Land acknowledgment
This performance took place on Wasaga Beach. "Wasaga Beach is the part of the "traditional land of the Anishinaabeg" and the "enduring presence of the First Nation Métis and Inuit people, and as we move forward, we journey in the spirit of reconciliation and respect." The name comes from "Nottawa," which means "Iroquois," and "Saga," meaning "mouth of the water."[https://www.wasagabeach.com/en/explore-and-discover/resources/Archives%20and%20History/History%20of%20Wasaga%20Beach.pd]
Here at the traditional territory of the First Nation people of Turtle Island at the shore of Wasaga lake, I pray to the water of this sacred land, hoping that water takes my prayer to my ancestral land and brings rain to the dried-out rivers.
And it [water] was the second in creation, and Anahita, its guardian goddess.
“Strong and bright, tall and beautiful of form, who sends down by day and by night a flow of motherly waters as large as the whole of the waters that run along the earth, and who runs powerfully.”
“Who has a thousand cells and a thousand channels: the extent of each of those cells, of each of those channels, is as much as a man can ride in forty days, riding on a good horse.”
“For whom Ahura Mazda has made four horses -- the wind, the rain, the cloud, and the sleet -- and thus ever an upon the earth it is raining, snowing, hailing, and sleeting; and whose armies [ of the rain, snow, hail, and sleet] are so many and numbered by nine-hundreds and thousands.”
“Strong and bright, tall and beautiful of form, who sends down by day and by night a flow of motherly waters as large as the whole of the waters that run along the earth, and who runs powerfully.”
“Who has a thousand cells and a thousand channels: the extent of each of those cells, of each of those channels, is as much as a man can ride in forty days, riding on a good horse.”
“For whom Ahura Mazda has made four horses -- the wind, the rain, the cloud, and the sleet -- and thus ever an upon the earth it is raining, snowing, hailing, and sleeting; and whose armies [ of the rain, snow, hail, and sleet] are so many and numbered by nine-hundreds and thousands.”
http://www.avesta.org/ka/yt5sbe.htm
[“Here, O good, most beneficent Ardvi Sura Anahita! I beg of thee this favor:”]
[I beg of her a] boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet, to the river of life, to the life-giver river.
Boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet, to my Zayandeh Roud that was run powerfully and was as large as the whole of the waters that run along the earth.
Boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet, to my alive river that my grandfathers, the gradians of the Zayandeh Roud, sacrificed their lives to protect the river.
Boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet, to my Zayandeh Roud that dried out, and the migrant birds that did not come back, and the animals that left, and the people that their dried riverbed became their last trench.
Boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet, the alive river that was life and life-giver.
Boon to my Zayandeh Roud of rain and snow and hail and sleet.
Boon us.
