We Are the Land 2017

The red dress hung on a black velveteen coat hanger that was tied with a red ribbon to the lowest branch of the bare tree.  As the cold spring wind gusted, the dress spun and swayed just as if it were worn by a woman who was dancing.  All the way along Philosopher’s Walk at the University of Toronto more red dresses, hanging from trees, were animated, brought alive by the wind.

All pictures from John Klein's post in Timeline Photo

This installation by Winnipeg-based Mètis artist Jaime Black is the most recent expression of her REDress Project and it is called We Are the Land 2017 .  The dresses which were collected from community donations are reminders of the more than 1200 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada.  Black hung nearly 120 red dresses in six locations at the University. 

I read about this installation in the newspaper on the last day that it was to be in that location and I visited it after finishing work that day.  Philosopher’s Walk is where I used to take naps on the grass when I was a student at this University in the 1970’s.  I felt safe enough to do that.  This was in stark contrast to the unacceptable level of violence that Indigenous women face here in Canada. In the same space that I felt safe in were short dresses and long dresses, dresses for thin women and dresses for larger women; dresses for evening wear and dresses for work; dresses for young women and dresses for older women. 

As the wind breathed life into the dresses, some danced, some thrashed as if fighting off an invisible attacker, and some had become tangled in the branches and lay at odd, crumpled angles as if injured.  Some had wrapped a sleeve or sash around the trunk of the tree as if for support.  I tried to imagine what a woman wearing each dress would look like.  How would she wear her hair?  How old would she be?  How would she move?  Who loved her?  Who were the people that missed her – mother, father, grandparents, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunties, children, cousins, community members?  Who was this woman gone from our sight but not from the hearts of those who loved her?

I noticed how students walked along the path, earbuds in place, looking neither to the right or to the left as if the dresses that danced and flapped were invisible.  I went to each dress in two of the locations to honour the women they represented.  I wished for them that the MMIW Inquiry which will soon start will bring answers, healing and solutions so that these women will not be forgotten and more women won’t join their ranks. As I spent time with the dresses and the women I imagined, they stopped being strangers, stopped being other.  They felt more like sisters.

Jaime Black began this project at the University of Winnipeg in 2010.  She feels that urban campuses create “space to speak about what Indigenous women are facing in a really public forum.” (Toronto Metro Mar. 22, 2017).

After I reached the last one I started to walk to the subway but something stopped me and I turned around.  Coming down the path flanked by red dresses walked a young woman in a bright red coat.  It was as if one of the dresses had become inhabited by life.  I stood and watched as she walked calmly, safely through the university.  That is my wish for all women in Canada and especially for Indigenous women, to be free to walk safely anywhere.  This won't just happen.  We have to want it to happen and work towards it happening.  That is part of our new story.

Beloved Storyteller Richard Wagamese Leaves Us with Embers

Beloved storyteller, award winning author and journalist Richard Wagamese died March 10, 2017 at the age of 61.  Originally from Northwestern Ontario, Wagamese described himself as second generation survivor of residential school  because of the trauma that was passed down by his parents who attended residential school.  Part of the sixties scoop, Wagamese was in foster care and then raisied by a non-Indigenous family in southern Ontario.  He worked across Canada and called Kamloops home in his later years.

Author of many books of fiction, many based on autobiographical themes as well as non-fiction, essays and poetry, he was first and foremost a storyteller.  “He loved stories and stories loved him,” said Kim Wheeler of the CBC.

Wagamese always wrote from the heart and his voice is one that inspired many others.  Shelagh Rogers of the CBC was his `chosen sister`.  You can hear her speak about him here.   She called him “love on legs”. He told painful stories with a generosity of spirit that opened people`s hearts and minds, remembered Rogers.

The CBC show Unreserved paid tribute to him.   You can listen to the podcast of that edition here. In that special show, author Thomas King said that Wagamese could cross cultures by writing from a vulnerable position.  Author Waubgeshig Rice said, “We’ve lost a vibrant spirit and a beautiful voice.”  Speaking of Wagamese’s legacy, Rice said, “At the core of that legacy is the resilience of the human spirit which transcends all of our differences.” 

I had just received Richard Wagamese’s last book, Embers, One Ojibways Meditations as a gift, when he died. It is a collection of his writings when he started each day in silence with sweetgrass, cedar, tobacco and sage burning and it is a beautiful way to start your own day.

He will be terribly missed by many Canadians including the authors he mentored but we will be comforted by the work that he has left behind. If you haven`t read any of his work, it is available in stores, on-line and in libraries.  If you want to hear his voice, you can see a video of him receiving the 2015 Matt Cohen Award with the Writer`s Trust and hear him speak about his relationship with story here. 

Here are some passages from Embers that turned out to be his last gift.

Richard Wagamsese (2016) Embers. Madiera Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre.

“In the darker depths of long winter nights, spirits slumber, too, and allow their stories to be told – these are the storytelling moons.  Elders and storytellers who have been given tales to carry speak softly, reverentially and the people hear them.  The people do not merely listen – they hear.  To hear is to have a spiritual, mental, emotional or physical reaction to the words.  Sometimes at very special times, you have all four reactions and are changed forever.  Share stories, fill cold nights with the warmth of your connections, your relationships, here each other and be much more.  That is the power of storytelling.” (Embers p.100)

“Life is something hard.  There are challenges.  There are difficulties.  There is pain.  As a younger man, I sought to avoid pain and difficulty and only caused myself more of the same.  These days, I choose to face life head on – and I have become a comet.  I arc across the sky of my life and the hard times are the friction that shaves off the worn and tired bits.  The more I travel head-on, the more I am shaped, and the things that no longer work or are unnecessary drop away.  It’s a good way to travel.  I believe eventually I will wear away all resilience, until all that’s left of me is light.” (Embers p.133)

“To tell.  To use the act of breathing to shape air into sounds that take on the context of language that lifts and transports those who hear it, takes them beyond what they think and know and feel and empowers them to think and feel and know even more.  We’re all storytellers, really.  That’s what we do.  That is our power as human beings.  Not to tell people how to think and feel and therefore know – but through our stories allow them to discover questions within themselves.  Turn off your TV and your devices and talk to each other.  Share stories.  Be joined, transported and transformed.” (Embers p.72)

 On CBC’s Unreserved author Waubgeshig Rice said it best:

 “Baamaapii Richard.  Chi Meegwetch.”

ReconciliAction Births New Stories

Naturalist Trevor Herriot tells the story of a piece of Manitoba prairie in Towards a Prairie Atonement (2016).  He recounts how the prairie habitat was a balanced ecosystem for thousands of years, then tells the story of the Métis who managed it but were eventually forcibly relocated by the government and finally how modern day agriculture has threatened it.  As a naturalist, he is concerned about the dwindling habitat for endangered species and how the previous federal government removed all protection from the land.  He and others have worked for the past four years to return federal protection for uncultivated prairie habitats searching for ways to manage this common land.  You can read more about this on his blog.

Trevor Herriot (photo CBC)

Towards a Prairie Atonement is dedicated to “those who take up the work of reconciliation.”  Herriot sees the work of reconciliation and protection of the land as intertwined.  His suggestion to get beyond private and public ownership of the native prairie is found in a “third way, found in Indigenous perspectives on land and refined in Métis concepts of land governance [which] offered – and could still offer – the basis of a more sophisticated regulatory model that would respect and conserve long-term community interest in the well-being of the land.” (p.16)

Herriot also recounts the story of a woman who contacted him, offering to show him a piece of native prairie of which she had become a “bewildered steward.”  This woman had discovered the names of the Métis family that had lived on and cared for this piece of land on the South Saskatchewan River.  She wanted to “do right by the land” and find a way to reconciliation with the Métis that were driven off by “the violence of Canadian law.”  Herriot writes, “The more time she spent there and walking the prairie and riverbank alone, the more she felt that the place was opening her heart, teaching her about the land and how the Métis had lived along the river.” 

photo: TrevorHerriot.blogspot.ca

“What do you do when you know the name of the family who lived on the river lot whose title now bears your name?” asks Herriot.  The woman answers, “I will work that out, but all I know for now is this: the work of reconciliation we have been called to do is not just for governments and institutions.  I can be, I am, part of it, and getting to know this river lot is helping me find others who want to be part of it too.  I may be just a placeholder for it, a steward for a time.  Private landowners need to be thinking about that, to let go of the sense that land is only about money and wealth.  Part of reconciling as people under treaty – and including the Métis who were left out of the treaty but who also had land rights – is to make decisions that are not about money, that will get us thinking about wealth from a broader, community perspective.”

The woman has asked a Métis Elder to help her explore these questions.  This Elder told her that, “reconciliation means sharing what we have with one another and not taking from one another.” 

This week I read in the Toronto Metro newspaper that the city of Markham, ON has, after months of discussion, made a cross-cultural agreement with the Eabametoong First Nation (Fort Hope) in Northern Ontario.  In the past, Markham has built economic and cultural ties with cities in Europe and China but decided to look closer to home this year.  The agreement “hopes to promote an exchange of culture, skills, and economic opportunities between the two communities.” (Metro, Mar. 7, 2017).  

The mayor of Markham also wants to “plant hope” in this community of 1,500 people 300 km north of Thunder Bay.  As well he wants to educate people in Markham about the history and realities of First Nations communities.  You can read more about this project and see pictures of both communities and their goals on their Working Together document.  Believed to be the first of its kind, this may provide a model for other cities to follow.

Secret Path by Gord Downie & Jeff
Lemire is also an animated film with
an original soundtrack by Downie.

Driving home from work on Friday evening I heard a story on the CBC radio about a special exhibit at Canada Blooms, the annual spring flower show in Toronto.  Entitled The Secret Path, the exhibit inspired by Gord Downie`s project of the same name, tells the story of 12 year old Chanie Wenjack who escaped from an Indian Residential School and died trying to make his way home fifty years ago.  

Designed by award winning landscaper, Joe Genovese with the support of the Downie Wenjack Fund the display will allow visitors to take a path through the landscape of the Canadian Shield and over a train track which is what Chanie was following trying to get home. Information to help tell his story and that of thousands of other children will also be part of the exhibit.  

In the radio interview Genovese said, “Gord said we should just do something and this is what I am doing.”  Genovese wants to bring awareness of the story of residential schools to more Canadians and remarked that many visitors are visibly moved by the experience. “We recognize that Indigenous people have known about these issues for a very long time, have been calling for change for a very long time, and that we still have a long way to go,” he said.  An Indigenous Elder attended the opening, performing a smudging ceremony with song and drumming.  Genovese reported that the Elder was very happy to have this story told to more Canadians.  You can read more about this project here. 

I am fascinated at the new stories that are emerging as ordinary Canadians get about the work of reconciliation or ReconciliAction as it has been dubbed.  Moving from awareness and empathy to action and the formation of new relationships, these stories will inspire others to take actions and so on as we write and share our new story together.    

The World is a Gift in Motion

Robin Wall Kimmerer, In Braiding Sweetgrass writes:

     “For the greater part of human history, and in places in the world today,              common resources were the rule.  But some invented a different story, a            social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold.       The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for        human well-being and devastation for the natural world.  But it is just a story      we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old            one.

     One of these stories sustains the living systems        on which we depend.  One of these stories              opens the way to living in gratitude and                    amazement at the richness and generosity of the      world.  One of these stories asks us to                      bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our            kinship with the world.  We can choose.  If all the      world is a commodity, how poor we grow.  When      all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we        become.”

I took a break from reading the beautifully written Braiding Sweetgrass to pick up emails.  I found one from Playing for Change that seemed to speak to the quote above.

Playing for Change not only creates and records intercultural music as a means for creating peace but it also has a Foundation that supports music schools in various countries.  Mark Johnson, Co-founder of Playing for Change writes, "The Playing For Change Foundation was born out of our first experience visiting the township of Gugulethu, South Africa 10 years ago. We learned music is the greatest tool we have to provide hope, joy and inspiration to the next generation and that together we can change our world, one heart and one song at a time."

The Playing for Change website says that most residents of Gugulethu do manual work in nearby Cape Town or in the Township itself. Gugulethu means “ our pride” in Xhosa.   Apartheid had a devastating impact on the community and they are still rebuilding from that time.  After ten years of success, Playing for Change is expanding the music program in this township.  “With drugs, crime, poverty, and disease prevalent in the township, the Imvula Music Program will offer even greater hope and possibility for the community and its youth.” 

Poppy Tsira, one of the founders of Imvula

The Imvula program will now take place in 4 different schools with a larger and more diverse group of children taught by six talented teachers. The children will learn guitar, vocals, drums, saxophone, keyboard, marimba and dance.

People and musicians around the world donate time, talent and funds to Playing for Change who can then share this gift of music with the children.  As the children make music, they share with one another and give their musical gifts to all who listen.  And then, just as Robin Wall Kimmerer says,” When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”

You can see a video of the kids in the Imvula Program here.  Share in the wealth!

On and On

On and On  by War & Pierce 

(C Pierce, S Ward and J Faber 2016)

We’re calling… Out to you!

Everybody!  We got to move!

Sunny War and Chris Pierce

We’ve been down… Way too long!  

It’s our right, to right the wrong!

We’re gonna walk!  
We’re gonna crawl!

Gonna make it, through it all!

Through the fire… through the rain 

Won’t stop fighting. 
Until we’re free again

On and on, the tears will flow 

On and on, that’s all we know

On and on, still so far to go

On and on, the tears will flow 

On and on, that’s all we know

Tears will flow that’s all we know  

And we have so much further left to go

Stand up. We all belong!

Up on the hill, that some live on.

Keep on strong!, Keep on proud!  

Tell the truth, say it loud!

We’re gonna walk!  We’re gonna crawl!

Gonna make it ,through it all!

Through the fire… through the rain 

Won’t stop fighting. Until were free again

On and on, the tears will flow 

On and on, that’s all we know

On and on, still so far to go

On and on, the tears will flow 

On and on, that’s all we know

Tears will flow that’s all we know  

And we have so much further left to go
On and on....

These are the lyrics to a new song and video by blues singer/songwriter duo War & Pierce.  I found this on an email from Playing for Change accompanied by this message:

      “On and On” is a powerful testament to how far we’ve come as a human race but             also speaks to how far we have to go in order to reach freedom and justice for all.           Let us not forget that WE have to be the change we want to see in the world and as         the song says, “It’s our right, to right the wrong.”

The video includes black and white footage of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s interspersed with footage of Indigenous people, a Stop the Pipeline poster held by a young girl, a recent march to protest Trump’s anti-refugee stance, a Union march and a Black Lives Matter poster.  The song and the video capture the pulse of these times and link it to the past.  War & Pierce help to tell this old and new story of people walking, marching and standing up for the rights of each other.  It is a story in which “we all belong.” You can view the video here.

Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience

Kent Monkman

Canada is celebrating its 150^th birthday this year.  A quick look on-line, shows hundreds of celebratory events.  Our National Parks are free this year so we can enjoy the beautiful land that we live in.  And there will be fireworks galore.  Back in 2014, Barbara Fischer, the director of the University of Toronto’s Art Museum had her own idea.  She commissioned Cree artist Kent Monkman to create a Canada 150 project.

A lover of art history, Kent and his team searched museums to curate this project.  However, Monkman writes, “I could not think of any history paintings that conveyed or authorized Indigenous experience into the canon of art history…… museums across the continent hold in their collections countless paintings that depict and celebrate the European settler’s expansion and ‘discovery’ of the North American landscape, but very few, if any, historical representations show the dispossession and removal of the First Peoples from their lands.  This version of history excised Indigenous people from art history, effectively white-washing the truth from Canada’s foundational myths and school curriculums.”

And so he created his own paintings using the styles of classical and modern art to fill in the missing pieces of Canada’s visual history.  He recreates and reimagines famous paintings using “humour, parody, and camp” to confront “the devastation of colonialism.”  His alter ego, the “gender-bending time-traveller,” Miss Chief Eagle Testikle, “embodies the flawed and playful trickster spirit, teasing out the truths beyond false histories and cruel experiences.” (all quotes from the exhibition Brochure) 

 One painting called The Daddies  recreates the famous Robert Harris painting of the Fathers of Confederation.  However, in Monkman’s rendition, Miss Chief sits naked before the Fathers wondering how to get a seat at the “table”.  In an interview with Metro News, Monkman says, “There was no thought towards Indigenous people in that meeting.”

The Daddies, Kent Monkman (photo Globe and Mail)

As I walked through the exhibit, I saw images that dealt with sexual exploitation, murdered and missing Indigenous women, addiction, the slaughter of the bison, treaties and the fur trade.  Eventually I wandered into a small room painted in blackboard paint.  At the far end, brilliantly lit, was a painting called The Scream (after the famous painting by Edvard Munch).  The painting depicted Mounties, nuns and priests dragging children away from their parents to take them to residential school.  It is painful and heart wrenching to see the faces of the children and parents who are almost life sized.  On the side walls are mounted antique cradle boards found by Monkman and his team, that used to hold babies.  In between the cradle boards are some spaces.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that there were chalk marks outlining cradle boards that were missing.  We all know that chalk marks in movies are used to mark murder scenes so the message was crystal clear and chilling. Monkman, whose grandmother went to residential school, cuts through the rhetoric and touches the very core of this truth of our history.

Kent Monkman with The Scream  photo:Toronto Star

Despite the sad stories from this part of our shared history, Monkman is not telling a deficiency narrative.  The exhibition is entitled, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience.  Just like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, this show is accompanied by Miss Chief’s journal in nine chapters.  In Chapter VI, Miss Chief writes, “ So many of our people grew up broken – is it any wonder that they fill the prisons, crowd the wards, and line the sidewalks, lost in the cycle of self-loathing, trauma, and addiction?  I shine brightly for these souls through the darkness, slaying savage masculine force with the dazzling power of my beauty and allure.  I am the light, the two-spirited gentle man and fierce woman.  Walk towards me, my children, fall into step and let the drum guide you.  You will be reborn free to rise again with the buffalo.”

Seeing Red, Kent Monkman

Here in Seeing Red  Miss Chief stands down a Picasso bull with a Hudson’s Bay Blanket instead of a matador’s cape.  The matador lies on the road attended be two Indigenous healers (after Manet’s Dead Toreador).  Monkman writes, “Picasso’s phallic bulls and his butchering of the female nude were contemporatous with the European aggression against the female spirit (homophobia, violence against women) in North American Indigenous societies, many of them matrilineal. ”  In this painting, Miss Chief  takes over the matador`s role as bison return again and people in bison masks dance in the background.

Monkman writes, “I wanted to activate a dialogue about the impact of the last hundred and fifty years of European settler cultures on Indigenous peoples, and about Indigenous resilience in the face of genocide.”  He is sure to succeed in this mission.  The exhibition is filled with images and dioramas that cut through what we thought we knew.  Using visual cues from European art and our own Canadian culture as well as Indigenous images he challenges the colonial mindset.  One has to interact with the art to try to understand the message and this is definitely a decolonizing experience.  One has to make space inside for the new information and space to rearrange the previous pattern set down in our childhoods in history class.  It has been said that we are a country reconciling with our own history and this Canada 150 exhibition helps us to do that.

image: CBC

Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience will be travelling across Canada for the next few years, activating the dialogue that Monkman wants us to have, helping us to re-story our national story and setting Indigenous history firmly in the canon of art history. 

You can find out where the exhibition is, view images and read the brochure with all of Miss Chief`s journal entries and Kent Monkman`s foreword by clicking on these highlighted words.

All That We Are is Story

Author Richard Wagamese

“All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us. What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time…”

Richard Wagamese