Dedicated to Troy Emery Twigg, Kaayo’ohkitopii (Bear Rider) (1972-2023), from the Kainai Nation in Southern Alberta

all existence consists of energy waves/spirit,
all things being animate,
all existence being interrelated
—Dr. Leroy Little Bear

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, 
think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. 
—Nikola Tesla

i’m just an artist, using my art as a way to try and understand the Universe, and this is just a story . . . about how i have tried to imagine Spirit and Language in relation to the Land and the Universe.

When i was a child (around seven years old) my family was living on six acres of land just outside Red Deer, Alberta. We had a few horses, a few German Shepherds, a husky, some chickens, and a male peacock. One of my favourite memories of that place/land with the big skies takes place in the winter. It was nighttime and i was dressed in a ski-doo suit and had taken a flashlight to go on a mission and get myself a straw bale out of the barn. i took half of that straw bale to the snow-filled ditch beside the gravel road and proceeded to make a bed of straw under the comfort of a barren bush. i think it was a red willow. i then climbed under and into the bush and laid on top of the straw bed just to gaze at the star-filled sky. i remember there were as many stars in the sky as there were sparkles in the snow. The moon must have also been out. i lay still and was mesmerized by the beauty and mystery of our universe . . . and then i saw the Northern Lights. i was in awe (of course) and i wanted to sing to them (as i had seen/heard members of my family do before) and would have, had i not been alone, at such a young age, laying outside by myself in the semi-dark ditch. i didn’t want to draw attention to myself by singing, not because any other person was close enough to hear me, but rather out of caution that something else might hear me. So, i kept quiet—but the Northern Lights didn’t keep quiet! i remember i could hear them. They had a voice. i later described the sound of their voice to my mom as being “like rice crispies”—a constant snap crackle pop. Later, as i got older, i would describe their sound/voice as that of STATIC on the television or radio, and, more recently, like the sound of a shaker!

Western science tells us that the northern lights are a form of electromagnetic radiation and the sounds they make are caused by the release of a static charge in the inversion layer, which is the part of the atmosphere. Scientists have recorded the sounds of the northern lights many times, but the exact mechanism behind them is still a mystery.¹

Inspired by the sights and sounds of the Northern Lights/waawaate, or “lii chiraan” in Michif, i started researching this type of electromagnetic energy in 2004. Once, when filming myself walking towards the water on an 8mm video camera, i experienced a happy accident. In the midst of creating a new work, i accidentally encountered the glitch/electrical feedback that you can see in the video still below. 

This “glitch” inspired further research, in which i learned that the “static” found in the “glitch” was actually leftover radiation from the Big Bang, and that this energy took over 13.8 billion years to reach us here/on earth. 

This leftover radiation from the Big Bang is part of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)² and was detected by using microwave spectroscopy, which is the study of both the absorption and emittance of light.³ The terms light, electromagnetic waves, and radiation all refer to the same physical phenomenon: electromagnetic energy.⁴

This revelation (as well as my childhood memory of the Northern Lights) further inspired me to produce projects that utilized static/electromagnetic energy/the residual remnants of creation as the main medium of “a creation” in order to articulate my own cultural, cosmological understanding of Creation/Genesis. i started to make multiple projects that involved “static” as the medium.

In 2007, when my beloved best friend, the Master Dancer, Choreographer, Clown, and ever fabulous and esteemed <<Troy Emery Twig>> (who has recently crossed over), saw what i was working on (my mirrored and projected images of static electricity), he told me he wanted to dance in it, and i, of course, agreed. So, he booked us a space at the Rivoli Theatre on Queen Street in Toronto for Halloween night. i created the static, he sent me his Elders’ audio files, and then i also created the soundscape and filmed him dancing to his own Creation Stories . . . Without him telling me, i could see he was transforming (through dance) into Iinnii and other relations.

Throughout our collaborative process and friendship, we would often discuss our pedestrian and artistic interpretations of: Dr. Leroy Little Bear’s notion of flux, Nikola Tesla’s ideas on frequency, a multi-verse, the possibility of many big bangs, and superstring theory … we asked ourselves: “how are these theories related to static, EME, and light?“

After Troy and i performed this first draft at the Rivoli, he then created an amazing team to expand his choreography/story of static. i was so fortunate to be aligned with/learning from the likes of Joane Cardinal-Schubert (who i got to share a hotel room with for two weeks!), Byron Chief-Moon, and Olivia Tailfeathers. We became the opening act at the inaugural Alberta Arts Day celebrations and shared the stage with the likes of Joni Mitchell and the Alberta Symphony Orchestra. This event was also the last time i saw my father, who crossed a few years later. 

i’m so very grateful to Troy for making this happen and for bringing us all together, including my father. i miss them both very much—though i never talk about people who have passed in the past tense as i believe that Spirit/energy continues. As my Elders and Einstein have told us, “[E]nergy is neither created nor destroyed, but . . . changed from one form to another.”⁵

All energy and matter that consists in the universe was originally contained within a singularity,⁶ which is a point in space-time that the Big Bang theory predicts existed at the beginning of the universe. The singularity is thought to have contained all the precursors to everything in the universe.⁷ 

This singularity and its expansion are portrayed visually in my latest project, which i began working on in 2013 when i received a research and production grant to finally actualize my own original intentions with static. This research culminated in a two-channel video installation titled “Mazinbii’igan / a Design (a creation),” which was finally exhibited seven years later in 2020. 

With this work, i focused on further developing my limited understanding of electromagnetic energy and Creation through a comparative analysis between Western and Indigenous science particular to an Anishnawbeg and Red River Métis understanding. All the while i was guided by the oration, teachings, and Creation Stories of my Elder/friend Marie Gaudet (Anishnawbe-kwe from Wikwemikong), whose voice guides, sings, and narrates one of our Creation Stories. 

i created the visuals of this work before receiving Marie’s audio recording. The visuals are a seven-minute synopsis attempting to articulate the creation of our Universe and its 13.8 billion years of history! i had been working on the visuals and timeline for over seven years, and i instinctively knew that whatever story Marie would offer to the project would match the visuals i had created beforehand—and i was right! i also knew that our stories would be somewhat comparable to the West’s cosmological understandings, because i know our ancestors had brilliant insight and observation, and also because i fully believed in the concept of what Willie Ermine calls mamatowisiwin.⁸ Mamatowisiwin articulates the methodology used in a quest for vision/knowledge, whereby the seeker/(artist) begins to explore his/her/their own existence subjectively. “Mamatowisiwin is the process of exercising inwardness.”⁹ i’ve had many other teachers who have similarly told me that “if one wishes to understand the workings of self, the universe/the outer realms, then we must first go inside ourselves to learn,” and that this particular quest for inner/outer knowledge is most often guided through ceremonial process and/or (as Ermine suggests) the processes of mamatowisiwin.

Mamatowisiwin has been utilized in the creation of a variety of my artworks, as i often work in a psychic automatist state where, through the process of my creations, i try to “let go of as much mind awareness as possible.”¹⁰ In doing so, i am usually gifted with unexpected, seemingly accidental new knowledge, where stories/teachings begin to unravel/reveal themselves to me subconsciously through the processes of my creations and the guidance of Spirit/energy/my ancestors. This type of subconscious acquisition of knowledge reminds me of Dr. Leroy Little Bear, who said, “[I]t is the energy waves that know. It is not you that knows. You know things because you we are also made up of energy waves or a combination thereof.”¹¹

So, in letting go, i open myself to receiving/acknowledging/hearing the information/knowledge that was already contained within or brought forward in the process of mamatowisiwin. This is how i “knew” that my visuals—created before the telling of Marie’s story—would align.

Another example of how this type of knowing became evident with the telling of this particular Creation Story, which Marie narrates in our work, occurs when she says, “And at that first time there was nothing but vast darkness and vast silence.”¹²

The story begins with “And . . .” which subtly makes it seem as if the listener has just entered into a story halfway through, that something possibly came before. And when Marie says “that” first time, instead of “the” first time, she allows for the plausibility of multiple “first times.” There is no formal beginning, as “something” has come before, just as there are multiple starts or first times. While this work is about Creation/Genesis, it really has no beginning and no end. 

So, what came before the creation? The Big Bang? Well, according to MIT professor Alan Guth, who pioneered the theory of cosmic inflation, perhaps what came before . . . was another big bang!

[The theory of cosmic] inflation suggest[s] that we’re perhaps living not in just an isolated, lonely universe but maybe our universe is, in fact, one of a whole set of universes, perhaps even an infinite set. . . . [I]nflation does very much point toward the possibility of our universe not being unique but rather our universe being part of a much larger complex, which has come to be called the multiverse. . . . [A] multiverse means many big bangs and our big bang was just one of many.¹³ 

The idea of “a” universe giving “birth” to multiple universes and constantly expanding exponentially at the same time for infinity is a beautiful and mind-boggling possibility—though Guth’s theory seems to match some other theories that postulate the idea of a multiverse and the consideration of parallel dimensions. This is partly why i decided to literally mirror our visuals, as a means of emphasizing the cyclical visual and auditory story of a multiverse and parallel dimensions.

Viewing the illusionary mirror effect after completing the installation, i was also reminded of the Einstein-Rosen bridge theory, which postulates the plausibility of multidimensional portals/wormholes that bind parallel dimensions together. Scientists Einstein and Rosen hypothesized that there is another opening at the “end” of a black hole, which is a white hole, and which creates a double-funnel-like structure (a wormhole). Through this wormhole structure, the scientist Karl Schwarzschild further suggested that transit through the tunnel may be possible and that “doorways” to possible parallel dimensions can exist.

Wormholes were first theorized in 1916, though that wasn’t what they were called at the time. While reviewing another physicist’s solution to the equations in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm realized another solution was possible. He described a “white hole” as a theoretical time reversal of a black hole. Entrances to both black and white holes could be connected by a space-time conduit. 

In 1935, Einstein and physicist Nathan Rosen used the theory of general relativity to elaborate on the idea, proposing the existence of “bridges” through space-time. These bridges connect two different points in space-time, theoretically creating a shortcut that could reduce travel time and distance. The shortcuts came to be called Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes.¹⁴

And with this in mind, i am even more certain our ancestors/our People knew/know of a multiverse, as so many of our stories also attest to this knowledge. i imagine that these are the wormholes/doorways/dimensions that Sabe and memegwasi and other relations must walk/cross through. 

Another interesting point of cosmological comparison in Marie’s Creation Story is when she talks about light. After Marie starts the story with, “And at that first time there was nothing but vast darkness and vast silence,” she goes on:

Gtchi Manitou was lonely.
He listened. He listened. And he. And he heard nothing.
Then he had a thought. And that thought moved.
From his mind.
Into the universe.
And it travelled . . .
never, to be seen again or heard again.
And then . . . he had another thought.
That thought travelled into the vast darkness.
It travelled. Into the universe
never to be seen or heard again.

And one day he had many thoughts
and those many thoughts
those many thoughts burst into light.
And they travelled in that vast darkness of the universe
never to be seen or heard again.

Gtchi Manitou did this many times
over and over and over again.
And as these thoughts moved around the universe,
they began to form light.

And they began to glow and bounce off one another
And his thoughts were that they were beautiful.
They were beautiful lights.
And so, he kept making these thoughts . . .

“Light elements (namely deuterium, helium, and lithium) were produced in the first few minutes of the Big Bang.”¹⁵ Though the universe was opaque when these elements formed, the early universe was opaque because it was filled with a thick cloud of plasma that scattered light, preventing it from travelling far.¹⁶

i wonder if Marie’s telling of how light was formed somewhat matches the timeline of how the universe was also formed. When she says,

. . . those many thoughts burst into light. 

And they travelled in that vast darkness of the universe

never to be seen or heard again . . . 

i wonder if this is because of the opaqueness of plasma?

And when she says,

And as these thoughts moved around the universe, 

they began to form light . . . 

i wonder if this formation is the creation of the cosmic microwave background?

Light began to take formation in the universe approximately 240,000 and 300,000 years after the Big Bang.¹⁷ The light that was created (then) is part of the cosmic microwave background. The CMB is the cooled remnant of the first light to travel freely throughout the universe. It is a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills the observable universe. it’s the oldest and most distant light that can be seen, and it carries information about the early universe.

Light takes its form in frequencies or wavelengths. Frequency and wavelength are the means by which everything in the universe communicates knowledge and information.

By reading light (in frequency or wavelength), we can see how the universe expands.
Energy waves are the vehicle for expansion.
Energy waves carry information.

Flux is the rate/how fast that information flows.
Flux is the measurement or rate of movement.
Flux measures the flow of energy: cosmologically.

“And also, on a subatomic level,” (Dr. Leroy Little Bear).

The native paradigm consists of several key things. . . . One of them is constant motion or constant flux. The second part is everything consists of energy waves. In the native world, the energy waves are really the spirit.¹⁸

Dr. Little Bear’s notion of flux reminds us that all objects/“belongings”—places, things, everything in the universe—is animate, and (to paraphrase Dr. Little Bear), if it is animate, then it has Spirit, and if it has Spirit, it must also be sentient. As he says,  

If everything is animate, then everything has spirit and knowledge. If everything has spirit and knowledge, then all are like me. If all are like me, then all are my relations.¹⁹

Everything in Universe can be viewed as animate, as everything in the universe either emits or absorbs electromagnetic radiation. The action of emitting or absorption is flux. Like inhaling and exhaling, it is Spirit that compels the action, which causes me to believe that the entire Universe (in flux) is sentient in a state of what’s called “universal flux.”

Scientist David Bohm also articulated (like Little Bear) his own idea of universal flux when he proposed that everything in the universe is part of a vast, interconnected whole that is in constant motion and flux.²⁰ David Bohm’s theory, known as the “holomovement,” refers to a concept where everything in the universe is interconnected and constantly unfolding as a unified whole, essentially implying that matter and consciousness are not separate entities but rather different aspects of a single, dynamic reality, signifying a deep level of interconnectedness between them. The universe is not a collection of separate parts, but rather a single, interconnected whole in constant flux. This is what my Elders/teachers have also taught, though said in a different way. Everything is animate/everything is in flux.

Bohm and Little Bear met each other in the early 90s and Bohm was apparently fascinated with the Indigenous languages present at the meeting, as Indigenous languages are mostly verb-based/in flux, reflecting a “world view [that] was very much in harmony with his conception of the quantum theory.”²¹

This notion of flux/the idea that the universe is sentient/conscious/has spirit, combined with Tesla’s belief/idea that the universe is a network of energy, vibrating at different frequencies, causes me to question . . .

If all existence has/is energy/spirit and matter
Then frequency/light/wavelength must be the language 
Of all energy/spirit and matter?

My teachers have always said that language comes from the land and i imagine now that that language is voiced through frequency and initiated by the thoughts created/carried by flux.

My teachers have also said that particular languages are born/reflective of a particular ecosystem, and that all matter, energy, and Spirit in this system has transmitted to us the learned understandings of how the land animates/governs herself. And so, when someone tells me they received a teaching or were gifted a water song while visiting a river, i believe it was the frequency of that river that spoke/sang, and that the flux of that river, is the Spirit of the giver, the water/river.

Is frequency/light/wavelength the language of all energy/spirit and matter? 

i have a feeling that if i actually could speak any one of my ancestral Indigenous languages (my Grandma spoke six) that i wouldn’t be asking myself this question.

Though i’m very much interested in what the science of our Elders would say, i use my art as means to try to understand.

i have listened to Dr. Little Bear speak about how Indigenous languages need be used to achieve the “Grand Unification Theory,” and have read how Bohm also thought a verb-based language would be a better way of understanding his own ideas of unification.

i have been taught that the land relays to us—through thousands of years of direct empirical observation—our entire cosmological understanding, and that this is reflected in the language, which admittedly i’ll never come to know/understand without being a fluent speaker. 

Here—in writing this text and through my processes of making art—i use text, sketches, and creations as a way to pose questions around how i may come to know what i sought initially to learn . . . and, yes, it’s through energy waves that bring/carry the information (Little Bear) and, i believe, that frequency that “speaks” the knowledge/thoughts of flux, through a process of mamatowisiwin. i do not pretend to actually know what I’ve proposed here. i just think it is an interesting idea to ponder: the possibility that the language of the land, waters, and universe is the language of frequency, initiated through the consciousness of flux, and that perhaps language changes dialectically depending on the flux and frequency of where we are located geographically. 

These are the questions that inspire me, when thinking about my place in relation to the ‘great mystery.’

_______________________________

1. Kate Ravilious, “Whistles, Cracks, Hisses: Noises of the Northern Lights,” The Guardian, January 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/05/noises-of-the-northern-lights-weatherwatch. ↩︎
2.  Daisy Dobrijevic and Elizabeth Howell, “What is the Cosmic Microwave Background?”, space.com, January 28, 2022, https://www.space.com/33892-cosmic-microwave-background.html. ↩︎
3.  Vic DiVenere, https://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/big_bang.htm. ↩︎
4. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Science Mission Directorate, “Anatomy of an Electromagnetic Wave,” https://science.nasa.gov/ems/02_anatomy. ↩︎
5.  Richard B. Alley, Seth Blumsack, David Bice, Maureen Feineman, “Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory,” Earth 104: Energy, Environment, and Our Future, Penn State University Libraries Repository of Open and Affordable Materials, https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth104/node/1253. ↩︎
6.  “The Early Universe,” Les Cumbres Observatory, https://lco.global/spacebook/cosmology/early-universe. ↩︎
7.  Eric Ling, “The Big Bang Singularity” (Master’s Thesis, University of California Santa Barbara, 2015), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6bq4g6kf. ↩︎
8.  Ermine, Willie, “Aboriginal Epistemology,” First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds, eds. Marie Batiste and Jean Barman (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995). ↩︎
9.  Ibid. ↩︎
10.  Jeannette Armstrong and Douglas Cardinal, The Native Creative Process: A Collaborative Discourse (Penticton: Theytus Books, 1992). ↩︎
11.  Dr. Leroy Little Bear as quoted in Don Hill, “Listening to Stones: Learning in Leroy Little Bear’s Laboratory: Dialogue in the World Outside,” Alberta Views, September 1, 2008, https://albertaviews.ca/listening-to-stones/. ↩︎
12. As narrated by Marie Gaudet in Tannis Nielsen’s video installation Mazinbii’igan / a Design (a creation), 2020.
    ↩︎
13. Alan Guth, “Podcast: Inflationary Cosmology—Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse?” Slice of MIT Podcast, 2020, https://alum.mit.edu/slice/podcast-inflationary-cosmology-our-universe-part-multiverse. ↩︎
14.  Ailsa Harvey and Nola Taylor Tillman, “What are Wormholes?”, space.com, March 5, 2024, https://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html. ↩︎
15.  Martin White, “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis,” course website, https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html. ↩︎
16.  Chris Palma, “The Cosmic Microwave Background,” online course materials, Astro 801: Planets, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe,  Penn State University Libraries Repository of Open and Affordable Materials, https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l10_p8.html. ↩︎
17. Fraser Cain, “When Was the First Light in the Universe?” Universe Today, November 7, 2016, https://phys.org/news/2016-11-universe.html.
    ↩︎
18.  Dr. Leroy Little Bear as quoted in Don Hill, “Listening to Stones: Learning in Leroy Little Bear’s Laboratory: Dialogue in the World Outside,” Alberta Views, September 1, 2008, https://albertaviews.ca/listening-to-stones/.
    ↩︎
19.  Leroy Little Bear, “Jagged Worldviews Colliding,” Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 78. Accessed online at https://www.law.utoronto.ca/utfl_file/count/documents/hewitt-leroy_little_bear_on_jagged_worldviews.pdf. ↩︎
20.  Lucas Jenn, “The Interconnected Universe,” Medium, October 2, 2024, https://lucasjenn.medium.com/the-interconnected-universe-a2ab9073109e. ↩︎
21.  “Bohm and the Blackfoot,” infinitepotential.com, https://www.infinitepotential.com/bohm-and-the-blackfoot/. ↩︎