Lines / Confines
Creator shaped the body of the land. Wake to its beauty and facets of wealth:
Its People are the medicine, pray for their health.
They sit, a fire is lit, and sing in memory of children found, once lost,
Hear the tears that echo still, a taxing colonizing cost.
Settlers came and claimed, framed with maps and lines.
Stamped land with a doctrine of discovery, made prisons and confines.
Dispossessed, the Melawmen People watch the sk7ap disease grow.
Their healing ablutions shape a canyon of waters ready to overthrow.
Settler:
A swell of truth floods the banks, and the colonial vice starts to crack;
Let Water wash the old away, let the stories come under attack.
In the land lies awakening that must bloom to heal.
Minds be flowering open, so get humble now, get real.
In war, lines are drawn, divisions set, the Old Guard holds the pen.
Let’s pull quill from their hands this time before they do it again.
Settler, abandon your hired gun.
Erasures trigger everyone.
(by Venta)
Like the incredible salmon species of the Pacific Northwest, the work of understanding the impacts of colonization and healing the foundations of our relationship to Indigenous People is a serious swim upstream.
Let’s ground ourselves by again asking: What is my role and responsibility as a visitor to Indigenous territory? This is the anchor, the point from which we journey. Today I ask it from my home, in Secwepemcúl’ecw, in the City of Williams Lake. You may ask it from elsewhere. What is the traditional territory and Nation you reside in?
Becoming aware of yourself in the context of ‘land and Nation acknowledgment’ is an important beginning. Learning percolates from there, like a wellspring. Like water, we, too, are receptive beings, able to absorb, change course and respond as circumstances arise. When we widen our lenses to perceive various perspectives, we swell with understanding, and through that we can choose our direction to impact our world.
As arts and culture workers in the province known as B.C., we’ve been asked to take leadership on Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion work in our society for its growth. The arts contain a legacy of social activism, of speaking truth to power, but also uplifting beauty - and this is encouraging when the scope of work ahead of us is considered.
When I encounter both the artistic and intellectual contribution of Indigenous creators from around Turtle Island and beyond, the works are imbued with a message regarding the essential connection to the land and our earth. Beside the river with Helen, on the mountains with Meeka, I am transported to the roots of the message, which also link back to my own ancestral teachings… the reverence for our systems of support, being the land and its gifts, provide so much strength and healing for the individuals and communities recovering from the legacy of Indian Residential Schools, but also to multiple generations and people from all backgrounds to awaken to the life-giving elements. The arts that emerge from these places and spaces are works of resistance to destructive practices leading us to the brink of a climate catastrophe and polycrisis.
Helen Sandy's pine needle work brings together traditional craftsmanship with prayer and mental health practices. Handmade works of art using traditional materials anchor Helen to the past, present and future.
(Photo by Rick Magnell, Art direction by Venta Rutkauskas)
Returning to The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, we encounter a thorough and challenging document that can direct governments and individuals on the changes Indigenous People are asking for. It states: “For (reconciliation) to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgment of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour.” These instructions themselves ask us to critically assess how we become responsible visitors here. Stating that we must understand the history and context of colonial harms, the TRC sets us up with an essential directive – learn and understand the Truth.
Like the line in my poem above, the waters of Truth are swelling the banks of our reality. When we envision the flow of the river, it leads downstream, moving through impediments in its path, flowing around, above, below… fluidity offers possibility. The salmon, in their great journey and life cycle, however, understand that energy and intent must be used to get upstream, to the Truth of these matters. This implies that we also need to endure a great deal to craft and carve new foundations of ComeUNITY, becoming anti-racist… Writer Ibrahim Kendi explores anti-racism in his book, How To Be an Anti-Racist, indicating that opposing current and historical systems of oppression is an ACTIVITY. It requires something of us, a contract with nature to show up and swim upstream, even when it’s uncomfortable. There are many routes to the ocean that represents our common unity, our shared humanity. This flow and / or push is our evolution towards communities that uplift and care for everyone. I want to move in that direction.
My second mentor Meeka is not an elder, but an arts and culture practitioner, a scholar, and an advocate. Her work continuously uplifts and celebrates the beauty and successes of Indigenous society, especially in the arts. Through projects like 2 Rivers Remix Festival and Confluence educational events, Indigenous excellence and cultural wisdom is broadcast live and online to anyone. Event slogans like, “We Are Still Here” and “Bring the Children Home” encapsulate a movement ripe with unapologetic presence and a necessary call for healing.
My conversations with Meeka have mostly taken place over the phone, yet the landscapes I have experienced through listening to her voice are palpable and clear. She is the first generation in her family not to have attended residential schools. Despite this, her world was full of its impacts. Like a nameless ghost, the spectre of the oppressive and destructive schools slid into everything and everyone in her family and extended community. She encountered its impacts through the inner voices she met within herself, daily. For Meeka’s master’s thesis at Simon Fraser University, she began to search the ghost out, within herself and the elders in St’uxwtews (Bonaparte First Nation), piecing together a looming Truth that emerged from her interviews and storytelling workshops.
“In the process of doing the research, through listening to the storytellers, the
original purpose of the research was transformed. I felt a deep sense of loss while
carrying out this research because I realized that the history of my own community and
family had never been validated, or allowed to 'come out', even to our own people. That
feeling of loss had always followed me throughout my life, especially when I thought
about the people of my parents' generation.
“Being a member and resident of the St'uxtews community for over 20 years, I had
never truly felt like our history had been validated. I had felt it to be trivialized many
times through teachers, friends, and most of all, from my own people, from my own
family. Knowing this, I did not think that I could get the information that I needed to
piece together my identity any other way other than what I knew.”
(From Making Connections with Secwepemc Family Through Storytelling: A Journey in Transformative Rebuilding by Meeka Noelle Morgan)
Meeka’s thesis contains more word for word experiences and ideas from Indigenous lives permanently changed by a government sanctioned program. Read them, and you will be compelled to act, even though the actions took place in the past. What my mentor makes clear is that it is not over, there are ongoing consequences and impacts today.
When we follow the water, downstream for action, or upriver to the source of its wellspring for hard truths and inspiration, we find the stories and the people whose lives were irrevocably altered by governments and industry seeking power. I know this narrative from my own personal history, of families torn apart by two World Wars, nation-states laying claim to lands and abolishing culture. My story and truth are universal, experienced by countless refugees and victims of colonization. It empathically links me to the people of Turtle Island. Here I am now, in Secwepemc’ulucw, and so here is the place in which I act.
How will you and I show up as anti-racists today?
Learning links:
How Do You Like Your Reconciliation? - Yellowhead Institute
Meeka Morgan’s Masters Thesis: https://summit.sfu.ca/item/10264