Awasi Saba

Awasi saba (Western Abenaki) means “after/beyond tomorrow.”

This suggests an anticipatory attitude or way of being, while we are iodalik ta nikwôbi, “here and now.” Our awareness while being present-in-place entails the use of all of our senses to be responsive, while we stand in the center of everything.

We are always having in mind that change or creation is continual, and that sense of motion of change is what we call time. We are on a path, marked and worn by those who have gone before - nikônkôgoak, the ancestors, the ones who come ahead - and headed ôgawasek, somewhere that lies out of sight (literally, in the shadow). We, in turn, show the way to sôkhigwzijik “those who approach crawling” - the children. This is a shared journey, and we can help each other along, or we can try to do it alone; this is how one may become lost and even lose oneself - wanôbôthlôt. To be lost is to forget, to not remember the directions we have been taught, to no longer be able access what we have or could have known.

And to that point: we are known by (and exist as a result of our relationships with) others. We do not exist as singulary entities - separate from everyone else (including all of our relations, here) - but we are realized in the confluence and interaction of all of those around us. They create us, and we are all in this together, right now, and that too will change into something else. Remember, time is change. We are part of this moment and I am reminded of the definition of “moment” from an engineering or mathematical perspective: the tendency or measure of tendency to produce motion especially about a point. We see here a relationship between time and space, that continuum of “change-in-place.”

And so, we travel together, in the company of Creation. Knowing this, we have a responsibility to those who will follow and to those who have shown the way: to look ahead at the same time as we remember. We can only see ahead “one look”, as the old way of relating travel distances over various terrain was described. And then we need to take another look once we reach those shadows: awasi saba, beyond tomorrow.