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John Beargrease

by Ben Weaver

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UnderCurrents Powerful message ~ beautiful recording.
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about

I wrote this poem to celebrate the spirit of John Beargrease, the Anishinaabe man for whom the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon was named. The marathon takes place on the ancestreal lands of the Gichigamiwininiwag, (Lake Superior Ojibwe), beigning in Duluth and ending at Gichi-Onigaming, (Grand Portage), in the Northern part of Minnesota, where I live. The rivers here flow to Lake Superior and The Boundary Waters, then on to join the Atlantic and Hudson Bay.

In 2019 my friend Jay Petervary and I were the first to ride this route on fat bikes during the dog race. On our ride I carried prints I had made of this poem and handed them out to people I encountered along the way.

This year because of the pandemic there will be no spectators at the Beargrease, so I decided to set the poem to music and share it with a larger audience.

I humbly work to help my people heal by remembering the reciprocal and communal ways of relationality which the land has never forgotten.

Proceeds from this track will go to furthering that work. Thank you for your support.

lyrics

Even in the most remote nights
constellations are inherently
stories of relationships,
connected leaps of
failed domestication
hooking ground into sky.
Some of my ancestors were leaves,
flames, tamarack, and waxwings,
I feel their pull and hear their singing
through a fabric of organized chaos,
placed near the end of the rapids
sending a chorus of birch seed
and agate out on the tail
of each snow mote.
Don’t get thrown off the scent
mistaking simpler times
for lack of sophistication,
complex systems of mutual
dependency and survival
have always been woven
into the chains that bind life to earth,
the poverty of the current time is that
the miraculous leaps
between these links have come to be
considered burdens,
with curiosity and generosity held hostage
by a cultural entitlement to comfort.
When I hear the songs of my lupine
and snowshoe hare ancestors
I am pulled into the thick and pregnant
fog of the land, where I am told stories
that remember,
when news from the outside
world came down the trail
behind a man on a sled
pulled by four dogs moving
at the pace of the land,
it was not a liability
to have an open heart,
it was an act of wildness.

credits

released January 29, 2021
Vocal and Banjo: Ben Weaver
Recorded and Mixed by Tome Herbers
Cover Image: T.C. Worley

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about

Ben Weaver image

Ben Weaver Minneapolis, Minnesota

Ben Weaver is a songwriter and poet who travels by bicycle. He uses his music as a tool to strengthen relationships between people and their local ecosystems, with a focus on protecting fresh water.

Bens most recent project the Buffalo Weavers is a collaboration with Strong Buffalo Walken Schweigert, Liz Draper and Mikkel Beckman. Check out their most recent release, The Dark is Getting Bright. ... more

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