Reconciliation Day

A week ago yesterday, I was parking my car under a cedar tree in a parking lot near the site where the Reconciliation pole was about to be raised on the main mall at UBC.  It had rained all of the way into the city from the valley and we were preparing ourselves for a cold, wet, dreary day.  Instead, the rain stopped as we parked the car and by the time we were winding our way to the main mall, the sun had come out and it had become a beautiful spring day.

I was excited to be there with my daughter, who had invited me to come with her as part of a voluntary field trip for her Indigenous Peoples art history course at UFV.  I was so excited to be there, to be a part of this powerful occasion, to bear witness to the first step to healing – a prayer for healing in the glint of those copper nails – for those who survived the residential school system and for those who did not go home again.   

I was so excited and honoured to be there…I had no idea how I would be affected by the experience after the fact.  I had no idea that I would carry this lump in my throat when my mind would wander to that pole, those figures.  I had no idea I would be ripped open by that pole like a ghost-filled piñata; bleeding grief from parts of my soul with no name.  I especially had no idea that standing in the presence of that pole would serve as a reminder that I have no idea who I am – who my people are; that shame and denial has coloured my ancestry for generations; that my children will never know who their people are because my grand-parents were afraid to be Indians.  I had no idea I would walk away with any of this…or just how much I would be gutted by all of it.

The Reconciliation Pole at UBC

None of this story will make any sense without context:  context of the residential school system in Canadian history (its attempt to eradicate the Indian presence during the expansion of the railroad and the colonial claims on land historically lived on by many Indigenous peoples across the country) the context of the creation of the pole as a symbol of healing for our people in light of the reality of what was lived by those who survived the residential school experience and those who did not; and the context of all of my story – my family history and how all of this echoes through my family history like whispers in abandoned mine shafts.

The Subjugation of Truth
by Kent Monkman

The Treaty system and the Indian Act paves the way for Residential schools:

When the expansion of the West began in the early to mid-1800s, the Canadian government (and the American government as well) rounded up the nations of the Prairies (and any other nation that was present in areas coveted for settlement) and forced them onto randomly drawn sections of land called reservations.  The governments promised to care for his Indian brethren in this reservation system because the natives were like children, in the eyes of the colonial governments, and needed the Christianized, “civilised” officials and police to help them learn how to be better people.  Here is how the current government of Canada sees it:

“The impact of treaty making in Canada has been wide-ranging and long standing. The treaties the Crown has signed with Aboriginal peoples since the 18th century have permitted the evolution of Canada as we know it. In fact, much of Canada's land mass is covered by treaties. This treaty-making process, which has evolved over more than 300 years between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Canada, has its origins in the early diplomatic relationship developed between European settlers and Aboriginal people. As the two parties made economic and military alliances, Canada began to take form. These diplomatic proceedings were the first steps in a long process that has led to today's comprehensive claims agreements between the Crown and Aboriginal groups.” 

From the Indigenous and Northern Affairs web page…like today… To read that makes it sound like the nations were happy to create this system and help out their burgeoning country.  The reality is that Indigenous peoples were rounded up and threatened with jail time if they didn’t comply with the authorities and their demands.  True acts of negotiation were few and far between…as in the example of the Indian Act of 1876.  The Indian Act granted more authority to the Department of Indian Affairs, allowing it to make sweeping policy decisions regarding the lives, livelihood, and identity of Indigenous peoples across the country, such as:  determining who was an Indian, managing Indian lands, resources and moneys, controlling access to intoxicants and promoting “civilisation.”  The Act was created to make the government the “guardians” of Aboriginal peoples until such time as they were sophisticated enough to fully integrate into Canadian society.

The Final Solution to the Indian Problem:  the Residential School System

 I always tell my students – grade 10 First Peoples unit or the grade 11 Second World War unit – that “the final solution” was not conjured by Himmler when he was designing and building concentration camps.  The phrase was created by Duncan Campbell Scott, an Indian Affairs minister in the early 1900s:

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.” (April 12, 1910)
(Department of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG 10 series).

Yep.  Our government created a phrase, and policy, mirrored 30-odd years later by a regime noted most for its holocaust.  The Canadian government created this policy and yet has never called it a holocaust…that is a conversation for a whole other blog post.

The Canadian government wanted to civilise and integrate Indigenous peoples into the “main-stream” Canadian society and looked to the Jesuits tradition of early childhood education as a frame work for this policy.  Many Catholic orders see that the earlier one educates the child in the ways s/he should go, the better success one will have in the passing on of knowledge and the chance that the child will follow the teachings.  Thus the impetus for the “Indian Problem” was fired in the hearts and minds of those who would eliminate us and thus began the assault on Indigenous communities and the legalized kidnapping of Indigenous children across Canada. 

They came for our children.

They stole our children.

Look at your children right now, if they are close.  If they are not, close your eyes and see your children as 3 year olds or even as shaky-legged 18 month olds…smell their soapy, baby smell.  Now imagine that the RCMP and nuns and priests drove up your driveway, kicked open your front door, and ripped your children from your arms…they scream your name as they are driving away from you.  If you try to stop them, they will kill you.

THEY CAME FOR OUR CHILDREN!

Children are the heart and soul of First Nation’s, Metis, and Inuit communities.  The laughter of children is the breath of these communities. 

They took our children.

 

The Scream
by Kent Monkman

I remember reading the account of a mother whose children were kidnapped and shipped away, thousands of miles away, to residential school…she talked about the silence after the children were gone – the hollow silences where laughter had once been.  She talked about how the adults didn’t know what to do, how many people became very sick because their hearts were so broken.

They took our children and they tortured them.  They raped them.  They starved them. They conducted experiments on them.  They impregnated them and murdered the faceless, nameless babies by asking other children to throw the strangled infants into the furnace fires.  They cut their hair and beat them for speaking their mother tongue.  They jailed children who tried to escape this hell and beat them to death.

Study for Blackrobe
by Kent Monkman

Those children grew to be parents who knew nothing of love or culture or connection to who they were supposed to be.  They had children and became grandparents and those children and grandchildren were either “educated” in the same way their ancestors were or they were never parented because few people coming out of that system knew how to parent because no one was parented.  Many people drank, many peopled used drugs, many people entered the sex trade, many people killed themselves because the burden of the memories of those days were just too much.

 

Many people also survived and their resilience embraced those next to them and their strength gave hope to the generations that followed.  They held each other together.

The “Reconciliation Pole”

Haida master carver and hereditary chief 7idansuu (Edenshaw), James Hart, and a contingent of other carvers (including his son), began two years ago with an 800 year old ts'uu, or red cedar.  They created the story of Indigenous people before during and after the impact of residential school on Indigenous communities. 

I’ll let the pole tell the story.  The description is mostly taken from:  http://news.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Pole-diagram-full-size.jpg  I added some other reflections/details.

Haida poles are read from the bottom to the top:

Before Residential School/Colonisation:

1.         Surrounding the base of the pole are salmon representing life and its cycles

2.      Mother Bear is next.  There is a sGaaga (shaman), standing on Salmon house, performing a ritual for the return of the salmon

3.      Bear Mother holds her two cubs while Raven looks out from between Mother Bear’s ears

During Residential School:

4.       A residential school house, designed to assimilate and destroy all Indigenous cultures across Canada.  It was modelled after the Coqualeetza Residential School, where many of James’ relatives were imprisoned (his grandfather, great aunts, great uncles, and friends).

Chief 7idansuu comments in the Georgia Strait that it looks like the school has been “plunked on our heads.”  When you see the pole, you certainly are struck by the incongruity of this square “thing” in the middle of the flowing lines of the other figures – it just doesn’t fit.  It is covered in copper nails which, I was told by my daughter’s instructor, represents the children who died in those schools.  There were nearly 60, 000 nails.  There is one nail for each child lost.  Survivors and other members of indigenous communities were invited to hammer copper nails for the lost.  

5.      The next section is what I have carried all week – the piece that haunts me: the children holding and supporting one another are wearing their school uniforms with their numbers on their chests…the numbers by which they were identified when the schools took their names upon arrival.  Their feet are not depicted as they are not grounded during those times.

THE CHILDREN HAD NO FEET!  

And from where I stood, at the north side of the pole, there was a faceless child among the varied faces and colors of the children carved together.  It caught my breath.  Between the nails and the children, I could not feel my body in the midst of the crowd anymore.  I could only hear the drums. 

6.      Next are four spirit figures for the four directions:  water – killer whale; land – bear; air – eagle; Thunderbird – the supernatural.  They symbolise the ancestries, worldly realms, environments, and cultures in which they are rooted, that each child came from.

The Future:

7.      The mother, father, and the children represent the family unit and are dressed in traditional, high-ranking attire, symbolising revitalisation and strength of today.

8.      Above the family is a longboat and a canoe travelling forward side by side.  The canoe represents the First nations and governances across Canada.  The longboat represents the Canadian governance and the Canadian people.  This represents the respectful honouring of differences but shows us travelling forward, together, side by side.

9.       Four coppers, in red, black, yellow, and white, represent the different peoples of the world.  They symbolise and celebrate cultural diversity.

10.  Eagle at the top of the pole represents power, togetherness, and determination and speaks to a sustainable direction forward. 

I belong to a group of residential school survivors on fb.  I am not sure how I found them or they found me but I asked to join and they accepted me.  The videos and pictures posted from those who were able to make it to the ceremony – their tobacco offerings (tobacco smoke sends prayers to the creator) with kisses on the faces of the children, as they prayed for themselves and those who didn’t come home – were crushing.  I knew, mostly, how they felt near that pole.  It had been carved with such love and honour, it makes the lump grow in my throat to think of it.

The spirit of love and longing to be whole washed over all of us.  The drums and the singing and the glint of the copper nails, the wooden little faces with their wooden numbers, washed over all of us.  I could only hold my daughter and weep while I prayed for the souls of the survivors, the souls of the dead, and the souls of all of my people who long to be whole and honoured and loved. 

It took four days before the entirety of the experience hit me, while I was sharing with my dear friend and Aboriginal Support worker.  I didn’t know the meanings of the figures and as I read them to my friend I was once more awash in the emotions of Saturday.

But it was the children with no feet that really got to me – that still gets to me.  The faceless one and the children with no feet. 

No feet, no name, no face.

My story – the girl with no feet, no face, no name.

This seems a natural segue to the context of this experience in my story.

I was born on the Saskatchewan Prairies, in Yorkton, to a woman of 21 who had just gotten married in October.  I was born in mid-May in 1967…right in the heart of the ‘60s Scoop (Aboriginal women had their children taken from them right after birth and put into foster care).  The Scoop was not part of my mother’s reality, although, one of my Aunties had several children adopted out.  The Scoop was not part of my mother’s reality. 

I was born with piles of jet black hair and the pigment of my brand new skin was darker so that my mother’s father called me his little papoose.  My maternal grandfather played the fiddle and could jig up a storm, apparently – a key part of Metis culture (one piece of many).  My maternal grandmother’s people were long time Orangemen from Scotland and Ireland…basically the UK and Canada’s version of the KKK. Tolerance of difference was not their strong suit.  My maternal grandmother’s people homesteaded near Winnipeg, in the heart of Metis territory.  My maternal great-grandmother would tell me about the Indians coming to her house – how they were always around.  I remember that from when I was very small, probably around 2 or 3…definitely before my sister was born – we are 3½ years apart. 

I remember the faces of my first cousins and thinking to myself – always in the most silent parts of myself – that their straight black hair and hooked noses; their faces and skin and something else I couldn’t quite understand made them like the people my father and mother derided when they saw “Indians” stumble around downtown Regina or Calgary or Edmonton or any other city we have lived. My cousins always dated people who were Aboriginal, married into Aboriginal families, birthed children into Aboriginal communities.

When I was three, or so, and we were living in Winnipeg, my mother and father took me to Fort Garry for the afternoon for a picnic and to run around.  We lived in an apartment and had no back yard for me to run around in so they made sure we went outside to parks as often as we could.  I remember this trip because I have this very clear memory of the giant canoe on display and how I could hear drumming and singing of the people who had once used it.  As I got older and thought about that day, I envisioned a button that someone had pushed to make the canoe sing.  When I became a teacher, a student of mine was raised here on the coast but was born on a reserve north of Winnipeg.  He knew Fort Garry very well and knew that canoe.  When I told him about the singing and the button and how it wasn’t there anymore; when I asked him what happened to the speakers that made the canoe sing, he looked at me like I was crazy…there was no singing canoe.  Ok.  So, as a three year old I heard drumming and singing in a canoe that had no one drumming or singing near it in reality.  Cool.

Given that experience, I really should not have been overly surprised when, in my mid-twenties, just after the birth of my first child, I started having dreams about living in a village with people whose skin was as red as clay.  Granted, I had been watching lots of North of 60, which happened to be one of my favorite TV shows of all time, but it fit for me.  The dreams fit for me.  I was with the elder women of the village and we were fighting intruders.  I stood beside them as they were shot in the head – I woke feeling bone fragments and blood on my face.  I hid them and ate with them.  We talked and walked and swam – Else told me I was a turtle person. 

Elsie 

I would dream I was a bear or a cougar.  I dreamed one night I was an eagle, soaring above a mountain made of bones…later I found out Thunderbirds live on mountains made of bones. 

I dreamed I was sitting in a long house across a fire pit from three elder men.  They told me it was time for me to learn about my ancestors…this was the morning before I was supposed to go to a Pro-D on the Katze reserve in Pitt Meadows but I was sick when I woke up – sick with fever and I didn’t go.

I dreamed, around two years ago, that I stood facing the mountains behind my school – Golden Ears.  I was in line with thousands of women and they were singing the women’s warrior song.  They were drumming and they told me to sing.  When I awakened from the dream, I knew I had been gifted with the song.  I played it on my phone to be sure that it was actually that song…it was.  I wept.  Such an honour.  I wept again as I shared that information with my Ab Ed worker friend.

About a year ago, I dreamed I was in a teepee with an elder man in traditional robes and eagle feathers.  The teepee was black and twinkled with stars – it was as though the teepee walls were the night sky.  He stood giant over me and said “They have named you Starchild.  You are a star child,” and I woke up.  I told my friend about it and asked her if she knew what it meant.  I looked it up and was shocked (not too much, mind you) to learn that many of the qualities of a star child are qualities I have or have experienced.

So what, right?  What does this have to do with the pole raising?

About five years ago I proposed to my mother that we were probably Aboriginal.   She laughed and said there could be no way.  I told her all of the stuff I just told you and she said that maybe I was Aboriginal in a past life.  Given that my mother’s family were Orangemen, I am sure that outing the family as “Indians” in a northern Saskatchewan town would not have been awesome; especially because my mom’s brothers were constantly in and out of jail, her father was thought of as one of the town drunks, and one of her older brothers was put in jail for manslaughter for shooting his wife in a drunken rage and trying to shoot himself.

We never talked about the shootings.  Even after my Uncle moved in with us when he got out of jail, the scar on his cheek still pink and fresh.  Even when I heard his name on the radio when we were driving to pick him up from the pen.  Even when he would get blackout drunk and cry to my mother.  We never talked about the shootings and we never talked about how her sister’s 17 year old son was the first to sexually assault me when I was 3.  We never talked about how he started the abuse train on me that went on intermittently with many other family members until I was 10 or 11 years old.  We never talked about that.

Somehow being “Indian” was much worse than all of that.  I don’t know how but it was.

I saw my Granny’s face in the faces of the elder women at awards ceremonies or meetings for Aboriginal Education.  I have been asked several times in my life what “tribe” I belong to.  I have been pulled and connected to the soul of indigenous spiritual practice for as long as I can remember.  And yet, there is a code of silence, a pressure of denial in my family that has kept me footless and faceless my whole life. 

The ultimate effect of that is that I have no idea who my people really are.  Where do I come from?  Am I Metis?  Am I Cree? Ojibway?  Blackfoot? Dene?  Who are my people?  What is my clan?  I don’t know.  I don’t know who I am or where I come from and this makes me as lost as those wooden children on that pole…the children with no feet because they were not permitted to be grounded in their culture.

I want to have feet.  I want to teach my children the ways of our people but I don’t know the way.  It was buried with my great-grandmother and all of those who knew the secrets but didn’t whisper them to enough people to allow them to get to my ears.

The Reconciliation pole is for our survivors and also for our country so that families need never feel the necessity to cover up their true identities again in order to save their children.  The pole was for the dead and the never born, the survivors, and the generations living with them.  The pole was for the children who were ripped from the arms of their mothers and fathers and torn to pieces by a country that needed to get rid of them but hasn’t had the courage to call it genocide.

Those wooden, nameless, footless children will haunt me for a long, long time.  They will tug at my heart and force me to stare into their faces. They will remind me that I live in a place where I will never know who I am because it was better to be a murder and a child molester than it was to be known as an “Indian.”

I lift my hands and voice in prayer to those beautiful children murdered by the church and government; the children torn from family and community; for the souls of the dead and the living who carry the burden of those days in their heart.  I tell the souls of the nameless that they will not be forgotten – that they will live in our hearts forever.  I pray for peace and love and healing.  I pray for strength and pride for our people and the generations to come so we can free ourselves from the yolk of colonialism for good.  May the Creator hold us all and fill us with love and strength.  All My Relations.