There’s something about painting a black and white photo into colour. Trying to choose colours that won’t seem ridiculous in the context of the painting. It’s a challenge but was enjoyable. I like the end result.
Miner’s
Tag: #acimowin
Bear spirit
The spirit of the bear walks with me. As I journey through this life, bears medicine walks with me. It gives me strength when I need it and reminds me that sometimes you need to rest so that once again you can grow and keep moving forward. Kinanâskomitin, I am grateful
Family history
I’ve been told about my family’s history and told I should remember it, so I do. This is how we start.
In the beginning… we were here, we were here from time immemorial, from before colonization, before Canada and before the treaties. We come from people who were autonomous and independent. We had our own creation story, our own history, our own math and science. We hand our own medicines and medical practices. We educated ourselves. We took care of ourselves. We knew our history, our laws, and practiced our culture freely. As time continued we experienced changes and made contact with new cultures and new ideas. We considered ourselves equal to these people. They did not consider us their equal and sought to exploit us.
We found the changes that were occurring were faster than we expected, and we were asked to enter into agreements to share the land. So we entered into ceremony, prayed, and asked for guidance towards this end. In 1876, we were guided and therefore agreed to enter into a sacred treaty. This was done to benefit the people. We thought that because we we had entered into an agreement through Sacred Ceremony, that they would honour the sacredness and truth of the treaty. We thought they would follow through on their word to help us.
We did not agree to give up our independence, nor did we agree to give up who we were, our laws, our traditions, and our ways of being. We did not think they would continue to steal from us, not only taking all the land we agreed to share but also eventually our children. We did not think we would lose our autonomy, nor did we think we would be forced to give up our culture, language, and traditions to fit into another nations society. Their society.
So our family history is always told with the prefaced context of what happens next. This is the story of our family and its journey to now. It’s about how history has impacted us as best as I can tell. It’s about our relatives and who we come from. It’s the story of us.
Cancer….Why?
Cancer….why
So I asked
There was no answer, only silence
Again I asked
CANCER…why
Still no reply
In anger and frustration I yelled
CANCER….WHY
Still silence, no answers
I can only cry.
cancer….why
My tears fall. My heart is silently broken.
There are no answers, the fight begins and still I wonder why in the silence
Places of the heart
There are places that when you think of them, they evoke strong memories and feelings. They remind you of the first time you visited or the time you were there with your friends or when you first took your children there. They remind you of people, of events and times that have passed. These places when you think of them or visit them again bring a smile to your face and joy to your heart. These are the places of your heart.
Etikwe, I suppose
“We don’t say goodbye”
Describe the last difficult “goodbye” you said.
I’ve always been told by my elders that we don’t say goodbye. We say see you later or we’ll see you again or see you soon. My understanding of this is because goodbye is final. Goodbye is what you say when you will no longer see a person.
There have been many times when it felt like I was never going to see a person or speak to them again. The last truly difficult goodbye was the last time I spoke to my cousin on the phone. He was in the hospital with covid. He was immunocompromised as he’d had a double lung transplant several years before.
When he got his new lungs, he was so grateful. He told me, “These lungs belonged to a young man, I’m going to live a life because of his gift.” He did. He and his girlfriend got married. They went places and most of all he went fishing. He loved fishing.
When he got sick with covid, he couldn’t have lots of visitors. He had his wife and my dad on his list. We talked a lot. He would send me photos of the treatments they gave him. Then he wasn’t getting better. The last time we talked on the phone when we were close to saying goodbye, I said “well we’d better say goodbye soon.” I didn’t even think about what I had just said to him, but he did. He said, “Ho, remember we don’t ever say goodbye. Don’t ever say goodbye. I’ll see you again.” “Yes, I forgot, ” was my reply. We talked a lot longer, and I told him my husband was taking me to Jasper for my 50th birthday and that I wasn’t sure what the cell service was going to be like. I told him I’d talk to him when I got back.
On my birthday my parents called me, they said that his wife had called and asked them to come to the city to be with them. My cousin passed away the next day. When my mum called me to tell me he had died, all I could think of was, “we don’t say goodbye, we never say goodbye, I’ll see you again.” On our hike that day, I walked to a beautiful spot, took a photo, put some tobacco, and prayed for him. When we buried him, it was hard. That was the last difficult goodbye.
“Tell me a story – Acimowin”
History
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.
Tell me a story
This mixed media piece includes a telegram sent in 1888 from the Chief’s Alexander, Alexis and Michael telling John A MacDonald that their community members are starving and that they had to break the law and kill the cattle in order to save the lives of they and their children and includes parts of the responses from the government. This piece includes images of piles of bison bones and hides from when the bison were slaughtered to show the impact of the loss of an important resource to all plains peoples. The pictures also show the use of the railway to transport the bones to factories to make fertilizer.
The man painted over top has his head down in reflection as he contemplates the telling of our history.
The words of the telegram show through to demonstrate how the history of colonization continues to impact us. The past will always sit with us, and it is important that we remember and tell our own history. The inclusion of archival documents shows a record supporting oral traditions about the impact of signing treaties, the neglect of treaty obligations especially after the 1885 resistance, the loss of access to the land and the loss traditional food resources. It demonstrates the loss of autonomy through the need to ask permission to slaughter their cattle and that without asking permission, they had broken the law and were at risk of being arrested. It is called “Tell me a story” because we continue to speak about our past and the impacts it has had on our communities.
Transcriptions of archive RG10, Volume 3794, File 46,205
Telegram:
Feb 23, 1888
From Edmonton, NWT
Sir John A. MacDonald. We are starving. We cannot get help from the agency, have killed cattle on reserve to save our lives so far. We don’t want to kill anymore but will have to unless we get help at once. We don’t want to break the law but we and our children are dying of hunger. We ask for a commission to investigate the truth of what we are saying but need food at once.
Alexander, Chief of River Qui Barre
Michael Callioux, Chief of Sturgeon river reserve
Alexis, Chief of Lake St. Ann Reserve
At that time, it was illegal for Indigenous people to slaughter their cattle without permission. Even though the cattle had been given to the people as their own to encourage farming, the Indian agent and the government did not consider the cattle the property of the people it was given to. The file this is from includes other documents that explain why the Indian agent decided not to have them arrest for fear it would cause another uprising.
This piece also includes the responses from the governments Indian department to this situation.
Response 1
Feb 24, 1888
To Major de Balinhard Indian Agent
Edmonton, NWT
Chiefs Alexander and Michael telegraph Indians are starving, cannot get help from agency. Killed cattle to save lives, will have to kill more unless assisted at once. They and children dying of hunger need food
at once. Please write facts. See Chiefs and inform them that you have been communicated with by dept. This reply questions the validity of the statement they are starving.
Response 2
Edmonton Feb 25, 1888
Contractors behind delivery provisions, Saddle Lake, Edmonton, and Whitefish Indians were hungry, now fully rationed, Lac La Biche also now receiving rations. Starvation extreme word. Edmonton and St Ann’s complaining all winter of short supplies of rations, not sufficient. Hard winter for all, fur scare, fisheries a
failure, no rabbits, will find next two months more. Samuel, member and spiritual advisor, [is] working this up
[This response downplays the lack of ration, providing an explanation for the provisions not being provided. This treaty
has a clause that stated provisions would be provided in times of famine. It also states that one member is overreacting and getting everyone worked up. It seeks to invalidate the experience of starving people.]
Sakaw Iskwew 