ve had the privilege of studying with is Lloyd Martin. His teachings about fire intertwined with that of community responsibility. He used four concentric circles to illustrate them. 

These circles represented our responsibilities as nêhiyawak (Cree people). They started with the self, and then expanded outward in the order they’re meant to be prioritized.

We would start with the smallest circle, the one in the middle. “Draw a small circle, and inside that, write ᓂᔭ,” my Elder explained.

ᓂᔭ was how to write “niya” in our writing system, that he called Spirit Markers (some folks call them syllabics).  

The smallest circle was niya, or “me,” he explained, and he emphasized that our first responsibility had to be to ourselves. 

The next circle was for family. After that came circles for community and nation.

What does this have to do with fire? 

Well, it turns out I wasn’t alone in the smallest circle. There was something there with me: iskotêw — fire. 

My Elder seemed to be telling us that fire is at the core of a person. 

Over subsequent lessons I would learn that fire is central to creation. Every woman with a uterus has a fire within her, and it’s there that life is created. It is the fire of creation.That same fire makes it possible for plants to grow, and heats our homes. It is used in ceremony, to make the Grandfather rocks so hot that they glow from the inside. Those Grandfathers cleanse us with that fire. 

When someone passes, we light a ceremonial fire to help them on their journey. This fire must last four days and nights, as this is how long it takes for their Spirit to make their way to the other side, where they will take up residence amongst all the Grandmothers and Grandfathers who guide us everyday. 

Fire is also at the centre of the IndigiNews Storytelling Lodge. That’s where our stories are born. We quietly tend the fire — visiting communities, listening to people, doing our best to summarize what we’ve learned in a way that creates understanding and provides context and nuance. 

IndigiNews is here to shed light on Indigenous realities and create understanding on three levels: 

The first level is for the IndigiNews team. We seek to understand the issues we report on for our own understanding. 

The next level is the communities we write about. We write to keep them informed of events in their communities, and help them understand issues their First Nation or the wider Indigenous community is facing. 

Finally, we hope that this understanding radiates outwards, like the concentric circles, to the whole country, and maybe even the whole world. We share about who we are as Indigenous Peoples — what matters to us and what we’re facing.

For a long time, Indigenous People’s internal systems of communication were broken by the violent colonial system that tried to destroy our culture. They separated parents from children, and siblings from each other in the residential “school” system. They made it illegal to leave the reserve without a pass. They didn’t want us talking with each other, because they knew that if we did, there was a greater chance that we would revolt against the system of apartheid that “Canada” subjected us to. 

Even newspapers, when they came around, didn’t fairly include us. TV news was no better. In mainstream media, we were maligned, misrepresented and objectified. This led to misunderstandings in mainstream culture about who we are. We were blamed for the poverty that “Canada” had legislated into being. We had no way of defending ourselves, of setting the record straight and exposing the anti-Indigenous bias that even the country’s “paper of record” perpetrated. 

We didn’t have a place to share our incredible body of knowledge in engineering, earth science, astronomy or plant medicine. We couldn’t teach people how to steward the earth safely, how she requires humans to help keep forest fires away, and rivers clean and filled with an abundance of fish. We had no system of communication. Some communities didn’t even get household phone service until the 1970s.

I believe we were also cut off from ourselves at this time. We lost our connection with each other and with our inner wisdom. Many of us forgot who we were, and so weren’t able to teach our children who they were. We couldn’t pass on our beautiful belief systems, where all things are related and our religion is gratitude. We couldn’t instill pride in our children, because in the eyes of the colonizer we were worthless, and those are the eyes through which we were also now looking.

The results of that cutoff from our own knowledge systems were catastrophic, as has been well-documented in mainstream media. We don’t need to get into that here.

When social media was invented, everything changed. Suddenly, we could communicate again — to each other and to the outside world. 

This is why IndigiNews exists. We believe the work we do can change the way Indigenous Peoples see themselves. It can instill pride in communities. It can support the mental health of our Youth and show love and respect to all of our old ones. 

The ones that survived residential “school.” The ones that did not.

And so we’ve come full (cough) circle. IndigiNews is in my two outer rings, the ones that represent community and nations. As publisher of IndigiNews, I feel a great responsibility to steer us in a good way and to keep that fire burning. 

That’s why, today, we are launching a new fundraising campaign which we have named “Firekeepers.” 

I’m asking everyone who reads us to help us keep that sacred fire burning inside the IndigiNews Storytelling Lodge. With hard work and gratitude, we can ensure that the warmth from this fire radiates out to the team, the Indigenous communities and nations we write about, and people all around the world, with whom we share this beautiful earth.  

Today on #GivingTuesday, we call on our Firekeepers to help us reach the goal of raising $20,000 by 11:59pm PST, December 31, 2025. 

If we could get just 120 new Firekeepers to commit to a recurring monthly donation of $15, we can raise at least $20,000 to sustain Indigenous-led journalism. With this amount, we can continue supporting our award winning journalists who are on the ground and embedded in the communities they report on. 

Thank you for helping us tend this fire.