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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Seal Maiden

We're Seal Clan on my mother's side, and we've got the toe-webbing to prove it.

You know the story. One full Moon night, a man sees the Seal Maidens dancing naked on the beach. He steals one of the laid-by skins, so that, when the dancing's done, the youngest (and most beautiful) of the Seal Maidens cannot follow her sisters back to the Sea.

She becomes the man's wife and bears him several fine children. But then one day she finds her old skin in the chest where it's lain hidden for years, and it's back to the Sea for her. That's how these things work.

It's an interesting story, and an old story. You have to think that among the truths that it tells is the trauma routinely experienced by young women in patrilocal societies when, at marriage, they're uprooted from everything that they know to go live with their husband's family.

But that's where Seal Clan comes from, and to this day some of us bear the signs of that ancestry on our bodies.

I didn't know any of this until my nephew was born. That's when I first heard about the toe-webbing from the aunts, the bearers of family memory. Not all of us have it, but my nephew does and, as it turns out, so do I. I'd never noticed it before because, well, that's just what feet look like, right?

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Initiations Humans Must Go Through to Reach Enlightenment

*The following are the first seven "13 Spirit Grandmothers of Time" initiations humans must go through to reach enlightenment.

   The First Door is the Physical Door, which represents the physical needs of the body: feeding, clothing, sleeping, breathing and exercise. This door includes the trauma of being born. The first step on the spiritual path is to clear away the debris of this trauma. This brings one to love of the physical self. This teaching is contained in the Spirit Grandmother, Buffalo Clan Shield.

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