Concert Celebrates the Contributions of Refugees

We are far too familiar with the story of refugees fleeing from violence and genocide.  We are somewhat familiar with the story of refugees settling in safe countries which don’t always end up being safe.  We are sharing the story recently of Syrian refugees coming to Canada and the communities that have welcomed them.  But this is only part of the story.

June 21^st is International Refugee Day so this past weekend, the story of the resilience, extraordinary contributions, talents and hearts of refugees was celebrated in Toronto at the We Want Peace Celebrating Refugees concert.

The concert was spearheaded by South Sudanese refugee who now live in Canada, rapper Emmanuel Jal who was joined by Nelly Furtado, Faarow, the Love Peace Harmony Ensemble and Vibe with the Tribe.  The music shared was hip-hop, jazz, R&B, afrobeats and spiritual sounds.  Once again musicians came together showing the unity and collaboration that we need in the world.  They honoured and showed respect for the struggle of refugees all over the world with their music.

In addition, the concert raised funds for Jal’s charity Gua Africa which builds schools in East Africa and gives scholarships to young Sudanese refugees.  Funds also went to Matthew House which is a Toronto organization that provides shelter for people seeking asylum.

Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal knows all too well what it is like to need asylum.  As a young child in war-torn Sudan, he lost his whole family and became one of the 20,000 lost children of Sudan.  Many of these children walked all the way to Ethiopia looking for help.  Most died but Jal was one of the ones who made it.  However the UN refugee camp that he found was run by rebels at night and he was taken to be a child soldier at the age of 8.  He was a child soldier for 4 years before being rescued by a British aid worker who smuggled him to Kenya.  He ended up living in a slum of Nairobi after the worker died in a car accident.  It was in Kenya that he combined hip-hop music and political activism and he recorded a hit song while there.

In 2005, Jal made it to Britain where he released the album War Child in 2008 as well as a documentary about his life and an autobiography.  In 2012 Jal came to Canada and co-starred in The Good Lie with Reese Witherspoon about Sudan’s Lost Boys.  He continued recording, including a duet with Nelly Furtado.

Emmanuel Jal at Jal Gua cafe

Emmanuel Jal came to Canada with nothing and now has three businesses which employ Canadians. He has his own recording label and he also opened a café in Toronto called Jal Gua to help support his charity and launched a dietary supplement made with sorghum for vegans with the same name.  Jal Gua means walk in peace in the Naath language.

Jal has founded We Want Peace which is dedicated to raising awareness of justice, equality and freedom for all through the power of music worldwide.  He launched this campaign in 2010 and released the song We Want Peace (view it here.)  which includes Alicia Keyes, Peter Gabriel, George Clooney, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Branson.

In a Huffington Post article,  Jal is quoted as saying "[People think] that they (refugees) are coming to take our jobs, they are desperate people, needy people, violent people, dirty people, sick, traumatized. But people forget the resilience; they are human beings that have survived. And the journeys they have overcome, we can learn a lot from it; we can learn courage, we can learn faith, we can learn resistance, we can learn endurance, we can learn loyalty. We can learn so much from each and every refugee."

In the same article he concludes by saying,  "[Refugees] can inspire Canadians to be grateful for what they have. People don't know to be grateful. You wake up and there's no bomb here. You wake up and nobody's coming to arrest you in your house. You get sick and you have a free hospital." "Gratitude is the key for enjoying peace."

So on International Refugee Day we can be grateful that all the refugees Canada has welcomed over the years have a safe place to live.  We can be grateful for all that they have contributed to our communities and we can be grateful that for the most part we all find a way to live together peacefully.  And we can enjoy and celebrate all the people that work together to create that peace because this is an important part of our story.

Coming Home

Part of Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve

The UNESCO Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve (GBBR) is holding four events this year to celebrate the Anishinaabe lunar calendar.  I wrote about the GBBR in an earlier blogpost and since I live nearby, I have wanted to find ways to connect with this innovative project.  So I was very happy to read in their email about the celebration for the Flower Moon (Waawaakone Giizis) which happens in the lunar month in May.  We were invited to visit Wasauksing First Nation just outside of Parry Sound for a Medicine Walk with one of the community members. 

I love plants.  I grow them for food and for beauty and I am continually learning about medicinal uses for plants as well.  I was told that my grandmother in England used herbal remedies which she used to mail to my mom here in Canada.  But my mother was trying to be Canadian so she never used them and that knowledge was never passed down.  

I had a very early interest in plants and my parents taught me about the plants that they knew and grew in our backyard.  I would ask adults what certain plants that attracted me were used for.  If I was told that they were weeds and were useless I didn`t believe them.  I just figured that they didn’t know either.  As I got older I read books, learned from other women who knew about medicinal plants, grew them and made some remedies to use myself.  Although the knowledge was severed between my grandmother and me, I have spent most of my adult life trying to reclaim this knowledge so that I can pass it down to my family.

So on the last Sunday in May, we headed north.  After going through Parry Sound, we crossed the swing bridge on Rose Point Road,  and the road changed its name to Wasauksing Rd.  We followed it to Geewadin Road and found the Wasauksing Seniors' Centre where we were to meet.  Two staff members from GBBR were there and we were introduced to Faith Pegahmagabow, the community member who would take us on the walk.  She told us that she didn`t know everything about the plants but she would show us the ones that she did know.

 

We carpooled out to the part of the island that used to house a settler community of 2500 in the past.  It is now a ghost town as the company that built the community is now gone.  The buildings have crumbled and only the foundations and some steps are visible. Since the land was leased from the First Nation, it has returned now to the use of the community members and they use the area for pow wows and gathering medicines as well as the plants left behind by the settlers such as apples and lilacs.

Mullein leaves

Faith pointed out plants all along the roadway and told us what they were used for.  She showed us plantain, burdock, yellow dock, jewelweed, balsam poplar, white pine, pin cherry, sweetgrass and even mullein.  Mullein is the velvety leaved plant that shoots up a tall yellow flower spike.  This is the plant that first caught my attention as a child.  I remember stroking the fuzzy leaves and knowing that it must be a healing kind of a plant.  When I asked my parents, they told me it was a weed and it wasn’t good for anything.  So when Faith told us about its uses, I bent down and stroked my old friend who is even more beautiful to me now that I am a grandmother.  It was as if time warped as I realized that after more than fifty years, the little girl’s question was being answered by someone whose people have been here for thousands of years.  It felt like coming home somehow – like coming home to myself, to what I knew as a child.  It felt like my persistence in being true to what I knew inside all these years had come full circle.

Faith went on to tell us that she is going to visit another woman who knows about plants to learn more from her.  It seems that there are many of us who are trying to recover the knowledge that the hubris of modern science deemed worthless.  As the 18 participants asked Faith questions about many plants, she told us that she figured everything was good for something but she didn`t know what all of that was.  I loved that idea.  I think that will change my way of looking at many things.  Just because I don`t know the use of something doesn't mean that it is useless.

As we walked through the remains of the destructive slag of an old railway yard and down the sidewalk and steps of a church now gone I could see how nature was growing over and through all of these signs of “progress”.  The lilac bushes, apple trees, day lilies and snow-on-the-mountain ground cover were all species brought in by the non-Indigenous town’s folk who are now gone.  However, the plants remain.  People on the reserve come and take cutting for their own gardens.  They come and pick the huge heritage apples and make apple butter.  And they gather the medicines that have grown there for thousands of years.  The plants mingle and thrive side by side.

Fiddleheads of Ostrich ferns

Faith told us that when people on the island gather plants for their use, they leave behind some tobacco as a thank you.  “You don`t take anything for nothing,” she told us.   When she showed us where she picks fiddleheads, someone asked her how she knew that they were from the right kind of ferns (ostrich ferns).  “Because I was shown by someone that these were the ones,” she replied.  Of course this is the best way to learn about plants, to be shown.  That was the gift I had longed for as a child.  I had substituted book learning which has taken me a certain distance.  But to be on the land with Faith and have her show us the plants and talk about them was a huge gift.  It was what the little girl inside of me had longed for.  It was healing.

And so when we parted, I gave Faith one of the Heart Berry pins from the Call to Action #83  and told her where it was from.  She told me that when girls become young women in their community, they have a strawberry ceremony and that her granddaughter was about to take part in that.  “Maybe this is for her,” I said.  Faith nodded and we two grandmothers hugged.

Circling the Truth

When we arrived at the McLaren Art Gallery in Barrie and headed up the stairs we could hear the voice of an older woman speaking in another language over the sound system.  Reaching the open door of the gallery we saw a circle of chairs large enough to fill the big gallery space and most of them were occupied by people.  As we listened to the speaker I guessed that she was speaking Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe people. The soft sounds floated around me as I noticed the paintings I had come to see on the walls of the rectangular gallery.  This was the opening of Call to Action #83 in Barrie, ON.  I had been eagerly waiting to see this exhibition since I first heard about it over a year ago.

I wrote about this reconciliation project in an earlier blog post.  Basically, 8 Indigenous and 8 non-Indigenous Simcoe County artists came together in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #83 which called on the Canadian Council for the Arts to direct funds to artists who are working on reconciliation projects.  So far this collective of artists haven`t received this funding but they went aheads with the project anyway.  

The first non-Indigenous artist Xavier Fernandes created a woodcut that spoke of reconciliation.  Then he took this piece to the next artist Marilyn George who is Indigenous.  Back and forth the process went.  Each artist only saw the piece before him or her.  Once all the pieces were finished, the artists brought them together and shared their processes with one another.  Since that time, they have presented the work at schools and in galleries.

The artists of Call to Action #83

Here in Barrie, after the four elders who supported the project and the mayor of Barrie spoke, each artist talked about their piece or their process.  The people who had gathered, moved around during the presentations so that they could see each piece.  Some of the Indigenous artists sang and drummed.  The audience, no longer an audience but now participants, were invited to dance in a round dance inside the circle of the chairs.  Holding hands, we stepped with the drum beat moving in a circle, swinging our arms in circles as well.

The artists spoke of their own histories, their own stories and how this process had changed them.  Indigenous artists talked about how residential schools had affected their families and themselves.  One artist had been a child in the seventies scoop.  They spoke about recovering traditional knowledge and languages.   

Non-Indigenous artists spoke of the countries they or their families had come from to settle in Canada.  They spoke of how they had unknowingly been part of a system that took land and children away from Indigenous people who had been here for thousands of years.  And we all listened and danced and listened some more and danced again. 

The whole time, people moved in and out of the circle in a dynamic process that we all participated in.  This was not a formal talk with rows of chairs and one person speaking at the front where you saw one face and the backs of people`s heads.  In the circle, we all faced each other and the artists faced us and spoke their truth from their hearts. 

Reconciliation by Nathalie Bertin 

The third last painting entitled Reconciliation was of a beautiful strawberry, with gold seeds on a gold background by Nathalie Bertin.  The collective had square pins made from this Heart Berry painting that you could buy afterwards and I bought a few to share with people.  The artists had shared with us from their hearts and we had received that gift into ours.

I met people I knew and danced with people I have now met.  I spoke to Xavier, the first artist who I had met at the beginning of the process last year.  He told me that every time he speaks at one of these events, he says something different because after listening to the other artists, he gains new insights.  The process of going around the circle and listening as each speaks changes those who take part in it.  The act of speaking truth and listening to the truth of another without interrupting is healing and transformative.  

According to the catalogue, this project lays out a roadmap for 'awi-niigaani-mino-wiiji-inawendiwin' -- Going Forward Together in Harmony.  I cannot  imagine how anyone who was in that room with an open heart could have come out the same person.  The stories that were told are heartbreaking, the wounds intergenerational and the solutions seem come too slowly.  Non-Indigenous people are learning of and reconciling with the history that they are learning to accept as the truth.  But as we listen to the truth, and speak our truth with open minds and open hearts, and we do it together I believe we are moving forward together.  We don`t have a map and much has been lost but as one artist said, “We have to get this done.”

What Does Diversity Sound Like?

“Where else but in Canada today, at this moment, can artists from different traditions come together to create a new body of work or, even, a new tradition?” asks the Royal Conservatory of Music on their website.  Their answer is the New Canadian Global Music Orchestra which the Conservatory has created by bringing together professional musicians from around the world who now live in Canada.

The orchestra includes:

Padideh Ahrarnejad (Iran) on tar
Sasha Boychouk (Ukraine) on woodwinds and ethnic Ukrainian flutes
Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk (Canada – Métis) on violin, viola, jaw harp, spoons, and vocals
Luis Deniz (Cuba) on saxophone
Anwar Khurshid (Pakistan) on sitar, flute, esraj, tabla, vocals, and harmonium
Lasso (Salif Sanou) (Burkina Faso) on Fulani flute, kambélé n’goni, tamanin (talking drum), balafon, djembe, doum-doum, and vocals
Paco Luviano (Mexico) on bass
Aline Morales (Brazil) on Brazilian percussion and vocals
Demetrios Petsalakis (Greece) on oud, guitar, lyra, bouzouki, riq, and Greek baglama
Matias Recharte (Peru) on drums, percussion, cajón, conga, and timbales
Dorjee Tsering (Tibet) on dranyen, flute, piwang, yang chin (dulcimer), and traditional Tibetan vocals
Dora Wang (China) on bamboo flute, flute, hulusi, xiao, panpipe, and ocarina
David Buchbinder (United States), Artistic Director

This orchestra is an attempt to create an orchestra  that sounds like Canada for the 150^th anniversary.  Although there are musicians in Canada from all over the world, they usually stay within their own musical traditions and cross-cultural collaborations are rare.  The executive director Mirvan Mehta wants to create the sound of these cultures coming together and expects a "distinctive audience experience."  After weeks of intensive co-creating and working with communities, their inaugural concert will be next week at Koerner Hall in Toronto.

So what does diversity sound like?  You can hear it on the 5 minute video on this webpage.  Just scroll down until you see the video box.  It explains and shows some of the process that the orchestra went through to create a new kind of music.  It looks like a lot of fun.  It is the sound of people creating a brand new sound from a process of collaboration.  Maybe this is the some of the music of our new story.

Looking Into the Faces of Unsung S/heroes

On the walls of the second floor of Daniels Spectrum in the Regent Park neighbourhood of Toronto are the beautiful faces of African grandmothers who have lost their children to AIDS and are now raising their grandchildren.  As part of the Scotiabank CONTACT  Photography Festival, the Stephen Lewis Foundation  (SLF) is hosting this exhibit called Unsung S/heroes.  Self-taught photographer Alexis MacDonald who is also SLF’s Director of External Relations has captured candid moments and portraits in natural light of some of these amazing women.  

One of the photographs from the exhibit

As I walked the halls I could see a whole range of emotions on their faces.  On the walls painted blue you could see the shared grief of grandchild and grandmother, sadness, fear, fatigue and worry for the future.  On the yellow walls were faces that expressed joy, love, fierce determination, the power of community, courage, tenderness, resilience and strength.  In between the pictures were quotes from some of the women:

“Tell me, who has to be stronger on the planet than an African woman?  So if you make it to be an older African woman, you must be the strongest of all.”

Mama Zodwa Ndlovu, South Africa

“All my children died.  Now when I go out to the field to work, I go with a baby on the back, a baby in one arm and a hoe in the other arm.”

Grandmother Evelyn of Reach One Touch One, Uganda

The Stephen Lewis Foundation builds relationships of mutual respect and trust with African community-based organizations.  SLF provides direct support to the local grassroots groups that have the expertise to work with these grandmothers, their grandchildren, people living with HIV/AIDS  and women.  Since 2003, SLF has partnered with over 300 grassroots African groups with more than 1100 initiatives in the 15 African countries that have been the most affected by the AIDS pandemic.

African grandmothers have stepped up to become parents to their orphaned grandchildren, helping them through the grief of losing their parents and sending them to school while harvesting crops, creating local savings and loan groups, educating others about HIV prevention and treatment, as well as coming up with innovative ways of generating income.  They have formed support groups and are also lobbying governments for better social services due to their added responsibilities.

In 2006, SLF began the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign that linked Canadian grandmothers to African grandmothers.  These Canadian groups are still in existence over ten years later.  Their three goals are to raise funds to meet the needs of African grandmothers and the children they care for; to raise awareness about the expertise and leadership of Africa`s grandmothers; and to build solidarity between grandmothers to sustain the changes that need to take place to turn the tide of AIDS in Africa.

In October of 2015, 500 African grandmothers from every region of Uganda met at the First National Grandmothers Gathering.  “Together they expressed their grief, outrage, resilience and hope for the future. (Grassroots, Fall 2015, SLF)  They formulated their demands and wrote a powerful call to action: the  Ugandan Grandmothers` Statement.

Here is a quote from their Statement:

We have done our part.  We care for the sick, we work the land, we hold our collective memory, and fueled by our love we raise the next generations, provide food, schooling, homes and security.

For far too long we have not been counted, we have not been valued, we have been made invisible.  It is time for our contributions to be recognized and our rights to be protected.

The power of these grandmothers comes through in the photo exhibit. Alexis MacDonald has taken them from invisible to visible.  One picture of a grandmother spinning cotton is accompanied by this quote from the spinner:

“I am a cotton spinner.  When I spin my thread I sing my hymns of sadness.  I sing the loss of my sons and daughters into my cotton.  I sing my sorrows into the balls of thread as they spin onto the spool.  I sing and spin away my tragedies.  This is how I go on.”

Grandmother Nigatea, Ethopia, Developing the Family Together

You can learn more about Grandmothers to Grandmothers groups on the SLF website.  The local group where I live is called Grandmothers and Grandothers so that anyone can feel welcome to join.  So far, according to the SLF website, Canadians have raised $24 million for the Grandmothers Campaign.  If you want to see Canadian grandmothers doing flash mobs to raise awareness across Canada last year just click here.  Older women making themselves and their African friends visible.  We are surrounded by Unsung S/heroes and their allies and you just might just be inspired to join them!

Spring Song

Trillium

On an early spring evening we decided to go for a walk in my favourite forest, Grant's Woods.  The forest floor was covered in trilliums.  Only a few had their blossoms opened.  Most had their blossoms closed tightly by the three green sepals.  Only a hint of white gave a clue about what was about to be revealed.  I wondered if they would all open at once, when it got warm enough.

May apple emerges in forest

May apples emerged from the earth like closed umbrellas that opened once they achieved the height needed for the large leaf to open up.  Blue cohosh had already shot up to several feet and were now opening their tiny yellow flowers.  Wild leeks and wild garlic grew in abundant patches throughout the forest. 

Wild ginger

Wild ginger had burst through the soil and opened it’s heart shaped leaves as well.  It was like welcoming old friends back again as we pointed them out to each other. We greeted them as if at a party recognizing people we knew.

Last year's dead brown leaves of the mixed forest of maples, red oaks, beeches, ash, white pine, cedar, and birch where moved aside and covered up by the new green emerging life.  After a long winter, the sight of these rejuvenated me.  For supper we had had wild leeks and fiddleheads and I imagined their new spring energy coursing through me.

Marsh Marigold

In the marshy areas, marsh marigold flowers were vibrant yellow setting off their rich green foliage magnificently.  They made me feel as if the marsh was smiling brightly at us.  Green cattail leaves were shooting straight out of the water as if trying to reach the sky as other water plants emerged from the depths.  But it was getting dark now.

As we made our way to the parking lot, the sun began to set with beautiful oranges and reds streaking across the sky.  The still leafless trees were intricately silhouetted by the coloured light behind them and we stopped to breath it all it.

Sunset over Georgian Bay

We drove west on our way home, into the full spectacle of the changing sunset.  Large pools of water in the fields mirrored the light show and set the dark fields on fire.  We drove without speaking, just taking in all the glory of each moment.  When we arrived home, we could see the sun still setting over Georgian Bay so we drove past the driveway and down to the lake to watch the end of the show over the water.  Now  it was pale oranges and grey clouds, dark water splashing in waves onto the beach.  We watched nighttime arrive peaceful and calm and then headed back up the hill to the house and the warmth of the fire.

Our eyes and hearts were full and we were grateful for the beauty that had greeted and surrounded us from the earth, the water, the fire in the sky and All Our Relations.

Bridging the Divide

I recently took a short 45 minute on-line course offered by edX.  EdX offers free MOOC's or Massive Open Online Courses.  It was started by a professor at MIT and now hundreds of thousands of students from all over the world have taken all kinds of university courses online.  The founder describes this as the "democratization of education."   The course that I took was called Communication Skills for Bridging Divides which you can check out here or at edx.org.

This course attracted me because of the polarization that I am seeing in Europe and North America in the last year.  If you watch the news, you will see countless examples of politicians representing worldviews that seem to be light years apart.  So I thought I would learn some skills for bridging these divides.

The course designers explained the difference between debate, discussion and dialogue.  According to them, debate is set up to have a winner and a loser and discussion seeks to come up with a solution or a decision.  But the purpose of dialogue is to understand the other person’s point of view more fully.  Rather than seeking closure, dialogue uncovers more options. 

It seems to me that we float between these three all the time even in the same conversation.  So often we like to score points or try to convince the other person of our ideas while looking for the closure of agreement.  The idea that you would only be seeking to understand the other person’s point of view and not pushing your own agenda sounded like something I don’t hear very often.  And so I decided to learn more about that.

Whereas, discussions assume that all parties have the same beliefs or worldview, a dialogue is designed to bridge the divide between different worldviews or beliefs.  Dialogue has to be collaborative to work as it involves trust.  However one person can model this and begin a dialogue.  The course listed five ways to facilitate this.

First, you can consciously choose to believe that the other person has good intentions.  This reduces the likelihood of being judgmental and helps one to focus on understanding the other person’s viewpoint.  The second strategy is to ask clarifying questions or paraphrase what you think you heard to make sure that that is correct.  Phrases such as “Can you say more about that," or saying that "this is an unfamiliar way of looking at this for me. Can you give me more details," are ways to gain more understanding.  

The third strategy is to listen humbly, putting aside your own viewpoints and showing that you are listening.  The fourth strategy is to pause when the person is finished talking instead of jumping right back in with your own comments.  This can be a real change for those of us who are used to a fast paced, fast talking, competitive environment.  And lastly, look for common ground, something that you both agree on to build bridges.  If that is impossible, you could always simply thank the person for sharing their point of view.

I got an opportunity to practice some of these strategies.  I was talking to someone about a best selling book that I had recently read.  Most people I talked to didn't like the book and neither did I.  But this person actually liked the book.  I told her that she was the first person that I had met who did like it and asked her to tell me what she liked about it.  As I listened to her point of view, I gained more insight.  I realized that there were people who thought the same way about life as the author and that they would enjoy the book.  We could agree that we simply liked different things.  And we did both agree that we didn't think it should have won the prize that it did.

Sound bites, twitter, and texts make it easy to be get your message out but they are not so good for understanding points of view, listening to subtleties and finding ways to understand complex issues.  It may be that we need to learn and re-learn how to communicate so that we can collaborate, cooperate and take care of each other.

I ran into a story in the newspaper that seemed to be a good example of this idea. Sam Fiorella's son Lucas lived silently with depression for about five years.  It wasn't until he died by suicide that Sam learned how many others his son had reached out to, while he himself was suffering.  At Lucas' funeral many young people told his family how Lucas reaching out to them had helped them to not take their lives. 

This inspired Sam to found The Friendship Bench.  This non-profit organization provides space on campuses where students can talk about mental health issues.  The group installs bright yellow benches in high schools, colleges and universities across Canada to encourage students to talk to each other.  During Mental Health Week this year (May 1 – 7, 2017) they will install benches in five new schools.  The benches are a physical place to sit and talk as well as a reminder to take the time to talk about mental health.  

On the website yellowisforhello.org there are short videos with mental health messages and tips.  Sam suggests taking the media out of social media and encourages young people to get out with others.

Perhaps all our technological progress has taken us too far away from each other.  But humans are resilient and adaptable and we can always learn new things to make our lives better.  You may want to experiment yourself with dialogue and see what stories and new ideas emerge.