Episode 2: Honoring Legacies & Indigenous Futurities

The voices you will listen to share personal connections to Honoring Legacies and Indigenous Futurities. Elder Shirley begins with a song, welcoming the listener to her world. We then hear from the voices of the four other community partners who explain how the past has informed where we are today and how to envision a future that centers joy and resilience beyond trauma and erasure of identity.

Transcript

Elder Shirley  0:00

I sing the song today. The songs we sing are usually in four directions. Grandmother sitting in the east, I feel you lookin' at me I pray to you, pray for you, you are sacred, I feel you lookin' at me. 

Elder Shirley  00:43

So with that song you go in four directions with that. And all the grandmothers and all the mothers and all women sitting in those directions to live in Amen, we will be blessed in a good way. That's what that song is about.

Jessica Sass 0:51

This is Jessica Sass and you are listening to one of four parts of a series titled: Collective History: Reconciliation, Knowledge, & Justice. Over the course of several months, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Indigenous educational partners of Facing History and Ourselves Canada, an international education organization that creates supplemental materials for teachers that “stand up to bigotry and hate.”  Invested Educators and Elders shared their vision of what educational partnership looks like and how it impacts not only their classroom but generations of students who will uplift and uphold true narratives of history. In this conversation, we focus on Honoring Legacies and Indigenous Futurities. Leora Schaefer, the executive director of Facing History and Ourselves, begins by discussing the limitations of centering trauma within historical narratives and suggests we elevate stories of resilience. 

Leora Schaefer  2:21

We want our students to, we can to not only study trauma, and also not to begin from a place of trauma and this, we're not saying that like, well, the history ends, you know, okay, the last school closed, this is where, you know, there's the end, or oh, TRC came out with a report. That's the end. Now we move on next. We understand that there are lived legacies like these moments are lived in an ongoing way in an intergenerational way from generation to generation. And that is not always like part of that conversation is around intergenerational trauma and lived experiences and how that is passed on. But it is also about resiliency. And it's about Indigenous people today. And it's about, you know, we're not looking at any of this through like behind a bush. Right, like a museum experience of a people that once lived. This is an ongoing lived experience. 

Jessica Sass 3:29 

This is indeed an ongoing lived experience as we hear from Elder Shirley John, Anishinaabe wisdom keeper, who shares her path of healing as a survivor of residential schools. She is a first-person source for this period of history.

Elder Shirley  3:42

Hearing from a survivor changes the mind, changes your way of thinking, instead of reading from a book all the time. One survivor can have been mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually abused from the time they're a little girl. Or from the time they're a little boy to the time that they're maybe still in the school at grade ten level. There's abuse in all that system. And it takes a long time for them to, some of them never heal from that.

Jessica Sass 4:19

Elder Shirley discusses the point in time where she feels it is important to move past the narrative of trauma.

Elder Shirley  4:28

I've been on a healing and spiritual journey for many years, and to have that acceptance for myself.  Because I went to residential school for one year, they think that they should not talk to me, they put this roadblock in front of them. They're afraid they're going to hurt me. Nobody hurt anymore. I've gone past that I've gone to my own healing. I've went through my own healing, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. All of that. I've had to work with that. I've had to find guidance. I've had to talk to people I've had to cry my eyes out. I am at a place where my spiritual journey began forty years ago, maybe longer than that. I've been on my spiritual journey for a long time. So when I talk about the residential school, for me, it's a piece of cake. The icing on the cake, you're not gonna break me.

Everything is passed on passed on from generation to generation. And we don't want this for our children. So somewhere along the way, this person has to cut that, sever the cord, so that my daughter and her children will not be that way. That they will have a good life and not think about the past. And what's happened to my aunties, what's happened to my uncles, what happened to my grandmas and grandpas when they went to residential, we kind of put a stop to that. That's my thoughts.

Jessica Sass 5:50 

Grandmother Kim Wheatley, Anishinaabe cultural consultant and wisdom keeper understands what Elder Shirley means when she says “everything is passed on from generation to generation.” She explains the blindspots that non-Indigenous Canadians had around the unmarked graves of children’s remains at residential schools and the importance of accountability. 

Grandmother Kim Wheatley  6:15

We're not going anywhere, there's this still in-school continued perception that we're a disappearing race. And the government will throw stats every once in a while, I think the latest by 2050, there'll be no more status Indians in this country like somehow we're gonna, we're going to be eradicated or assimilated into the whole. And you know, we're the only race of people that are measured by blood quantum. If you are a settler, you come here from whatever country you identify, you don't have to prove it. They just accept it. And all your children get to claim that identity and you're done with it. And see right there, like how broken this system is?

Jessica Sass 7:00

Grandmother Kim Wheatley discusses the ramifications of newly discovered graves of hundreds of children at Kamloops residential school and how that news was received by the general Canadian population.

Grandmother Kim Wheatley 7:15

With the first 215 Children that were discovered or unearthed at Kamloops residential school. Some Canadians were genuinely shocked. They drink the Kool-Aid and believe that this is, you know, the safe, honest place that only has the best intentions. And then there was outrage, you know, which you can only sustain for so long. And for me, I believe that divisiveness and war and anger don't change anything. It just inflames more of that kind of negative discourse and negative response and it peters out over time. Or it heads in very, and fuels very negative outcomes that do not benefit the greater good. I feel education and seeing each other as human beings is very unifying and very important. And, and blame and shame do not serve us or do not serve the greater good. Accepting responsibility for actions is very important. 

Jessica Sass 8:31

Jasmine Wong, senior programs associate at Facing History and Ourselves Canada continues to ask questions about how we remember and reconcile with histories of harm and injustice, and how we can imagine a future for Indigenous youth to thrive. 

Jasmine Wong  8:50

How do we learn from ways in which society has sought to remember and to remind so that we can think about what that means for us today? In education, what we hope to do is to raise critical consciousness. So we talk about the Indian Act, and we talk about how the Indian Act was present in the past, the harms that it created, but also how it is present today. And what does it look like? We have to ask the question, what does it look like for, for us to redress harms around, you know, environmental degradation, you know, stolen lands, laws that have and ideas, the stories that we've told ourselves that have made particular people vulnerable. I'm thinking about women, girls, Indigenous women, and girls, in particular two-spirited people. There's a whole language that has harmed and marginalized people and so it's about asking ourselves; How do we get back to a place of understanding what human rights, what living in the community and respect looks like? And what kind of vision does that paint for us for restoration and of healing and rebuilding, the next generation of young Indigenous kids will be empowered to take their future, in the direction that they want to take it.

Jessica Sass 10:04

While Jasmine talks about rebuilding, Andrew McConnell, coordinator of First Nations, Métis and Inuit education at the York Region District School Board,  explains how his people have survived and flourished. 

Andrew McConnell  10:21

We hold knowledge collectively, which means that no single individual has it all.What you see is what’s left of our civilizations made it because it works. And that's why we are so forceful in holding on to it. It is a source of survival. And it is the source of our future. All of the tools that we have, that are ours that came from us will guarantee that we remain us as we step into the world picking up the new tools that have been provided to us by other cultures and civilizations from around the world. For us, we're starting to see our ways of being acknowledged and being respected. And it's opening up avenues for serious discussion about, you know, how could things be in the future. Which kind of excites me because, you know, when I was growing up, no one ever talks about Indigenous people in the future, they were just shocked that they're actually people in the present. So that's kind of cool to have that discussion with non-Indigenous people, because of course, Indigenous folk, we always know we're going to be in the future.

Jessica Sass 11:18

During my conversation with Grandmother Kim, I asked what she wants for her grandchildren and for generations to come.  She aims big. 

Grandmother Kim Wheatley  11:27

I want you to think big. I want us to think big. I want the collective to be big, and not just isolated, little silo pockets of engagement. Have a voice to be visible in a safe space and place always, in all ways. To have true freedom of speech, and to have true leadership. I would love to see that. I'd love to witness that. I'd love to still be walking the earth when that comes into play. Through those avenues, we will restore harmony and balance with all things that comprise the life of the earth herself. She's our mother, she sustains us.

Jessica Sass 12:18

To hear participants’ full interviews, head over to the “people” tab and click on each individual you’d like to explore more. You will see their biography, along with the full video, and transcription. Thank you for listening.