i’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. (well, not just lately, as the story of my life is one filled with many books) however, the reading i have been doing lately is in regards to learning about different aspects of my cultural background.

being mixed race means that i have a lot of reading to do. while my mother is ukrainian, my father was of mixed blood – half anishinaabe/ojibwe and half european (a mixture of british, norwegian and irish).

in the anishinaabe teachings about creation and life, there exists the concept of the “manitou/manidoo”, the little mystery, a word for spirit or lifeforce. the manitou live inside all things – animals and people, machines, places, and events. sometimes, the great manitou, or the gitchii manitou, “the great mystery” is referred to as a god or a creator, a genderless being of power and knowledge. the little manitou, the little mysteries, inhabit everything else.

and, as is usual for me, i’ve been doing a lot of thinking about death and life and thinking about these little spirits, and i’ve been thinking about haunted objects. i see haunted objects a lot in ghost hunter tv shows or movies or mentions of them in true stories of hauntings – this concept that items that are loved by people in life will seem to carry energy with them after their owner has passed – intimate items like jewelry, hairbrushes, cigarette lighters, mirrors, etc. i began thinking a little about the objects that i love, what may be haunted by me after i die? i think i narrowed it down pretty well – my cameras, my jewelry, and my phone, of course. i’m a millenial after all, and as much as i would like to speak otherwise, i remain addicted to my phone.

i was thinking a little bit about what the little spirit inside my phone might look like.

i’ve been drawing a lot lately – mostly little doodles i use for my blog, but also things as meditations or to relieve stress. so, i decided to draw the manitou inside my phone.

i think she’s really cute, btw.

i started by tracing my phone case, and i always kind of see the camera in my phone as a set of eyes, and i felt like she would be watching the world through my photos. i gave her the star shawl seen on the virgin of guadalupe which nods to my upbringing in the ukrainian orthodox church and attending a catholic church and christian school as a child. i view the star shawl as also nodding to the star blankets much prized by various indigenous peoples. stars also remind me of my friend katie who passed this year from breast cancer. i think of stars and her as this intertwined thing. i connected with her via my phone and i am very grateful for this connection. i incorporated the dream catcher/dream snare (bawaajige nagwaagan) onto my manitou – something deeply cultural and something that i have had with me since my childhood. my mother learned how to make dream catchers when she married my father, and she made me a really cool purple one when i was little and it hung in my bedroom to protect me as i slept. a gold crucifix also hung in my bedroom for the same reason. i incorporated some runes from the skåäng runestone in sweden, a nod to finding my partner online, who is swedish, and the runes are a memorial for a lost father. “i don’t believe in a halfway heart” is a favourite lyric written by mike posner. my phone is almost always streaming music to me and mike’s poetry and lyrics mean a lot to me.

this was a fun little project and i had fun drawing this little manitou.

i’ve been finding ways of incorporating more of the indigenous ways of knowing and understanding the world into my work and into how i walk through the world. being mixed race has meant that i exist at the intersections of many aspects of being and culture and worldview and i feel so grateful and blessed to exist as i am.

i’ve started to draw another manitou already, and maybe i’ll share that one when it’s done.