Jacob Wawatie

An evening with a visiting Algonquin North American Native at The Glooscap Heritage Centre.It was not very difficult to find our venue for this evenings talk at the Glooscap Heritage Centre in Truro. You can see the large Indian Glooscap statue for miles around and in the evening he looks especially good with his torch lit and facing into the setting sun.

We were in for a special treat and looking forward to meeting Jacob Wawatie visiting from the Kokomville Academy, within the Wild life Reserve of La Verendrye in the Province of Quebec, Canada. He was traveling the country spreading the word about his school and had just traveled up from Yarmouth, were he held a talk the day before.

It was fascinating to see his medicine bag and an animal skin laid out with his sacred objects. His medicine bag was made from a turtle shell and unfortunately had been slightly damaged by a heavy handed customs officer at one of the airports on his travels. Even though in a slightly delicate state it was still a treasure to him having been handed down from his great grandmother, who had died at the very old age of 125 years old. She was the one who had instilled in him the importance of learning the old traditions of his people and not allowing them to be lost forever. Since then he devoted his time to learning all he could and spending months deep in the forests. He then set up the school to carry on these teachings. The talk was very interesting and informative and I found some similarities to Traditional Chinese Feng Shui in the descriptions and elements used. I am sure that all the original peoples around the world have similar threads running through their philosophy. We all had a chance to ask questions and after the talk we were able to speak to Jacob, take photos and examine some of his fascinating objects a little closer.