Fire burns for Indigenous women
Like many people, Fred Bowering spent his holidays with his family enjoying the warmth of crackling fire.
But Bowering’s definition of family includes far more than just blood relatives.
“It isn’t always blood. A family supports each other, and cares for each other. I view Niagara as my big extended family,” he said Sunday. “I like to include everybody.”
The crackling fire wasn’t enclosed in a brick hearth, warming a comfortable home. It was a sacred fire that was lit in a circle of 13 “grandfather stones” on the grounds of the Niagara Regional Native Centre on Airport Road in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
It burned in honour of murdered and missing Indigenous women, as well as people struggling with mental illness or addiction. The 48-year-old Bowering welcomed anyone in need of spiritual healing to join him in the warmth of its flames.
He kept the fire burning throughout the holidays, tending to the flame continuously for four days until he extinguished it on Boxing Day.
Bowering held a gnarled-looking branch with a leather pouch of tobacco adorning it. It was long ago cleaned of bark and twigs, and one end of it was charred black.
The fire stick was once used by Bowering’s father, Garry, a fire keeper. Since his father’s death about three years ago, Bowering has taken that stick and the duties his father left behind.
“It’s a role my father wanted me to follow in,” he said.
But in addition to respecting the spiritual traditions of his Mohawk heritage, Bowering has expanded the scope of those traditions to include the community at large.
“I do it for the people who don’t have anybody,” he said. “I’m a fire keeper for the people. I’m not a fire keeper for my beliefs.
“I was a little nervous taking our traditional culture and putting it out for everybody. Some people might not agree with doing that,” he said.
“But it’s part of healing. It’s growth.”
He invited people to write letters to loved ones or prayers and add them to the flames, along with traditional tobacco and cedar fronds.
“It’s peaceful. I think it helps with closure for some people.”
Bowering compared the Indigenous tradition to lighting a candle and saying a prayer at church.
It’s the second time Bowering tended to a sacred fire for the same cause. But compared to a year earlier, he felt like he was being pampered.
“It was colder last year,” Bowering said.
In December 2016 Bowering spent 34 days keeping a fire burning at Centennial Gardens in St. Catharines, not extinguishing the flame until well into January.
In addition to limiting the fire this year to only four days, Bowering had access to the NRNC building to come in out of the cold, if necessary. But Bowering didn’t spend much time indoors or sleeping.
“It’s only four days. I’ll sleep when it’s done, pretty much,” he said. “I’ll snooze when I can, but I’m afraid to sleep because if somebody comes here at nighttime, heavy-hearten and they need it, my responsibility as a fire keeper is to be there to welcome and greet them.”
He said the change of venue this year — due to construction at the park — slightly changed the spirit of the event. Although both sacred fires were intended to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women as well as mental health and addiction, he said last year’s fire burned in a park frequented by people addicted to opioids and had an increased focus on their plight. This year’s fire, in comparison, burned on the Native centre property, and had a greater focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women.
But the shifted focus didn’t deter people concerned about either or both of those issues from attending.
For instance, John Simpson joined Bowering by the fireside. Simpson’s daughter Ashley has been missing since April 2016, last seen in Salmon Arm, B.C. At the same time, Bowering was also visited by Jennifer Johnston and Sandi Walker Tantardini, who both lost their sons to fentanyl overdoses.
“Fred is an amazing human being,” said Johnston, who has teamed up with Walker Tantardini to lobby local governments in the hope of preventing future overdoses. “This is something he’s very passionate about and he gives all his heart and his soul to it.”
Bowering, himself a recovered addict, has been working towards the same cause, putting together a petition calling for the development of a supervised injection site in St. Catharines.
But the murdered and missing Indigenous women also “hit close to home,” Bowering said. He said he has lost too many friends and relatives like Ashley Simpson.
“It’s deep in my heart,” he said. “It’s really sad.”
Josephine Lavalley, who said her mother Eileen was murdered in 1980, said Bowering is “very modest” about the work he is doing.
“But it’s OK to pat him on the back and say, ‘Fred, what you’re doing is amazing.’”
She said Bowering’s sacred fire last year “started a chain reaction.”
“One person that cares is doing all of this,” Lavalley said. abenner@postmedia.com