Is it just me, or ever since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released their report in 2015, is there a bandwagon effect towards healing the effects of cultural genocide on nations upon nations of original peoples?
Rightfully so — and, ever since, it’s been fairly regular reminders of the ways my mom, my aunts, their mom, how they all survived residential schools. The impacts of intergenerational violence were still close to heart, I think you could say I was ‘triggered’ by images and talk around pain that our people lived through and continue to live through.
So, back in 2013, when I moved to Dish With One Spoon territory, I slowly started to learn my way around the area and made friends with the local scones. One day, it came to be that I learned about the Mush Hole. Also known as the Mohawk Institute, it was the longest running residential school in Canadian history. At the time, I believed I would never visit. It would hurt my heart so much to see the places where they tried to break our spirits.
Then, a few months ago, I started to see an event on facebook called the Mush Hole Project. An artistically, guided tour hosted by the Woodland Cultural Centre, that led groups of people through the places our ancestors once roamed. Many significant places through out the building would bear witness to artistically lived expressions of power and reclamation.
I was confronted with the idea of maybe facing my trauma. It looked like a very thoughtfully put together project with many of my favourite artists like Santee Smith and Monique Mojica, sharing their gifts with the place and the people.
Meanwhile, it’s like there’s been an endless tirade of Canadians looking for answers and hugs. Everyone was so sorry and it was almost like there was an expectation to educate and comfort. Because of this trauma, I was sometimes resentful of the Canadian need to reconcile. I wondered how I would work towards healing myself if all of my energy was focused on healing relationships that only really began when Canadians realized what their churches and governments had done to indigenous children. Reconciliation with Canadians was the last thing on my mind.
But when I saw the Mush Hole Project, I started to wonder about what reconciliation really was for me. Maybe it was a type of reconciliation with myself, I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew there was more to this relationship than what was before me. Soon afterwards, some friends asked if I wanted to go and so, I said yes. I knew it would be okay.
The day came. The tour started with a visit to the sacred fire, where we were invited to offer our thoughts and intentions before we began the tour. We were given red bricks to write a message on and carry through the tour. It was to remind us of the weight that these children carried. I wanted to be able to carry the weight with them while I visited to honour their struggle and decided that when I let the brick go, so too I would let go of the weight of that trauma, the residual effects of these places would no longer be a weight on my spirit either.
Travelling through the hallways and hearing the first hand accounts of our tour guide, a survivor of the Mush Hole, was real. The best way I could describe the feeling of the place, beyond the English understanding of the word ‘real’, it was alive. Dancers moved through shower rooms and non-native people were removed from their seats at boardroom tables to make way for an act of symbolic reconciliation. The time had come for me to confront the pain.
A woman offered the natives sitting at a boardroom table, as part of the tour through the Mush Hole, a tobacco tie. She invited us to paint on two canvasses, to offer our art towards reconciliation — if we wanted. She wasn’t pushy and was quite humble and kind. But I was mad. I crossed my arms and clenched my jaw, refusing any tears a space to come. Then I realized this was it. This was my chance to let it go.
I wasn’t reconciling with the church or the government. I was reconciling with myself. I reclaimed my love for my people and myself by facing down the resentment and deciding that it no longer had a place in my life. All I have room for, in my heart, is our people.
Was it forgiveness? I don’t know, but I accepted their tobacco and painted on their murals.
And there was one woman who did not accept the invitation. I witnessed and felt her dignified rage and respect her decision to say that she wasn’t ready. All of our feelings are valid, especially when, as nations of Anishnaabe or Onkwehonwe or Nehiyaw or Lnu peoples, we are talking about healing from the wounds of a colonially violent past and present. Reconciliation for me was confronting the Mush Hole. And so it was good. I confronted the shame, the violence and the power and I emerged with grace and joy.
The tour ended with a Kahawi Dance Theatre performance, it was a beautiful way to end the Mush Hole Project experience (not to mention the corn soup and scone). Here we offered the bricks we had carried throughout the tour to the dancers. They sang, “I will feed your spirit, I love you so much” and repeated in Kan’ien’ke’haka, while they piled our bricks along the wall. It was powerful.
And so the day ended and I feel like I understand reconciliation now. It’s letting go. It’s being everything the residential schools didn’t want us to be. It’s singing our songs and dancing your dances. It’s rebuilding ourselves. That’s reconciliation.
