Ode'imin: In Defence of the Berry Pickers
On #RezTok, a berry picker is a man who comes home without the moose. On fruity men and Canada's fruit machine, Man the Hunter and the women who hunted anyway, and pemmican, the food made of meat, fat, and berries that the Métis Nation first stood up for at Seven Oaks. On the serviceberry and its many names, saskatoon wood that became arrows, and the Michif word for a little pear. On bananas being berries and strawberries not, a Supreme Court that decided the tomato is a vegetable because of when you eat it, and a Eucharist that was already made of fruit. And on ode'imin, the heart berry: love, emotional truth, healing, forgiveness, the first medicine of spring.