Transitional Story

Fear

One of our natural laws comes from a ghost that we call fear. And I guess we were taught, Rose and I, when we got married and we had our children and our parents would say, “Don’t scare your children.” If you scare your children, that fear is going to split their shadows from their bodies. Their shadow is their spirit. So, if or when you cause trauma to your kids, you split their spirit from their body. And their spirit wanders to other bodies. They know what’s right and wrong, but they’ll go do what’s wrong because they’re just following other bodies. They don’t have a spirit until you have a ceremony to bring the two together. Then they can make their own decisions and don’t have to follow. So that’s where the whole concept of fear comes in. The old people told us, “Don’t scare your children because you’re going to cause trauma, and trauma can harm them.” We don’t want to scare anyone or cause trauma. So, I would say, I don’t want to scare the institution into change, into any of our decisions.

Oral Teaching, Piikani Elder Dr. Reg Crowshoe