Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Celery Feast...

What I love about being an American Indian is the seasons that take me out of myself and give me a greater appreciation for oh, you know, anything not ME...

This last weekend was our Celery Feast - the celebration of new foods, the first in the year being the delicious Wild Celery...it tastes like the sun mixed with rain and the color green.

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...I started this particular post last week. Celery Feast is a whole week ago and yet the gloriously tiring and exhilarating splendor of the weekend stays with me. 

We women who gather the traditional foods gathered early Friday morning and had breakfast together before going out to a remote location where we dug the delicious "first food" wild celery, where we went was cold and windy but there was TONS of celery to be dug and it was an amazing day!

I feel bad that this particular post awaits posting...to finish it off I'll add some pictures from that amazing day...
Because the celery is one of our traditional foods we wear our wingdresses to dig it.
Lunch time is fun although it's usually pretty serious as well with teachings from some of the older women on our first foods.
These two women are our leaders...
after the digging the WORK begins
we all wear our best longhouse gear for this occasion!

5 comments:

Alice in Wonderland said...

I love all of your photos! You all seem so happy together!
We get wild garlic, but it is very late coming out this year.
Personally, I love walking in our woods with the smell of it surrounding me!
Big, big hugs!

How I wish that there were more people in the world as nice as you are!

BB said...

Shawna,you are one of the reasons for why i love to blog.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
One feels the love and warmth of your hearts.
Thank you for sharing the bread of life with the rest of us.
With love and peace from Portugal.
"Diego" also knowned as bonequinho da bic, or "BB" for good friends like you.
Be cool ;)

Charlie said...

American Indian traditions should never be lost (so many are gone already), so it is good to know that the older women pass them down.

And that jacket in the bottom photo is simply beautiful.

flying eagle woman said...

Thank you Alice:-) I too love to get the wild garlic and ONIONS...our next "first food" is almost upon us, it's the Root Season and it's ever so exciting. I'll share on that too of course.

BB: You're a good friend I always appreciate hearing from you too!

Charlie, the coat was made by my brother who's wearing it. I made his shirt and earrings as well as his necklace... I love that I'm now becoming one of the "older women" who also pass things down!

Cheers all!
Shawna

Lady Katherine said...

I loved this post so much! I loved seeing everyone in their traditional Dress! This was really interesting to me, as I have a Native American Indian Bloodline too. Thank You for sharing this!