Journey to Healing and Prosperity

Friday, May 4 2007 Whitehorse Star, Yukon Territory excerpts:

On the count of three, Linda Bonnefoy threw her arms forward, and a feathered blur swooped out into the air.

Bonnefoy, who is accepted within the First Nations community and who was involved with the Red Fir negotiations 10 years ago to protect the land from being developed, has been crushed after losing a court hearing.

She met with Tlingit elder and storyteller Schulyetl Sylvester Jack Sr. and asked him, " When is that money going to come to me that I can help all these people and that I will be so rich I won't know what to do with it?

Jack Sr. then told her a story " A long time ago, people believed that the person who put a necklace around the neck of an owl and released it would be the richest person in the village. You got to be smart enough to catch the owl.

Bonnefoy believed that this would be part of her journey to healing and even came upon an owl with a broken wing. She turned it in to the Department of Environment but the staff released the owl without notifying her.

That's why Bonnefoy asked to be involved in Thursday's release ceremony and to be the one who released the great horned owl.

On Friday, May 20th, 2005 Journey to Healing and Prosperity wool felted copyright image was shared with Schulyetl, Sylvester Jack Sr.'s family. My friend and Tlingit elder passed away on March 8, 1998, and I didn't get to share my wealth with him but he gave the wealth story to me to act out if I was smart enough to catch the owl. My daughter was born in 2000 and I imagined myself releasing an owl pregnant. An owl is a messenger. Some believe it is an omen to see an owl as it is a messenger of death but I disagree wholeheartedly. More than a messenger of death I saw it always as a message coming through.

I started felting the image in