Episode 15: Honouring the Children

Today is a very significant day in Canadian history. It marks the 1st National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. In this episode I gently remind us through story telling what happens when we let fear determine our actions and provide you with actions and questions that contribute to a different way of being. Today is a reminder of how important it is to take responsibility for being the change we want to see.

What’s in this episode for you:

• A poem by an Ojibway writer who turned his pain into art that heals

• Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials

• Ideas for honouring the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation 

• Introspective questions that foster curiosity, love and compassion

Quote: An excerpt from Embers by Richard Wagamese

It’s all about opening, really. When I open myself to the world and its possibilities - even its hurts - I become whole. But when I choose to close, my life becomes fraught with struggle. Everything I do becomes about shielding myself rather than inviting good energy to fill me. Everything is energy, so I try to let the negative pass through me, rather than holding onto it. 

Tools for change:

• If you have some people you feel you can deepen this discussion with, here are a few questions you can explore in a curious and heart-felt conversation :

  • What feelings come up for you on this day?  

  • What lesson does this day hold for you that you want to carry forward?  

  • What is one way you can express acceptance of, or celebrate another person?  

  • What is one way you can express acceptance of, or celebrate yourself?

Pick up the talking piece: 

What came up for you as you listened to this episode? I'd love to hear your experiences with any of the reflections and exercises. Send me an email at podcast@humconsulting.ca or leave a voicemail (click the voicemail button on the right).

Gratitude: 

Circle of Change is recorded on lək̓ʷəŋən territories.

Our opening and closing music was created by the talented E-Rol Beats. You can find his creations at www.erolbeats.com

My fabulous podcast coach, Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions, brought this podcast to life www.organizedsound.ca

Transcript: (Some words may not be accurately recorded. Please let us know if something seems off.)

Ame-Lia Tamburrini (AT): Change begins from within. As easy as it is to look outside of ourselves and want the world to change, the truth is, it never will if we remain the same. This podcast was created for change-makers like you who want more love and connection in your community. Today you are going to hear stories that will inspire you, and also challenge you to be the change. We are going to go deep, my friend, so take a deep breath and settle in. My name is Ame-Lia Tamburrini - Welcome to the Circle of Change.

Hello! Thank you for joining me here on Circle of Change today. Today marks the very first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. This day intends to honor the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. Reconciliation and decolonization are important to me. And days like this are good opportunities to help us understand why it's important to be the change and also how we can do that.

In our episode today, I am going to share some of the life story of one indigenous author who I celebrate quite a bit on this show. He was greatly impacted by residential schools, and it's a way for you to know him better and also take in an example of somebody who turned their trauma into a healing experience for many people. I want to share with you some information about this day and some stories from survivors of residential schools in Canada to give voice to those experiences without placing the burden on indigenous people to retell these painful accounts. And I want to leave you with some questions that you can take into your circles at work, family, with friends to really deepen your experience of this day and what it means and to have a tool, to have open dialog with people because I think sharing these stories of being able to feel what comes out for us is important for our collective healing journey.

So, to begin, I am going to share a poem by Richard Wagamese. I had the privilege of doing a 3-day workshop— it was a writing workshop— with Richard. And I was completely taken in by his way of being, the spirituality, and ceremony and, grace he brought to the writing process and the love and care that he had for each of the participants. Richard died way too young in my opinion. And I can attribute his death to the impacts of residential school.

He had a very hard upbringing, and he slipped in and out of debilitating patterns because of the trauma he experienced. And although he, himself, did not attend residential schools, his parents did. And he experienced the intergenerational impacts of it. He was removed from his parents and placed into the foster care system and then adopted by people who refused to let him connect with his culture.

After much hardship and abuse, he spent his adult life reconnecting to his Ojibwe roots and allowed us to go along with him on that healing journey through the many books that he wrote. He is a beautiful example of somebody who was courageous enough to take their pain, do their healing work, and impact the world with it through storytelling and meditations that open up our hearts and minds and help us to connect deeper to what is most important in life.

And this book, Embers, that I'm about to read from, it was nominated for a BC Book award just 2 days before he died. This is why I love bringing Richard's words to this podcast because he, for me, is a beautiful example of being the change and also a sad reminder of what happens when we don't do our healing work and the pain that we can cause with those actions that come from fear. So, here is a poem by Richard Wagamese.

[0:04:49]

It’s all about opening really. When I open myself to the world and its possibilities even its hurts, I become whole. But when I choose to close, my life becomes fraught with struggle. Everything I do becomes about shielding myself rather than inviting good energy to fill me. Everything is energy, so I try to let the negative passed through me rather than holding on to it.

Thank you, Richard, for those words. There are many activities and learning events going on in Canada this week. As our contribution, I want to read the introduction to one of the many reports produced as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada in 2015, missing children and unmarked burials. It's relevant as more and more graves are uncovered across the nation. And the count of children who died in residential schools here far surpasses those documented in the work that was done as part of the commission. They knew that that would be the case, and they have new technology that is helping them to really get the facts straight.

As I read this excerpt from the report, I invite you to take this in, to practice empathy by thinking about your own children, or your nieces and nephews, or even yourself. What would this experience have been like? Empathy is challenging and it brings up a lot of emotion. And for some people, our own traumatic life experiences prevent us from feeling the pain. It's safer to stay stoic and not engaged or even be defensive of the system that harms so many people. We are all at different stages of being able to be with the feelings that arise with these painful truths. So, I invite you to be gentle and compassionate with others and yourself.

And if you are ready to allow yourself to feel, I invite you to just carve out a moment in your day and feel. Let the tears come. Let the anger rise up. Let yourself be with what is there knowing that these feelings of sadness, and anger, and frustration, and despair, they are here to tell you something about what is important to you, to get curious about what that is. Here is the introduction to the report. And I selected it instead of the executive summary because there are stories shared in this section. And I believe that stories help us to learn on a deeper level.

Death casts a long shadow over Canada's residential schools in her memoir of her years as a student at the Qu'Appelle Saskatchewan School in the early 20th century Louise Maureen wrote of 1 year when tuberculosis was rampaging through the school. There was a death every month on the girls’ side and some of the boys went also. We were always taken to see the girls who had died. The sisters invariably had them dressed in light blue, and they always look so peaceful and angelic. We were led to believe that their souls have gone to heaven, and this would somehow lessen the grief and sadness we felt in the loss of one of our little schoolmates.

Enus Montura had similar memories of his time at the Mount Elgin School in Muncey, Ontario. On occasion, the silent killer, TB, showed up among the enrollment. Some quiet inoffensive lad would grow unusually quiet and listless as his creeping insidious disease came over him. He began to lose interest in all boyish activity. He coughed frequently and his energy was sucked away. His chums tried to interest him in their games and outings, but he only smiled wanly and told them to leave him out. He didn't feel like it. Eventually, the boy was taken from school. And emptiness remained with the gentle boy had lived with his pals.

In his memoir, James Gladstone was critical of the medical care available to students at the Anglican boarding school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta. In the spring of 1900, a fellow student, Joe Glasgow, became ill after stepping on a nail. Reverend Owen had made some arrangements for a doctor from Fort Macleod, but he was a useless drunk who didn’t come until it was too late. I looked after Joe for 2 days until he died. I was the only one he would listen to during his delirium. Distressed, neglected, and abused, some students killed themselves.

In her memoirs, Eleanor Brass spoke of a boy who had hung himself for fear of discipline at the File Hills School in Saskatchewan. Poor youth was in some kind of trouble, which was not so terrible. But apparently, it seemed that way to him.

Accidental death was a risk for residential school students. A Methodist missionary and 6 students were traveling to the Brandon Manitoba School in 1903 when the boat carrying them sank. All seven drowned.  

[0:10:05]

Christina Jacob, a student at the Kamloops British Columbia School, died in 1962 when an airplane being piloted by a school employee crashed near the school. Poorly built and maintained buildings where firetraps. 19 boys died in the fire that destroyed the Beauval Saskatchewan school in 1927. 12 children died when the Cross Lake Manitoba School burned down in 1930. The high death toll was partially attributed to the inadequate fire escapes. Some students disappeared while running away from school. 4 boys who ran away Fort Albany Ontario School in the spring of 1941 were presumed to have drowned. Their bodies were never recovered. Another 2 boys had run away from the Sioux Lookout Ontario School in 1956. The principal waited a month before reporting that they were missing. They were never found. Many of the cemeteries in which students were buried have long since been abandoned. When the Battleford School in Saskatchewan closed in 1914, Principal E. Matheson reminded Indian affairs that there is a school cemetery that contained the bodies of 70 to 80 individuals. Most of whom were former students. He worried that unless the government took steps to care for the cemetery, it would be overrun by stray cattle. Such advice went ignored, led to instances of neglect. With very distressing results in 2001, water erosion of the banks of the Bow-Highwood River exposed the remains of former students at the High River Alberta School, which had closed in 1922. 34 bodies were exhumed and reburied with both aboriginal and Christian ceremonies at the Saint Joseph Industrial School provincial historical site. These examples point to a larger picture. Many students who went to residential school never returned. They were lost to their families. They died at rates that were far higher than those experienced by the general school age population. Their parents were often uninformed of their sickness and death. They were buried away from their families in long neglected graves. No one to care to count how many died or to record where they were buried. The most basic of questions about missing children (who died, why did they die, where are they buried) have never been addressed or comprehensively documented by the Canadian government. This document reports on the first systematic effort to record and analyze the deaths at the schools and the presence and condition of student cemeteries within the regulatory context in which the schools were intended to operate.

That introduction, of course, only touches on a sliver of what happened in residential schools in Canada and speaks of a few out of thousands and thousands of kids who died in residential schools. And today, in Canada, it's a day for us to really know that history that has not been spoken of broadly for many, many, many years. So, today, in Canada, you are going to see many people wearing orange shirts to signify that they're aware of what's happened in residential school systems and they are standing as allies with our First Nation, Inuit, Metis brothers and sisters. And the orange shirts, they are inspired by the story of Phyllis Jack Webstad, who on her very first day at a residential school in Williams Lake B.C., was stripped of the new orange shirt her grandmother bought for her. So, this T-shirt is now a symbol of the stripping away of culture, and freedom, and self-esteem experienced by indigenous children over generations.

If you are thinking about what can I do today, there are many things that you can do to be an ally. First, you can learn more about the history of your country with respect to the treatment of indigenous populations. This isn't a history that is unique to Canada. In Canada though, we have the website, the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, nctr.ca, that you can go and there’s events that have been happening all week on that website, but there are lots of materials there that will uncover the facts of what happened in Canada through the 150 or so odd years. You can support the work of indigenous artists and really be grateful that not all of this way of expression was wiped clean away, which really was the intent of the policies that created the school system and the Indian Act.

[0:15:00]

There are many events going on that you could attend to deepen your experience of this day and contribute to curiosity, compassion, and love. Feelings that are in opposition to the fear-based intentions that created the events we are hearing about today. I personally encourage you to have a conversation, and you can do this with others or in your journal. So, if you have some people that you feel you can deepen this discussion with, I'm going to leave you with a few questions that you can explore in a curious and heartfelt way.

The first question is what feelings come up for you on this day? What lesson does this day hold for you that you want to carry forward? What is one way you can express acceptance of or celebrate another person? And what is one way you can express acceptance of or celebrate yourself?

These questions are framed in such a way because, first of all, I believe that getting comfortable with our feelings, being able to identify them is such an important part of our journey as change agents in this world. Taking a painful event and identifying what the lesson is, what the negatives for your own life that you want to impact is also an important way that we can help to be the change and then expressing acceptance both of ourselves and others regardless of how you or they show up is, again, an experience of coming more from love than fear.

And when we have a day like this that really signifies what happens when we act from fear-based intentions and intention of needing to change somebody for us to feel okay about ourselves, I think that when we practice our acceptance in our own lives, we are countering that energy and helping to create something new, something more loving, something more caring. So, that's the intent of these questions that I have provided for you.

So, as you go throughout today, be considerate as you carry yourself. It's a day of mourning for many. Be kind, be gentle, and use this day as an opportunity to contribute more of what you hope to see in the world. Thank you so much for being here today.

I'm now passing the talking piece to you. If you feel called to put your voice in the circle, please head to humconsulting.ca/podcast and share your story there. I cannot wait to hear what has come up for you as you have listened to what has been shared here today. I wish you love and joy beyond your wildest imagination. Thank you so much for being here in the Circle of Change.

I also wanna express my gratitude to the following peeps: Circle of Change is recorded on Lekwungen territories and I am so grateful to live on this land. Our opening and closing music was created by the talented E-Rol Beats. You can find his creations at erolbeats.com. And special thanks to my coach, Mary Chan, of Organized Sound Productions for bringing this podcast to life.

Until next time, Ciao!