What goes into the making of a tribal Elder? We find some answers in the story of Edward James Bainbridge. Written like a memoir in first person, his story provides rich lessons in resilience, hope, faith, and remaining, always, Ojibwe: This is life as I know it. I say that because some people spend their entire lives searching for deeper meaning and end up missing it in the mundane because that’s where it dwells, deep in the creases and folds of the everyday. My teachers have been around me all along in the people I’ve met in my journey through life, in the quiet, alone times spent thinking things through, in all the beauty that surrounds me in this sacred place we Ojibwe know as aki, earth. And most importantly, once I opened my heart to the Creator’s love and allowed it to live through me, through my actions, my life has never been the same.
