Original Thought in 2024

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Original Thought in 2024

by Candace Hill

I grew up very naïve as most of us do no fault of our own that was until my life was literally turned upside down at the age of nineteen.

I experienced what was understood as a spiritual awakening in my aboriginal culture a “healer” was being born. However I had no clue this is what was happening to me. A profound vision of “peace” was shown in my dreamtime and a type of time travel through a dream that materialized in real life shook me up. Then shortly thereafter I was treated by western allopathic medicine locked up in a padded room with a window covered with black paper. I was raised to trust doctors but here I was helplessly being physically and emotionally abused as treatment for an experience I was to go through a form of initiation into the spiritual realms.

I was able with support by my loving family and friends to heal a sign of a healer is to be able to heal themselves and that was to be my first encounter to heal myself.

A few years later at the health store I was excitedly employed we were harshly raided by Health Canada for selling safe natural foods and herbs and given a hefty $2,000 fine. This is where I took my first stand against a very clear injustice, abuse of power and became a health activist.

I never looked back I began to question everything and seek answers on my own.

I had finally come to terms that not all people are good nor can be trusted but I didn’t let that jade me as my father taught me most people are moral have empathy and a conscience and he was correct.

But I was no longer naïve.

These lived experiences changed my perception and view of life and would take decades to understand and comprehend on a spiritual and mental level. But by stepping into the ancient world and unknown plight of my First Nations ancestors I began to acquire tools to live in this modern society. They once had a thriving healthy culture of civility respect that honored Mother Earth, the sacred life givers, the “medicine people” and lived by high moral high value spiritual laws and governance. Coincidentally they were led by elderly women matriarchs who were appointed Clan Mothers (knowledge keeper’s wise woman) and held in high esteem as the Peace Keepers, Protectors of the Water and Laws. Perhaps it might be necessary to seek these ways of living today as many are looking for answers and I say why reinvent the wheel just look to the past.

I have always been an optimist a solution oriented fearless woman and even though I have fallen many times I dust myself off heal and get back up. I believe our “life changing experiences” create and mold us into who we will become and it’s up to us whether we let these experiences break us or strengthen us.

I am a firm believer in the old ancient ways of living on Mother Earth that can be rescued dug up and brought back to life. Like a seed buried for years just waiting for the “spark” of a forest fire to bring it back to life to grow as its innate nature knows what to do.

We human beings have to collectively find that “spark” within ourselves and together in our communities find our courage and do what is necessary to bring back justice and peace against all not good in our society.

I look forward to writing more of my “original thoughts” as a thinker who gleams learning from experiential, listening, and reflecting. I feel in my bones we are coming closer to the “hundredth monkey syndrome” when a new level of conscience is attained and we as a society make a flip back to something once very good a society like nature based on balance and true democracy like my ancestors lived here on Turtle Island.

I think we are here…

Written by Candace Hill (brown bear woman) a bi cultural Metis, healer, knowledge keeper, storyteller, writer and activist. candacebrownbearhill@gmail.com

First and foremost Candace – osawuskiskwew (brown bear woman) is a mother and now a proud kookum (nehiyo for grandmother). She has lived a very diverse life straddling two world’s one as a healer/medicine keeper and the other as an international natural health activist.

As a bi cultural Métis with mixed blood – Scottish, Irish, English she walks in the ancient ways of her Nehiyo & Anishnabe Kokum’s, she was born in Manitoba known to the First Peoples as “Manito Api”- “That Place That Creator Sits”. In ceremony she learned she is from the “Golden Eagle Clan”

She is a visionary, spirit talker, storyteller, singer/drummer, sweat lodge keeper, and Sundancer. She believes knowledge is to “give away”

She has been a certified wholistic nutritionist for over 30 years, an herbalist, practitioner of alternative & traditional indigenous medicine, and family/community/addictions counselor. She began her consulting business over 22 years ago called, “Walking in Balance” where she has spoken on a wide variety of subjects such as nutrition, health, and Indigenous spirituality here in Canada, USA, Europe (France, Scotland) and recently Mongolia.

She published her first book in 2018 called, “She Who Wears Moccasins and Carries a Big Stick” and her second book (manuscript) about her experience working in the natural health industry, becoming an international health activist exposing WHO & Health Canada she hopes will be published this next year.