I am a survivor – yes, a survivor of history, a survivor of residential school. Though I did not attend, I was never the less there. I survived it. I was there, I was there before I was born.
This is not ancient history, a story, it is real and it is my history.
I survived the hurt, the anger, the fear – the tears – the sorrow – the betrayal of trust. A child’s trust, the loss of that innocence.
I survived. I survived the wicked behaviour called “discipline”. I survived the shame, humiliation, self-hatred and the loss. “You are nothing, you dirty Indian”
I survived the losses.
The loss of language, culture, history and pride.
THE LOSS, THE LOSS, THE LOSS!!!
The loss of safety, security, and the loss of family, for generations.
How can this be? How did I survive, you ask???
I did, I survived….
I am a survivor of my fathers pain and my Mosom’s shame. I am a survivor of the betrayal, two generations of “education”.
Yes, I did not go to residential school but my family did. My family was sentenced there. The terms were carried out over several generations, sentencing that carried a legacy, holding us, stealing life from us, slowing us, paining us.
It taught my family not just reading and writing. It taught shame, self-hatred and created the need to forget.
It taught my Mosom Self-loathing, it raised him up in foreign ways. It told him “remember your place” “say your prayers, you’ll go to hell” and it created shame, shame, shame.
It taught my father to forget. The only direction to turn – ANYTHING to help you forget. But it was not gone. It never leaves, it was ALWAYS there. It is always there.
It is there in the fear and the tears and the sorrow. It is there in the behaviours, the promises and the inter-generational sorrow. The trauma that still holds.
Yet I have survived. I walked into that building, feeling the fear, struggling to make myself go inside. I cried. I cried for those children who never left, whether that was through experience or death. I cried so that I could be free. I survived.
I will not let the former shame claim another generation. “I will be okay, we are okay” “TAPWE” this generation grows strong because I survived. My father and my Mosom lived and I am here in spite of the fear. I am a survivor of residential schools.
History is interesting. It is both written and spoken. History is remembered, and some events will always be spoken of. Those events that continue to be spoken about have had huge impacts on those that tell the story.
The stories we tell are connected to where and who we come from. Some of those who I come from didn’t have a voice that was ever heard. So now I research their stories so I can speak their truth.
1876 treaty paylist
My family always tells the story of when the treaty was signed at Saddle Lake. They say it was at the corner where our family had property. They say the first signers were 7 brothers. They agreed to join the treaty. This is a paylist. I wonder, are these those 7 brothers? Were there sisters? What are the other stories?
History is interesting. Written or spoken, it tells the story of a time and place. It tells the story of what happens to people. We must remember to tell the stories.
I close my eyes and I feel the softness of the earth under my feet. My moccasins touching the soul of where my ancestors walked before me.
I breath in and listen to the quiet of the forest all around me. It’s quiet but noisy at the same time. I gear the birds and animals around me. I feel the peace and connection that my ancestors felt before me.
I open my eye and I see the beauty of this land. I see the clear water, I see the treas grown tall. I see the birds flying and the moose walking. I see the plants for healingand medicines and I know where I belong.
I feel the connection, so strong. I pray to my ancestors to ask Creator to help me and guide me. I pray that others see the beauty and blessing of our ancestors who walked this land. I pray so others may see their reflection and the beauty of the natural world.
Hope is powerful when you have it. So many experiences can diminish the hope that you have and it can be difficult to find it again. Being diagnosed with cancer can devastate your hope. It can be like having a candle and trying to keep it lit in a storm. You never know whats happening and you are never actually prepared for whats going to happen.
Recently I have had many people close to me diagnosed with cancer. It sometimes feels like it’s all around me and as if it’s so common. It feels like we all need hope in action. We can only do what we can to build hope in ourselves and in others.
There are so many thing to learn when you get diagnosed with cancer. It’s hard to figure it all out. There’s lots of information out there. It’s also difficult to know how accurate all that information is. Every time I hear about someone I know being diagnosed with cancer I feel my shock over again. Then I think about all the experiences they will be going through and I pray that they have a good outcome.
I walked in Ovarian Cancer Canada’s walk of hope. They say “Hope for change, hope for awareness and hope a cure.” This year will be my third year walking in it. I prefer to do a virtual, local walk instead of the large walk in Edmonton. I can walk with my friends and family. It makes me feel hopeful. The first year I walked I was still receiving chemotherapy. I could not walk very far. I set a goal for my second year, to walk at least 5 kms. I was able to do that. This year, I hope to walk at least the 5 kms again and perhaps further.
Walk of Hope 2021
I’m walking because I was diagnosed with stage 3B ovarian cancer on April 1, 2020. I was told I’m in remission on September 28th, 2020. It’s been an experience and a difficult journey. I thought that somehow being in remission would mean that I was better. That all the fears I struggled with would soon be gone. That’s not the reality. I have lingering affects from the chemo. I struggled to remove myself from the idea of having cancer.
I guess I’m kind of still living with cancer. I’m still receiving treatment because I have a BRAC1 gene mutation. This means that I’m at higher risk for recurrence or getting breast cancer. I’m currently taking a parp inhibitor, which to my understanding is a form of targeted therapy to prevent recurrence. Research shows its very effective.
Recently I started seeing information about living with and living beyond cancer. I guess living with cancer would be the diagnosis and the treatments. Living beyond cancer would be be after all your treatments are finished and seeing yourself as thriver not just a survivor. I plan to live beyond cancer.
Medicine has been gifted to people. Every culture has its own understandings of medicine and what that means. Medicine is learned, it is taught, it is lived. In Nehiyawak culture medicine can be plants, it can be ceremony, it can be spending time in nature or with others. The word medicine has many different meanings. In this way there are many different ways to seek healing. Medicine is what makes you better.
One summer several years ago we went camping at mile seven. My Aunt Alsena, my father’s first cousin, met us there. Our purpose in going there’s was to pick medicines, there are several different kinds in that area.
We had spent the afternoon picking medicines and auntie Alsena told us that her friend Diane was going to meet up with us. She had camped there with us before. When Dianne showed up she had brought sage and sweet grass with her.
We learned about creating sage bundles and sweetgrass braids. Once we finished making the braids and bundles we took them and hung them up to dry in the breeze off the lake.
Then we began to clean the roots and preparing the medicines. As we were cleaning the medicines, Dianne and auntie Alsena were telling stories of the medicines and how we got them. We learned how the medicinal plants were used and why we are so connected to the land. This connection itself is a form of medicine. Just being out on the land brings healing in various ways.
One of the medicines we learned about was spruce gum. This spruce gum is used as an antiseptic. It fights infection. It helps to hold skin together when someone is injured. It is used to treat colds and is added to other medicines. It can be used for food too.
We were told the story of the gift of spruce gum and how badger gave it to us. Badgers are fierce and dangerous animals. A long time ago they were very big, much larger than they are now. They were bigger than people, and they used to kill and hurt people. The people prayed to the Creator for help, because we are weak and we need help to survive. The Creator told badger to stop harming people. That did not happen. Eventually the Creator had to do something about badger. The people had chased two baby badgers up a tree. Creator told them that because badger had not respected the request to live peacefully they would be changed. They would no longer be bigger than the people, they would remain the size of their babies. They would provide help to the people through the warmth of their fur, etc. The baby badgers were grateful that the Creator allowed them to live and they promised to help the people. When they slid down the spruce tree their claws cut open the bark and the tree sap came out. The badgers told the people that this was their medicine that they were sharing it with the people as a way to make amends. They taught the people what its used for and how to use it. There are stories for all medicines. Storytelling helps you to remember the medicines and how and why they are used.
Auntie Alsena also told us about a man was lost in the bush for two weeks in the winter. His snowmobile ran out of gas and he tried to hike out of the bush. He got lost and ran out of food and water. To survive he ate spruce gum and drank melted snow to help sustain his body. He survived and was rescued. She told us all that spruce gum is full of vitamin c and will help us if we need it.
All of these activities were each a form of medicine. Each thing gave us something different to heal us. It balanced our spirits through the camping and story telling. It taught us ways to help ourselves in a crisis. We learned the medicinal properties and usage of plants. We laughed and found purpose in what we did. We built connections and created memories that will last a lifetime. All this is good medicine.
There is a great sadness within the people. This sadness is deep inside and though one may be happy there is still and unexplained sadness that over takes them. It is somehow diagnosed in the western world as depression but I think it is more than that. It is grief. This grief is profoundly deep. The wounds cut like a knife, it is a peoples grief.
This grief transcends time and experience. It is unknowingly passed down through the generations. We see it in the young people today. It is expressed through anger, gangs and violence. The young people have suffered a loss but are so unfamiliar with traditions that they do not know what they grieve for.
We do not provide tools to the young people because many of us do not know that we too are grieving. Grief in its classical description points to a profound and significant loss in ones life.
This loss is a loss of culture but is also more that cultural experiences. It is a profound loss of spirituality. It is the connection to spirit, to the Creator. This profound form of alienation has created a separation of the spiritual self from the physical self. It has caused the separation from the ability to grieve and recover. Elders tell you to pray. This is the first step in reconnection with self in the spiritual aspect.
It has been said by many different people of many different belief systems that prayer is a powerful thing. That connection to the Creator allows you to begin your journey home.
When you pray you begin to adopt a feeling/attitude of respect. This is because you know you are praying to someone who is greater than you. You acknowledge that you are unable to change things on your own and you know that you need the assistance of a being greater that you. The grandmothers and the grandfathers in that spiritual sense would be angels, beings that connect you to the Creator.
When you ask for help and guidance you begin to change how you react. Your respect in prayer translates to your life. You begin to show respect to others as well as yourself. This respect further translates to respect for the earth, who is likened to a mother because she provides for all her children, human and animal. Once this aspect of respect is received and learned the grieving process is started. Healing begins ad you are open to other lessons.
The sadness begins to lift. As you start your journey towards healing you begin to realize that the Creator has provided these experiences to you for a reason. You begin to realize that in every experience there is a lesson. It is simply finding it. Humility, thankfulness, love, compassion, all these experiences are then brought forward. The profound sadness that once touched your life, the sadness that you couldn’t explain, lifts. It sounds easier that it actually is because there are other processes involved too. There is forgiveness and letting go. This does not mean that you forget, it simply means that you treat others, who may have done wrong to you, with respect and love.
If you continue to hold anger and hate or unforgiveness in your heart it will continue to eat away at your spirit. Your spirit/soul will suffer. You will believe that only bad things happen and that there is no love for you. The Creator loves all the children, the Creator forgives mistakes and wrongs. If you approach this life you have been given with love then situations will become easier to deal with.
First is respect second is love, you cannot have love without also having respect. With love and forgiveness comes compassion. When someone deliberately tries to hurt you, you are able to recognize that their soul/spirit is in pain. Their pain is as profound as yours once was. Therefore you treat them with respect, love and compassion. They will see that you have a new perspective and are able to treat them in a way that is right and honest.
Your honesty may not be appreciated, depending on the depth of their pain. They maybe able to appreciate that you do not want anything, that you are not trying to manipulate the, that you are really and truly respecting them or they may not. Do not allow this to discourage you. Your living in truth. This truth is for your peace and balance and harmony not theirs. Your forgiveness is not conditional, it is for your own peace of mind. Bringing peace to yourself is a way to bring forgiveness to yourself as well as forgiveness to others.
The sadness may never be gone. In truth it may always be with you but it becomes a different kind of sadness. It is a sadness that you watch others still struggling with their pain. Pain is very powerful. It can rule a persons life for many years without them even realizing it. Out of pain violence is manifested, the pain of hurt, fear and anger. They feed the pain by allowing hate and anger to consume them. They numb their pain by self-medicating through addictions be it drugs or alcohol or lifestyles, they really don’t want to live.
To release the pain in their life you muse confront it with love and respect. These experiences have brought you to this place. It is up to you to choose where you will journey next. The Creator has given us freedom of choice. You can choose love or you can choose hate.
Freedom from the pain is through the acknowledgement of the loss. It is understanding your grief. Your loss is your experience, you can own it, listen to the truth of your loss. Speak to it, this sometimes means sharing your grief with others, sometimes it is through self-reflection ad meditation. It is your journey and only you can decide where to go.
My parents often speak about their grandmothers. They’ve told me many stories about them. My dad has told me how much his dad’s mother loved him. He has told me that she used to always feed him whenever he went there, which was very often. He said that when his mother died his dads mom, his grandmother helped him a lot. He said when she died he was very sad. He wasn’t very close to his other grandmother. My mother also only had one grandmother. Her father’s mother had died when her father was young. Her mother’s mum had a profound impact on her life. Her grandmother was a midwife and a layer out of bodies. She was a washer woman and she was Welsh. My mother said that her grandmother had an air of mystery about her and that her grandmother loved her family fiercely. Both of my parents loved their grandmothers strongly and remember them in a way that keeps them alive to anyone who listens to them talk about them.
“All my grandmothers flowers” painting by Madeline Belanger using photos of my great grandmothers.
When my daughter had her son I became a grandmother, a kokom. It changed how I thought of the world of grandmothers. I thought I want to be remembered the way my parents talk about their grandmothers. I want my grandchildren to still talk about me when they are grandparents. I want to bring happy thoughts and thoughts of love and comfort to all my grandchildren no matter how old they are.
It made me think about my own grandmothers and I wondered what it would have been like growing up with them. My parents speak of their mothers with love. All I have is my parents memories of their mothers. Both of my grandmothers passed away before I was born. I know how much I love my nosim, grandchild, I can only hope that would’ve been that would have been the same for me. Both of my grandmothers died from health issues that I’ve experienced, one from gallbladder issues and the other from cancer. In some sense I’m connected to them through those things and the stories my parents tell me about them.
While I didn’t grow up with a grandmother in the sense that most people had grandmothers. I did have women in the grandmother role. In dominant society you can only have a certain amount of grandparents. In my culture you have many grandparents. I’m blessed to have many grandmothers. There have been several grandmothers that showed me that grandmother love.
On my dad’s side I was blessed to have my dad’s aunties as Kokoms. I will always appreciate them. Those beautiful women made me feel connected to our family. They were excited for me with every milestone I experienced in my life. They encouraged me and taught me. They were chapans (great grandmothers) to my children. We all loved them.
Kokom Bella and I
On my mum’s side I was blessed to have her stepmother. She was the only grandmother I had from that side and although we called her Auntie she was one of my truest grandmothers. She fussed over me when I was sick. She taught me how to draw perspective when I was 11. She was proud of me and I know she loved me. When my children were born she knit them all kinds of little sweaters and I wish she could have met them but she lived in England and we lived in Canada.
Auntie Phyllis and I
All these grandmothers that walked in my life; whether that’s in spirit and through my parents memories or physically with me, they have shown me how I to be a grandmother. They have taught me that a grandmother’s role is to love a child and to create memories that will always comfort you no matter how old you grow. I look forward to all the happy memories I will create for my grandchildren.
Grandmothers are important and you can always impact a child’s life in a positive way, whether you are related or not. Be the grandmother you needed as a child and create memories of love and happiness that last a lifetime.
I paint as an expression of what I feel that I cannot always explain with words. Sometimes these paintings come to me very clearly as this one did. I had been thinking about how much my family has been impacted by residential schools, how colonization has affected us and how these things are passed on generationally.
This painting represents how imposing blue quills has been on my family. There is a lot of intergenerational trauma because of it. We had multiple generations of family members attend this s hool.
Flowers represent medicines to me. The flowers are growing over the photos and bringing healing and change. Medicine comes in many forms.
The photo of blue quills is large because it had a huge impact. It’s not covered because it will never go away.
The smudge and eagle feather are clearing away the pain through reconnection to culture. Culture is medicine.
Each one of the flowers represents someone in my family. The purple ones are my dad and his siblings. The yellow ones represent myself and my siblings that’s why there are 5 of them. The orange ones are my parents grandchildren. The pink dots represent all of my cousins. The berries represent change and new growth. The sage also represents growth through healing. There are two photos of my family members as youth when they would’ve been in Blue Quills Indian Residential school
The background colours are there because of how this painting came me. Red is understood to be connected to healing, it is also understood to be the only colour that spirits can see.
Overall the painting is like a prayer for healing, separating my family from the school and the impact it’s trauma created.
The longest journey I took was the one to find hope. The longest journey is the one that I take as I try to remove myself from fear and depression. The longest journey is now as I stumble in the dark.
The longest journey is the one I travel from my mind to find the truth. The longest journey is to find the comfort of my heart.
The longest journey is mired in fear and darkness as I look for the light. The longest journey is the suffering and experience that comes before I rediscover the light.
The longest journey was realizing that I had been walking with my eyes closed. Upon that realization I opened my eyes and learned that hope was always within my reach, for there was always light on my journey.
Sakaw Iskwew 