.....my forebears on the river below, canoeing through snow squalls after sturgeon and trout, hunting red stag at the water's edge. There were no bridges, no locks, no canals in the river then. I saw them track the beaver in his poplar dams, stalking the washes through silent snows, I saw them snowshoe across frozen lakes with shouldered bows after the sleeping bear, I saw the women and children boiling sap on Sugar Island.
      And just that fast, Ontario, and up onto Canada's longest highway, Route 17. The world that can be known thinned out and vanished as I drove. Every gas station I pass advertised itself as the last chance for fuel, and it felt like I was surrendering control of my vehicle to the moon rising up in the clear eastern sky. The few fast food franchises that attached to the roadway are empty. The electrical storm, advancing from behind, gobbled them up. I didn't care. I didn't even have to move the steering wheel. The miles just happened. I was hypnotized. Pitchblende darkness flapped a ragged blanket over the huge farms where combines had been left for the night among strewn haycocks. I had outrun the storm, or it just fizzled out like they sometimes do, I couldn't tell. The peanut butter and the egg salad were gone, as

was an unknown portion of sesame sticks and a good slug of the ice tea. The sky, purple and yellow one minute, had finished black. I was reminded as I reached down to turn on the high beams: This vision I would propose to the Council was Neil's. I was merely the spokesman for a genius. He'd come to me and said, "Opportunity, Birchwalker, is knocking. Drive me out to meet the war chief?"
      "Birchwalker," he'd proclaimed, "the 2010 World Lacrosse Council championships would be the perfect stage for a reenactment of Minavivana's lacrosse deception at Fort Michilimackinac. If we get it by Parry Four Bears, you can sell it to the Council."
      In no time, we had fleshed the idea out and arranged a meeting with the chief. I drove us out to New York State to meet Parry Four Bears. We hemmed and hawed, probably didn't make a lot of sense at first. Like any politician, Parry had to see that the result promised enough to justify the personal risks, and he was a busy man so he was looking for the full clarity of our bottom line. It was a lot to ask. Powerful people in the modern game of lacrosse would object to tradition being bucked, vested interests being threatened. Parry would have to approve, or the vision was kaputt,

stillborn.
      Then Neil had stood and gestured leaderlike with his hands, "Let us not consider whether the downside is a battle worth fighting. Let us rather consider if the upside packs a wallop for our people and our sport, lest both be forgotten forever. For example, Chief, can you see a tournament where the players from every country use the traditional Iroquois stick? Where they run barefoot over a two- or three-mile field? Where the vermilion balls of the old days are thrown between stripped spruce saplings for goals.....?"
      Not only did Parry Four Bears' face warm to the concept, he immediately came to his feet and added three quick, grand twists of his own. Also these, I believe, had been anticipated by my friend well in advance.
      The chief had then said, inspired yet with calculation, "What if a hundred thousand, from every Indigene tribe that still exists, were present at such a game? What if the tournament, played under Indian rules of baggattaway, were televised?" Then, turning to face me, his mind obviously racing, "Birch, you will coach the team. I need you to get to the semis. I'd need you to beat the English."
      Neil and Parry together like that? It was the Big

Bang, like watching teammate gods in an act of creation. It was better than the thunderstorm I had just left behind me. We had sold him. Neil's vision had inspired equal ones in Parry until an idea had been birthed that was broader than sport or history or humanity alone, the sum and the product and the square of all three. Forever. Amen.
      Th e sparse road signage told me that Mattawa, Ontario, was the next exit, a little border town right on the Ottawa River. And across the river loomed the western edge of Quebec Province. My head had started to pound in waves, circling my skull like the thunder. I pulled off Route 17 at Mattawa, following a sign that indicated a campsite somewhere along the dark riverbank, and turned onto a dirt road that suddenly spilled the front end of the milk truck down into a run of birches and poplars that shrouded the water. I shut off the motor and got out for a walk. My ankle and ribs had stiff ened up, too, during the long drive. With no obvious cause, I felt alone here, penned in, spooked at the border of Anishinaabewaki. My mind was panicked, looking for a fence to jump over, a way to break out. The place names out there, Chippewa names, speak the very truth of our annexation: Nipissing, Petwawa, Nosbonsing,

Kaotisinmigo, Wahwashkesh, Ottawa itself, Memesagamesing, Amateewakea, Nepewassi, Manitowing, Wikwemikong, Wakomata - towns and lakes and islands I know of. Place names are our only epitaphs, names on placemats in greasy spoons that no one can even pronounce. In the deafening silence of place names, up into that chill of time and space our Chippewa spirits have been blotted, our entire civilization reduced to points on a map.
      The pain in my head was now a steady hurt, and I plopped down on the riverbank to the unbroken sound of rushing water. Downstream I saw a white disk glowing in the night as if an alien saucer had landed among the trees, a power plant, and that thought did not fi t at all because now the sight of the intricate Chippewa beaver hunt had entered my mind. I could have been hallucinating in my anger at being nothing but a place name, because suddenly I was in a birch bark canoe with other Anishinaabek brothers and it was cold and we were tracking beaver. A gray wolf bayed out of sight and an eagle soared overhead. It was dusk and we let the canoe glide. We threw a bound-up dog overboard to curry favor with the manidos. We spotted the domed top of the beaver house and

stationed the canoe at the edge of the ice, knowing that they would soon come out to gather food. We decided not to wait. We broke up the house with trenching tools and waited for the family to flee into the washes, revealed where the ice returns a hollow sound when struck. We found their faces in the bubbles through the ice, saw their breathing. We fetched them out one-by-one with our hands, suffering sharp bites in the process. We skinned and cooked the beaver and ate its meat.
      Waves of nausea and intense pain behind my eyes almost overtook me. St. Anne was suddenly standing at my side, barking in Ojibwemowin. I had no idea which of the four sisters she was. What next? I stepped out onto the rapid waters of the Ottawa River, led by St. Anne, and we were whisked into the seam of water and sky and sucked upward through a hole, evaporated with a hiss into the sky above the sky.
      Shhh. Bizaan. Shhh. Hear how I finally had my vision.