A Sign of the Times?
by Gilbert Oskaboose

There are strange goings on here in the wilds of Ojibway Country. I first noticed it last summer, but in keeping with our ancient ways, I've left the telling of it until the dead of winter, and the proper time for strange tales in Indian Country.

According to our legends, just before the end times, great trials and tribulations will come to the Ojibway. One sign of their coming, according to the Seventh Fire (a time or a prophecy), will be the arrival of unusual birds and animals into our territories.

I took this to mean the black squirrels, raccoons, turkey vultures and cormorants that are here now, pushed into northern Ontario by growing urban populations in the south. Locks on the St. Lawrence River and on American waterways have opened the gates for lamprey eels, zebra mussels and alligator gars. I thought these were the first signs of the end times, but I could be totally wrong in my interpretation of this ancient prophecy.

Recently even more bizarre creatures have arrived in our community. I've seen lambs, white pelicans, a baby chick emerging from an eggshell and two Holstein cows in band members' yards. Sounds reasonable enough, until you realize the cows are only three feet tall and the chick is a 50-pounder emerging from an eggshell that is at least two and a half feet tall. There's a Canada goose that gallops in one person's yard and a pink flamingo in another's, pecking away at a small whitewashed rock, for no apparent reason.

Down the road from the chick, in another yard, there's a gigantic foot high bumblebee that flies in the same spot whenever the wind blows hard. From a safe distance it appears to be anchored by its own foot long barb, which is probably a good thing.

These strange things have only shown up in the last couple of years.

A few people have put down tobacco and made the proper greeting for strangers, but these creatures never respond or make a sound. They just stand there month after month, never eating, drinking, sleeping, mating, pooping... They just stand there, watching. Even the elders don't know what to make of them.

Among the things they don't do is migrate, since they're still here, buried under three feet of ice and snow, probably still watching with their frosty little eyes....

Some people say somebody is making bad medicine. Others blame it on the mines.

Our village is located 50 kilometres downriver from the uranium mines of Elliot Lake so that could explain the giant chick emerging from a two and a half foot high egg and the mutant bumblebee. Maybe the miners have gone beyond producing two-headed moose calves and deformed fish. That still doesn't explain the pink flamingoes standing around in people's yards, and the brightly coloured flowers growing around certain houses, in the middle of the winter.

Is this sort of thing happening anywhere else in Indian Country? If strange creatures start showing up in your village get in touch with me - and we'll try and figure out what it all means.