I wrote about one nation that has lived in relationship with the land where I now live, the Haudenosaunee. Today I am travelling to the heart of a second such nation, the Anishinaabe. And learning about the Prophecy of the Seventh Fire, an origin story we should all come to embrace.

Hier j’ai vu des framboises sauvages, les plantes rubus idaeus. C’est mon amie Annie Legault qui les a identifiées lors de notre randonnée autour de la Mer Bleue, une tourbière dans le sud-est d’Ottawa. C’était un matin chaud et humide de juillet et les framboises rouges flottaient au-dessus des herbes hautes, la majorité déjà piquées par les oiseaux.

This land that I now live on, just above the Don River, has been in relationship with humans for thousands of years. As I build my own relationship with it, I want to know those who have cared for it before.

I live not that far from the centre of Toronto. This morning I took my dog Cinco through a break in the fence two blocks from our home. Twenty metres down all I could see was green, even if the noise above reminded me that six million other Canadians live close at hand.

The people who first lived in this land have offered us a way to bring ourselves together in common purpose. We say the following words at the beginning of any serious undertaking, such as the building of a new nation. We draw on a thousand-year tradition of diplomacy in committing ourselves to relationship with the land and with one another. I give thanks to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for offering this "ThanksgivingAddress" for us all to say: