More Medicine than I could have ever imagined.

In August of 2017 my life changed.  One of those life changes you feel on impact.  You step into the space, take a breath, close your eyes and know in every fibre of your being that this moment is the beginning of the end and the beginning of the beginning all at once.

On August 18, 2017 I stepped onto the sacred ground of the longhouse on the unceded territory of the Squamish people and my life changed. On impact.  It was the same day as the total eclipse of the sun.  I sat in the sacred smoke of the fire, weaving the scent into my curls, feeling the presence of thousands of people amongst the twenty-some women there.  It was the beginning and the end and the beginning of the beginning for me. 

I began my Masters Degree on August 18, 2017, exactly 3 months after my 50^th birthday.  The beginning of the end and the beginning of the beginning.  I placed my sandaled foot upon the sacred path I had been praying for for years.  I was seated across from a fire and a man I had dreamed about a decade before.  This was the place.  These were the people.  This was the first step upon the medicine walk to myself, my ancestors, my grandchildren. 

Many opportunities for Masters Degrees had appeared to me, before me, but none of them felt true to me: not leadership with its destination in administration, not psychology with its call to private practice as a therapist, not SPED specialties or any other traditional academic programs.  None felt like me. None felt right. None presented themselves in a way that suggested I was meant to be there.

Until May 2017…15 days before my 50^th birthday. I invited myself, last minute…into the last spot in the Inquiry trip to Harrison.  There Shawn Bullock tuned me to the calling and I looked to the Grad Diploma department where the Aboriginal Education and Reconciliation diploma reached out to me.  I felt immediately pulled to it because my Inquiry question from the May meeting I crashed just so happened to be How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I work in a system that was created to eradicate my people?  I prayed for answers, for direction, with all of my whole being.  I just wanted to be where I was needed.  And by the middle of June I was accepted to the program. By August I was in longhouse.  By November I was sharing my path to my classmates and my new family. 

From May until this moment, I have received teachings and continuous confirmation that I am exactly where I need to be…that my ancestors have taken me by the hand and guided me here…that I would not have been ready for this until now.  All is as it should be.

And I am so grateful.  Words cannot hold the gratitude I walk in daily for all of this.  I am truly, deeply blessed.

I am constantly called to the old St. Mary’s site…we call it Heritage Park now…to walk and pray and meditate.  After the snow and ice storm in late December, I have been grieving the loss of the trees, battered and broken by the devastating storm. 

Last week I walked to the girl’s dorm site and nearly wept at the piles of broken limbs of my dear trees, gathered up and sawed off without a thought to them at all.  I was feeling the profound metaphor reaching into me: all of this brokenness here where so many had been broken.  So much tidying done to clean up other messes of this place.  The line “did they pray for them when they cut you down?” kept ringing through my head as I approached the site, feeling wracked with pain at seeing the birch tree sawed off without care.

I wrote this poem as I stood among the shattered branches, leaving prayers afterward for the trees and the children:

All of the brokenness has been tidied up…

gathered into neat piles,

bundles,

stacks of shattered pieces.

Jagged edges made clean with blade and power,

lopping off limbs

sawing off bumps

all to make things smooth

clean

safe.

I wonder…

did they pray for them while they did this?

The trees here holding the secrets of this place…

did they pray for them when they cut them down?

R. L. Elke Feb 4/18

I left prayers and sage in the place after I wrote the poem and before I walked toward my car and home.  When I returned on Friday to gather materials for a project, my son called to me to “come see this.”  I walked over to him where he showed me an angel ornament laying on the concrete slab, dirty but undamaged. 

Clearly someone had left it as a votive for the same reasons I left poems and sage…prayers for those who lived here once…the living and the dead.  For me, I saw it as a recognition that my poem and prayers from the previous week had been received and appreciated.  I thought about making it part of my project…as proof that my reaching out had warranted a reaching back but I knew it wasn’t for me.  Dante and I found a safe place to house her and went about our business.

Yesterday I sat upon the concrete slab once forming the front entry step to the girl’s dormitory at the St. Mary’s site now known as Heritage Park in Mission, and I listened to the whispers of those around me.  They told me to share this.  So I honour those whispers…the living and the dead…to bring you this post.

I will, in all likelihood, share more of my progress on my journey through this learning, through these teachings, as I go back to go forward – learning who I am, who my people are, and who I am becoming.  It is my deepest prayer that the teachings revealing themselves to me may also be teachings for you. 

I share these teachings with the deepest love, honour, and respect for all.  Walk in love and healing to your medicine.  All My Relations.

For you from yesterday’s whispers in the park:

This weak February sunlight still feels like July – after what felt like months of rain and cloud and grey – here is the sun, glorious and heavy with the promise that all will be well..that anything is possible if we believe it to be so. 

I returned to the Girl’s dormitory site – the fourth time or fifth time in the past month…third time this week…

the angel still here in her hiding spot, tucked in the root of the giant poplar tree that has taken over the corner of the front entry slab; destroying it from underneath with its roots…crevasses widening yearly until, eventually, it, too will crumble to pieces like the buildings have over the past 134 years.

I return to this spot over and over and over – an archeologist returning to the same place, praying for a find, knowing in her heart of hearts this place is fertile with answers, if she only knew where to dig first. Two decades of connection to this place – this site of conscious …conscience…truth in the misnaming, actually.  Two decades of connection to this same place:

my first Shakespeare directed here, Kerry (my dear friend and mentor) lives here, my soul quietens here.  These trees, this grass – planted by me in some parts – stamped down to powwow drums in the rain as I felt my soul cleansed, emerging from the dust and desperation of long endured artistic barrenness.

I come here to listen and to witness.  The place I re-align to truth and what is real and right in my life. 

People come to the empty plaque/information holders and read the notice that the former celebration of St. Mary’s has been removed by the District of Mission “until replacements are found.”

Terrifying notions when you sit with that:  “Removal by the District of Mission for future replacement.” 

I fucking hope not!  Not for any of it!

Not for the lies

or the purpose

or the children!

NOT FOR THE CHILDREN!

I came here today, called by this place to bear witness to the brokenness that is passed by everyday without thought or honour or prayer. 

Without question or wonder or awareness.

Without outcry or disgust or rage

            that a mere few hundred feet north, in a little grassy knoll, the bones of dead children lay buried…according to those who know and are not believed. 

And it occurs to me that in the days of our nights during shows and learning of this place –

the ghosts in the ghost stories are from the school – from the little knoll a few hundred feet from this place and a few hundred more from the boy’s dorm or the barn or the gymnasium – where former information boards told of the excellent physical education the boys received – including boxing.

Oh, how they loved to box!

These broken pieces of trees litter these sites without notice of the incredible metaphor of the place.  Maybe others feel it, too, but no one stops to pray for the fallen branches

or children some say lay a few hundred feet north of here under a little, grassy knoll beside the maintenance building. 

I want to scream at them – those who wander over here and do not ask why I sit  on the front, broken step of the girl’s dorm amidst the fallen, broken branches –

I want to scream of the rape and the starvation and beatings and attempted genocide perpetuated here like a Canadian version of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen…more polite and less efficient but just as devastating. 

I want to scream at them to notice the brokenness and the ruin!  I want them to moan and keen and beat their breasts with their fists!

I want them to honour the little dead, buried, some say, in the bramble covered knoll a hundred feet or so from here!

I want to rage to the sky and the trees and the mountains until they crumble to dust!

I want to kick over every Oblate headstone and sledgehammer them – shit on all of them and throw them in a grinder until the sand they are made of blows to the four winds and their names are forgotten ad infinitum.

An information plaque in Heritage Park WITH NO MENTION OF THE REAL HISTORY OF THE PLACE AS A RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL SITE.

I have my next steps here.

These whispering dead – the mourning living have given me a plan and a purpose to count coup on these people who forget and to bring light to those who can’t see. 

My first song from my first drum will come here and I will sing for the dead and the living,

for myself and my children,

and for the future hopes of our grandchildren.

I still don’t know why I come here all of the time –

yes I do.

I have been told.

I have been commanded.

Now it is time to do.

*********************************************

I returned today with my sage and my sweet grass to re-search for my course work…to pray for the place and the people, living and dead, who haunt this place.  I learned that the real work is to re-search for the right questions.

That is my prayer.

On my walk out to my car, I was stopped on the trail by a hummingbird.

Yesterday it was a trio of eagles flying high above me.

Answers all.

Thank you, Creator, family, and Ancestors.

Message received.

All My Relations.