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twenty-twO The backcountry north of Kingston, Ontario, is home to a mix of people who seem to have little in common save for where they happen to live. I know, or know of, lots of backcountry residents: secretaries and factory workers, sheep farmers and beekeepers, carpenters and stonemasons, prison guards and school teachers, potters and painters, weavers and writers, antique dealers and second-hand book buffs, radio producers and freelance editors, draft dodgers and retired generals, hippies from the sixties who went back to the land, and their New-Age, twenty-first-century equivalents. I figured there also had to be natives in the backcountry, but I never met and spoke with any until the day I travelled up to the village of Arden with Apolinario Chile Pixtún and Matías Quex Serech. Apolinario and Matías arrived at my house in a state of shock. They’d flown into Toronto from Guatemala the day before, and the climatic jolt between south and north in late November was taking its toll. Apolinario in particular looked quite bewildered. “Ay, qué frío. . . . I can’t believe how cold it is,” he said. “And how everything looks so brown and dried out. When I was here only a few months ago the place was warm and green, lush almost.” Matías, who had no past experience of Canada with which to gauge the present, simply asked: “Va a nevar? Do you think it might snow? I’d like to see snow, I’d like to see snow falling.” They sat down and ate breakfast without taking off their coats. Matías removed his hat. Apolinario kept his on. “That’s better,” he sighed midway through his second cup of coffee. It was the right moment to ask a few questions . I inquired, “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourselves, what you do, why you’re here, so I’ll have a better idea of what it is you’ll be saying later on.” Matías let Apolinario speak first. Members of the Federation of Councils of Kaqchikel Elders, the two were nAtives in the BACkCountry natives in the BacKcOuntry 1 engaged in what might best be described as a cultural mission. Committed to staking out an agenda that addresses Maya concerns in Guatemala, their objectives in visiting Canada were twofold: first, to make contact and establish links with native groups and associations; and, second, to seek practical relationships with nongovernmental organizations involved in community development , especially projects relating to appropriate technology and traditional medicine.Their preoccupations lay with the valorization and revitalization of Maya culture, and they took pains to distinguish themselves, if not distance themselves, from the “popular movement.” Politics for them was primarily a question of creating ways in which Maya customs and practices were not simply safeguarded but allowed freedom of expression, indeed, encouraged to grow. Spiritual as well as material considerations had to be attended to, Apolinario argued, if peace in Guatemala was to have any future. His business card, inscribed with a Maya glyph depicting a god of healing, declared him “a naturopath at the service of humanity.” He lives in the countryside near Chimaltenango but holds consulting hours twice a week in an office on the outskirts of Guatemala City. His previous visit to Canada was as a guest of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. There he took part in the opening ceremony of an exhibit called “Human Body, Human Spirit.” Apolinario’s calling prompted me, after breakfast, to ask him if he and Matías would be prepared to conduct a ceremony of blessing on the centuryand -a-half-old house I’d bought. “We’ll need a glass of water and some perfume ,” Apolinario said. I dutifully provided the former, Matías the latter, an enormous bottle of Brut aftershave. Apolinario looked around my study and unfurled a cloth on top of my desk.On it were embroidered motifs representing the twenty days, and twenty gods, of the tzolkin calendar, a ritual affair that has governed and measured time for the Maya for over five millennia. “Where’s south?” he asked. I pointed out the front windowas he exchanged his hat for a tzute, an all-purpose cloth that men tie around their heads in the style of a buccaneer’s bandanna. We kneeled facing south as Apolinario invoked a blessing. After he finished, we turned to face north, and Matías took over the invocation. After his...

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