One New Nose
Metis Dreamer
This photo was taken 32 years ago during an experimental surgery to replace my nose. It had never been performed before, and I was the first person to consent to this type of skin graft. The procedure successfully restored the portion of my nose that had been bitten off in a good Samaritan attempt to stop a robbery.
It was during this time that the dreams began. At first, they were specific to the injury.
The woman first appeared to me seated in the middle of a cave with a fire burning to her right. I sat across from her. She had black hair, kind eyes, and a stern face that softened whenever she smiled. Her dress was made of animal skin, with multicolored beads hanging from its fringes of hide. This was my first sign that she represented my Native ancestry, there to guide me through a troubled period.
As my eyes adjusted to the fire’s light, I saw the cave walls and ceiling were smooth, covered with handprints of many sizes. The woman told me these belonged to my ancestors who had come before me. Then she directed my attention to what lay between us: two dreamcatchers.
Both were made in the traditional way, except that letters were sewn into their webs. The dreamcatcher closest to the woman displayed the four cardinal points N, E, W, S. She tapped each letter with her finger, then reversed the order, tapping S, E, W, N.
The dreamcatcher nearest me was its mirror image: the S was sewn into the North position, the N into the South, E remained in the East, and the W was inverted into an M. The woman leaned forward and tapped the center circle of the inverted dreamcatcher three times, the center where good dreams flow through, she then tapped the M, E, N, and S.
“MENS,” I said. She returned her finger to the center of the dreamcatcher and said O, tapped it three more times, and softly said: “OMENS.”
“Omens,” I repeated.
The woman smiled, then tapped her nose three times. Slowly, she slid her finger across the web of the first dreamcatcher, tapping the N, then the circle three times, then the S, and finally the E.
“N… O… S… E,” the woman said. Again, her finger traced the web, this time starting with the W, then the circle, tapping three times, followed by E and S.
“W... O... E…S.” Before she could speak, I woke up. I jumped out of the hospital bed and stumbled into the washroom. Looking in the mirror, I repeated the woman’s words, “Nose Woes.” What the hell, I thought. Am I losing my mind? Or was this an omen, that I was going to lose my nose? Two weeks later, the surgeon completed the final procedure. I had my new nose. The skin graft was successful, but the facial scars would remain for life.
Not long after, the woman returned. We were once again in the cave, sitting as before. This time, she pointed to the dreamcatcher closest to her, tapping the center circle three times, then the N and the E.
“ONE,” she said. Letter by letter, she tapped the web, until the message was complete: “ONE NEW NOSE NOW SEWN ON SON.” She smiled.
As for paranormal experiences, that one was right on the nose, though perhaps it was not paranormal, but simply a natural Indigenous Dream. The woman continued to appear to me over the next thirty years. And as many people learn on such journeys, patience and time are often your only true companions.
For example, she once revealed a lesson hidden in language itself. Oui and Aye, which are not just affirmations in French and old English, they are formed from the vowels, an anagram of A, E, I, O, U, Y. Together, they symbolized more than language; they reflected two-thirds of a Métis ancestry vote: French, Irish, and Scottish. Later the vowels appeared as components in a dreamcatcher riddle.
The woman also shared sacred poems,
one of my favorites I will share, called
The Land of No Name:
As I see a cooling reflection, playfully played,
In spring full of mind,
I am reminded of the bridge of time,
In the land of no name.
That I left behind,
Not one dog and God, to see me off,
Not the sands of land, but of old,
Silver reflecting the sun of day,
Moon of light, stars to fill my head,
For tonight I think of gold,
Not that which lines my sacket,
But of that which holds, the not so clouded memory,
Of two Gods, your Mother and Father,
Not one dog and god.
I sat in silence across from the woman, trying to interpret what she had just recited. Finally, I asked her, “If women and men were originally thought of as gods by their children, who changed it?”
The woman smiled, leaned forward, touching the letters of the inverted dreamcatcher. She tapped the S first, then the center circle three times, then the M and E. “SOME,” she said. Her finger then moved again, tapping M, E, N, “MEN,” she said.
I asked her, “Did everyone believe this?”
The woman leaned forward once more, tapping letters across the web until another word emerged. “OMNES,” she said, then waved her hand around the cave, reminding me of the ancestral handprints on the walls and ceiling.
When I awoke from the dream, I had to look up the word for its meaning.
That dream took place the year I met my wife, 2003. The first two dreams came closest to the injury; after that, the woman would reappear every year, just when I was losing focus. Lately her lessons have taken on an environmental bent, perhaps a reflection of my growing worry for our children and grandchildren’s future.
Once again, we sat in the cave, facing each other, the fire burning to her right and the two dreamcatchers between us. To the woman’s left, the vowels spelling OUI and AYE lay on the cave floor.
She lifted the A and placed it in the center of the dreamcatcher nearest her, then began to tap the web starting with the center A, tapping it three times, then S.
“AS,” I said.
She smiled, removed the A, and set it back on the cave floor, alone and apart from OUI and YE. Next, she placed the E in the center and started the next word with a tap to the S, then the center E, tapping three times, then East to tap E, ending with N.
“SEEN,” I said. (As a side note: I later discovered “See” has far more definitions than I’d ever realized and surely related to “Some Men.”)
The woman removed the E from the center, placed it on the cave floor beside the A, then lifted the I from OUI and set it in the center of the dreamcatcher. She tapped W, then I, three times, then S and E.
“WISE,” I said.
She continued in the same way, placing each vowel in turn, tapping letters, and with me sounding out the words, until all the vowel letters lay together: A E I O U Y. The message was complete:
“AS SEEN WISE ONES USE YES.”
The woman seemed pleased by the confused look on my face. She leaned closer and explained that there would always be people who answer with no when you tell them what you have seen. She tapped the N on the dreamcatcher closest to her, then the center three times.
“NO,” I said.
She nodded. “But you must answer with Oui, Aye, and Yes to their one No.”
Her finger traced and tapped the letters again, ending with the word SNOW.
“NO SNOW,” she whispered. That was the message. Then she added, “when the snows of the North begin to fade, the permafrost shall weep, and sleeping gases shall rise to wane the ocean floor.”
Sensing my disbelief, the woman removed the A from the cave floor and placed it back in the center of the dreamcatcher closest to her. Once more, she tapped her message methodically, one word at a time, while I sounded each out, until the final word formed: WANES.
“SWAN SAW SEA WANE AS SANE WANES,” I repeated aloud.
As the words left my mouth a second time, she leaned forward and traced a new pattern across the inverted dreamcatcher. The letters spelled out: EMS ON. My heart pounded in my ears. How had I not seen that before?
The woman leaned back. “The earth is sick,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered, “but what can we do?”
She lifted the A from the dreamcatcher, set it aside, and replaced it with the U. Her finger tapped six letters.
“USE SUN,” she said.
Was this a metaphor for enlightenment?
The woman removed the U from the dreamcatcher and reached for my hand, guiding it gently over the letters one by one, tapping the center three times as needed. When the sequence was complete, the words emerged: NO ONE OWNS, WE OWE.
“This is the way it has always been,” she said softly. “The earth gives us life, and we owe.”
She then reached for the letter A and placed it in the center of the inverted dreamcatcher. “There will be people who want to help you, but you must…”
Her voice trailed off as she began tapping again, first the N, then the A three times, followed by the M, the E, and finally the S.
“Check their NAMES,” she said firmly.
With that, the woman showed me the hidden names woven into the dreamcatcher, each vowel producing different names and meanings.
Again, as I often did, I asked the woman, “why me”, this time she waved her hand around the cave, your hands tell a tale, that no name can change, but the answer to your question has been right under your nose the whole time ENOS.
The woman removed the A from the center of the dreamcatcher and began stroking the eagle feathers sewn to the sides. As an afterthought, she added:
“Ask the people if they would prefer WONES or MESON, as time is running out, and living in a cave is no fun.”
Dream interpretation is simple when it’s spelled out for you. But for years, at the beginning, whenever I reached out for help, insisting this was an ancestral spirit guiding me, I was met with pity or the firm reply, “That’s not God’s way.” Only one elder ever said, “This is your journey; no one else can walk it.” My world had been turned upside down, and all I wanted was for someone to ease the burden; to tell me I had the right to believe in my ancestry and the gifts that came with it.
Eventually, the Woman appeared again in my dreams and warned me: “Stop speaking of our time together, you will know when the time is right.”
It dawned on me years later that the woman in my dreams was always looking at the dreamcatcher closest to her upside down, as most women must view the world everyday as insane. God what a revelation, as we enter that period of insanity again.
https://www.houseofnames.com/ca/wones-family-crest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enos_(biblical_figure)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson
Another sacred poem recited by Wise Woman
AS I Am Three Eye’s
Three who reached the shores of land,
Not so unkind for me,
To press onto, six angles of direction,
I, who began three, multiplied by three sons,
In time, as three, times three suns,
Two moons, one star, to pass,
And reflect the passing of time,
To be or not to be,
That is not a question to be asked for long,
For as it was before, before you could see
My reflection, I could see you, in my minds eye of two
Gods, our Mother and Father,
Not one son.
