Taansi. Aaniin. Hello. My name is Rebecca Hass.

My name is Rebecca and the spirits know me by the name The Voice of the Loon on the Lake (Anishinaabemowin).

I have introduced myself in Anishinaabemowin. This would be very close to the language that my ancestors spoke. I am Métis, from a community in Georgian Bay, Ontario, and I have many Anishinaabe relatives, and so I'm very delighted to share that language. I have been taught that when I use that language, my ancestors know where I am, and they can hear me and come and walk with me. Since we're on a nature walk today, I'm very happy to welcome my ancestors along with me.

I'm here today on lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) territory in Victoria, British Columbia. I have been a very grateful visitor here since 2005. This is beautiful territory, and it has been stewarded by the lək̓ʷəŋən people. Today we're going to learn a little bit about how I walk softly on this land to honour the people who've cared for this land, and to become part of the story of this land by how I see myself interrelated to everything that we're going to see on our walk.

When we start out on a walk on the land, I want you to bring your attention to your feet. If this were not winter and very wet here right now, I probably would've come in my moccasins, but actually I'm wearing a more practical boot, but that doesn't change the fact that I can think about the land that I walk on. Wherever you go for your next walk, why not listen to your footfall and feel the Earth below you?

When you're in bare feet and you walk on the land, you feel all the little pieces. You feel all the little bits of stones, little bits of wood, and even though you can't feel these in your boots, I want you to imagine it because it changes how you walk. You want to walk softly because this is our mother, Mother Earth, and so it's really important that we treat her with respect.

Often we clomp around and pay no attention to what we're crushing under our feet, but here on the land, I want to invite you just to walk softly and feel your footfall. You can press through from heel to toe, heel to toe, and just see what that feels like. Here in the wet season, it's much softer. If I were to do this in the summer, it would feel firmer. That tells me something about the land and it tells me about the season, and it probably tells me how I need to be in relationship to this land.

In a slow walk like this, now that I can hear the birds, I can actually start to look and see all the different colors that even the wintertime offers us on our territory. If you take a look, you can see the mosses, so many kinds of green. The little white berries that the birds are probably finding quite delicious this time of the year? Maybe.

Even when we start to look at the leaves that have died or the trees that are falling apart and rotting, we can actually see the cycle of life, and it's a good reminder for me I'm part of this cycle, a cycle in the spring of planting and growing and fresh green, but also a cycle of winter when things die off, allowing the soil to regenerate and new things to come. This is all available to you when you go for a walk. In fact, let's go find one of those rotting trees right now.

When you're out in the woods and you have a chance to stop, you can really begin to appreciate logs like this. We see these all over territories here in British Columbia, rotting logs, and first of all, we've been talking about our senses. We've been talking about our footfall. We've been talking about what we hear, the urban world as well as the wild world, and now we're talking about what we see.

You can look at there are so many kinds of brown and tans and beiges and the richness of the colors, and we can stop and take all of that in and we can let our mind roam, the artist in you who can actually think about what they might paint or draw, or the things it reminds you about in your life.

This is a tree that's done its job, it's lived its life, and now it's living a different kind of life. It's allowing other things to grow out of it, and everything that comes from it as it rots makes new life come. That's a beautiful thing we can find if we take the time in the forest to look at it, and not just see things as dead and as inanimate. They're not. They're actually still life-givers. They're creating new life, even in this state.

I want to talk a little bit about wind. On this particular walk we don't have a lot of wind, and so I can't really show you the trees moving and you can't hear it on this walk, but you can certainly see on the ground what's happened with the last windstorm here.

I want to talk a little bit about when you're walking and the wind. There are natural elements that we sometimes want to push against. We feel like, "I don't want wind in my face. I probably should have wore a hat." When you're out on a gratitude walk, I want you to think about what wind does.

Wind actually takes all of the leaves off the trees for us in the fall. We need that, because that's what goes into the soil and creates all that richness that can grow, as you can see here, grasses, and these grasses are the lifeblood of our kin, the deer. This is what they eat. You can think about all the organic little microbes. You can think about grasshoppers and ants and everything that lives inside of here, rabbits who go through here.

When we've been out walking in the forest, I've been asking us to tune into our footfall and to really feel how our foot presses through on the earth, even when we're wearing our shoes. Quite honestly, I know that for most of us, we spend a lot of our life walking on a trail that is pavement or tarmac, and then we may think that we're not walking on the Earth anymore. We don't even have to think about it. It's as if there was a buffer built in for us.

I want to invite you in this moment to think about, anytime that you are walking on pavement or concrete, don't let that fool you. Underneath this is Mother Earth, the very thing that we want to connect to and protect, that nourishes us. When you walk on this, it's just a little bit more of a nudge, as we walk on this, to actually think about what's underneath this pavement, and not disregard it and not think, "Well, there's nothing but more pavement," because we know that's not true. There are more good things from Mother Earth underneath here. I'm going to keep the very same thought when I walk on pavement. It's just a little more work than when I walk on the grass.

Thank you for taking the time to come with me on this gratitude walk, and I hope the next time that you're out on the land, wherever you live, you take a moment to walk. Slow down, feel the Earth, hear the birds, and notice what you are grateful for. Miigwech. Maarsii. Thank you.

Credits for Walk of Gratitude

Cinematography by Ashley Daniel Foot
Edited by Fletcher Lenz
Produced by Ashley Daniel Foot and Rebecca Hass