Weesageyachak: Cree Concept of the Creator

Weesageyachak: Cree Concept of the Creator

Dr. Alex Wilson shares the Cree concept of the genderless divine world creator.

Coming In to Indigenous Sovereignty: Relationality and Resurgence. UWinnepeg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkQo_yr4A_w

XkQo_yr4A_w

Weesageyachak is the Cree term for the constellation that in English, is called Orion. In our language, Weesageyachak is known as a trickster character...but more than just a trickster character..the character or the energy of Weesageyachak is something that changes all the time. So, in that sense, Weesageyachak is a ongoing creator of the world or of energy. I wanted to start with this because...if you look at the term, Weesageyachak, if you break it down, the first part means sour or tart (there's a play on words there), and the last part of the word, ahchak, means star. So if I say, kitahchak, its referring to your spirit. So, there's an understanding in this being that there's a continuum of energy that links us to our cosmology, that links us to the wider universe. This continuum of energy has existed since the beginning of time as we know it. Another interesting thing about Weesageyachak is Weesageyachak is not a gendered character. So in hearing the stories, you'll see that Weesageyachak can be a male or female or plant or animal. So on the highest spiritual level within the Cree cosmological understanding, there is no such thing as gender. So imagine that. So that's the starting place we're coming from today, is recognizing and validating that our knowledge system isn't just something that we came up with or read about. It is something that's intimately connected to land, water, and beyond that, the entire universe. So the stories are ancient and connect to our origin story as human.