Reid’s Narrative Account

As I drove home from my first conversation with Reid, I was struck by how important place seemed to his stories and I was reminded of a conversation I had with a Cree Elder a few months earlier. “We have an identification problem, the land does not recognize us.” Bob Cardinal is an Elder with whom I have had the honor of working with over the past few years. Being around him is hard to put into words; it is, in a way, unexplainable. To me, it seems that being with him is similar to being connected to a place. I find it hard to express the feelings through speaking or writing words. There is a feeling of a connection, a sense of belonging, a relationship. My thoughts around the relationships with place, with the land, consumed me as I drove. When I arrived home I could barely recollect the last half hour of my drive.