Song of the Night Goose
I have held much feeling around my ancestry: a lot of it heavy, like the plow pulled by Doukhobour women in the fields of Saskatchewan at the command of a religious leader who went by the name “Lordly.” I grew up with at least two sects in what started as pacifist ancestry, one known for radical and sometimes violent demonstrations, the other fundamentalist. I quickly rejected my heritage as a teenager, deciding to forge my path. I moved far away to Brooklyn, NY, immersing myself in a new melting pot that sounded like Erykah Badhu and tasted like curry. Before I left, an intoxicated uncle pointed the finger at me in anger. He told this 18-year-old girl that I would be the death knell of the Doukhobours because leaving would mean fewer people in the community to carry on the bloodlines and traditions. Then and now, I rejected forced dogma, favouring a loving and creative spiritual path. Then and now, I know that he was very wrong. My story wasn’t finished, and the divinity I built a relationship with was everywhere.
I dove into Buddhist Zen practice with “unattached” enthusiasm and yoga practice with fervour. I sang to the full moon, honoured seasons and recited the heart sutra. I had an intense spiritual longing, a desire to include ritual in my life, but I rejected the idea that another could mandate what that looked like. I found jewels in many wisdom traditions but often felt like a visitor, tiptoeing respectfully through a sea of faux pas. I found joy in community and harm in many structures and organizations, corporate and spiritual. This may have been why the semantics of Alcoholics Anonymous made me prickle. I wanted agency to explore my relationship with a higher power.
Growing up in the Cold War era, I had an internal bias against Russians. Not my soft, cream pie Babas, of course, but of those Russians, across the sea, cold, war-hungry and severe. Heartless hoodlums that wanted to harm the droopy-eyed boxer or nuke the latest beguiling Bond. In school, my Doukhobour ancestry was teased with comments like “Hide the matches” as I entered a room (a jab at Sons of Freedom ancestors who stripped naked and burned buildings in protest of materialism). I heard tales of bloody Kosak invasions and years of persecution that compelled Lev Tolstoy to help the Spirit Wrestlers to Canada in the late 1800’s. It never occurred to me that this bias created an internal void, severing an essential connection to roots deep like a turnip that requires an entire village to release her from the soil.
My auntie Elizabeth Hlookoff recently wrote a book about her childhood, living in a residential school up the road in New Denver, BC. It was told from her perspective at five years old. It included illustrations that she painted and a copy of the letter my Grandparents received from the government notifying them of her internment. I remember seeing the photograph on my Grandmother’s dresser of the little girl with an expressionless face behind a chainlink cage, unable to hug her family, missing her brother Matty and the taste of radishes and oranges. The book's release lined up with my move back to the Kootenays, coincidentally very near Lebahdo, an area that shares my surname. The government made a public apology to the survivors last year. As I heard my Aunty’s voice on the CBC, my ancestral pain loomed in full view. I visited the old “Sanitorium” where she stayed as I read about her experience living in the “San”. You can order a copy of her beautiful book here.
I found warmth in my ancestral community, too. I attended a borscht festival with my son, comparing versions of the comfort food my Babas were proud to serve. I sang harmony in a Doukhobour choir and participated in communal bread baking. The choir and bakers were warm and welcoming; we laughed as we baked. I performed a song written by my late Grandmother’s Sister and was asked to contribute an article to a magazine. As an adult in that space, I chose to discern which traditions I would embrace and which ideas I would reject.
As a young child in the Doukhobour choir, I had to wear a dress and a “Platok” or head scarf to Sunday School, as my brother stood there in a sweatshirt and skate shoes, his hair crispy with Dep. I didn’t know what they signified, but I recently read that plotki symbolize the humility that women should possess. It felt unfair, given the humility some men might benefit from. I wore a Platok on stage the day I performed. I felt similar to how I did wearing a sarong to temple in Bali. It was a gesture of respect and not a gesture of compliance. When asked to bring a symbol of my ancestry to a recent retreat to place on a ceremonial “soffreh,” I packed a black wool head scarf. It felt heavy in my bag as I hauled my backpack to retreat in the hills of Northern California to explore healing my relationship with my ancestors through story and song.
I didn’t realize that I was starving. I couldn’t wait for the feast where I would taste the next layer of the onion in the proverbial root cellar of my recovery: my ancestry from a neutral place, a retreat where this was the theme.
When I arrived at our opening session, I learned I was not alone in my ancestral shame. Our facilitators offered that every culture has a story and song worthy of bringing to life. Our histories have been told to us in tales of war and economy. Women and nature have to be sifted from layers of debris deeper than a Google search. At this time, our conversations with strangers often revolve around the mundane question: “What do you do.” Not at the Tending the Bones retreat. We dove into myth and imagery, folksong and instruments. We began each morning with observances of the land we shared on our time there, noticing frosted ferry tents, the life-giving swim pond, and a mysterious visit from a night goose, who spoke to me through a canvas wall in the nearly full moonlight. We added romance and symbolism; we cried and rejoiced in anthemic, harmonic song.
At the retreat's end, my spirit feasted on Lydia’s wonder, Leah’s lullaby and the metaphorical and actual (chocolatey peanut butter cookie and Japanese Curry) meals we savoured together. My Platok seemed to transform on the Soffreh, from heavy and black to a burst of red blooms jewelled with emerald leaves. I decided that humility was indeed a beautiful moral value, and one that appears prominently in recovery. I could hold humility and pride in opposite hands, in balance. When I sang to the group my song had a pronounced, trembling vibrato, I reclaimed my story. I have decided to keep some of the tenderness from my ancestral pain. I understand my great-grandmother Dasha had a pronounced vibrato, too. Did she too sing sad songs? I gobbled the story of the pastry-adoring Georgian Goddess who came to children dying of smallpox. Of course, a Goddess of mine would surely want sweets as an offering! I learned I could choose the symbols, story and song I would bring to light and that the culture I had previously rejected was a key to my claiming my place in deep time. I want to be a wise, intentional, folklore-sharing ancestor. I want to dig for the old story and pen the new. I have committed to my newfound friend Alexandra to write “The Song of the Night Goose.” I want to sing it with our community. In pouring over books in preparation for the retreat, I came upon a poem my Grandmother wrote titled “O Spirit Wrestler”. I have arranged it in polyphonic harmony, collaborating with one very dear ancestral spirit. Won’t you join me in a choir where you are invited to bring your ancestral voice, story and song to foster peace in the Kootenay Mountains and beyond? We start in February 2025 at Taghum Hall. Details and registration can be found here. There will be a Zoom for anyone interested in attending to explore the choir theme on January 22 at 7pm. It is not mandatory to participate in. You can join us here.
This choir is deeply inspired by a retreat called “Tending the Bones” and a body of work taught by Leah Song (Rising Appalachia) and Lydia Harutoonian (The School of the Great Turning) in person and online. I can’t recommend their offering enough. Their facilitation style is inspired and thoughtful, and I left there changed. You can connect to their work here.
