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	Harvesting Stories Reflections Lynne Davis’s experience as a popular educator and Aboriginal community activator spans many years of change. She relates some of the metamorphosis that took place in the “Lynne’s involvement timeline” audio clip; “…Edna Mantatowabe mentions a sweep of 30-40 years during in which time there was a great upsurge of a localization of energy toward self determination and decolonization…she describes incredibly well the struggle, the place of colonization that had sucked peoples energy, and that struggle to find that spark…she talks about a death dream…suddenly coming out the death dream into a place of transformation …she went to the mountains to begin to hear those stories, what are those teachings that had gone underground…it was in the 60’s and early 70’s where that kind of localization started and began to gain strength (Lynne Davis, modified).” Lynne speaks of her involvement as a Non-Aboriginal in this shifting atmosphere and shared her insight regarding Non-Aboriginals role in the First Nation and Inuit revitalization movement. It was this history, these stories that she recounted of her experiences that illuminated a history that I had only encountered in alternative/native history books. These are the memories that fused in my mind and gave me a perspective as to the journey and path that Aboriginals in Canada are on and the role that Non-Aboriginals can play in aiding in that process of revitalization and sovereignty. By reaching back to their traditional teachings and stories, First Nations and Inuit communities are finding, as Lynne had said, new energy to move towards self determination and decolonization. This revitalization is instilling pride and power to confront the government on past relations and agreements (or lack there of). As Native writer Thomas King puts it, “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” If the stories told by a community change or get re-established, people find a place to start from, to draw power and energy from. The revival of language and stories that have been stripped from First Nation and Inuit communities are at the heart of the process of decolonization. King recounts “…I’d want to hear a creation story, a story that recounts how the world was formed, how things came to be, for contained within creation stories are relationships that help to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they exist.” Without stories, without language, cultures loose their center, loose their heart and thereby are easily defeated. It is through oral traditions that communities are rekindling their past and their pride. In the documentary, Honour of All, the participants began to search for past teachings on the customs and ceremonies in order to gain the momentum to move the community away from systemic alcoholism. Basil Johnston, an Anishinabe storyteller explains that “beneath the comic characters and the comic situations (in Anishinabe stories) exists the real meaning of the story…what the tribe understood about human growth and development” (King, p23). So the fact that communities are reclaiming their stories, retelling them, recovering them is significant indeed. This is not an experience unique to Canada, as the Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri describes “In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in use early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives” (King, p154). Work Cited King, Thomas. 2003. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.