Reconciliation Through Poetry

September 22 was one of the wettest days on record last year, notably wet even for rainy Vancouver. Despite the monsoon-like downpour, some 70,000 people converged at the intersection of Homer and Georgia to walk in support of a hopeful yet formidable concept: reconciliation among Canada’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.

The walk was the vision of Robert Joseph, Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation and Ambassador for Reconciliation Canada. As a child, Chief Joseph suffered the brutish treatment of St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and dedicated much of his life subsequently to supporting other residential school survivors. Over time, his focus on healing has expanded to include a wider examination of the relationships between Aboriginal peoples and all Canadians.

This work has taken Chief Joseph from Ottawa, where he advises Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to as far away as the Vatican City, as part of the delegation that received Pope Ben- edict XVI’s statement of regret for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential schools. What unifies these activities is a belief that a lack of mutual understanding is undermining attempts to seek justice for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, and that the first step in this process is exploring shared values that can inspire Canadians to do better for each other.

The four poems that follow were commissioned by Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue to honour Chief Joseph’s approach, and to mark his receiving SFU’s 2014 Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue. The diverse cast of poets—Jordan Abel, Joanne Arnott, Juliane Okot Bitek and Daniel Zomparelli—drew from their own backgrounds and perspectives to create a tableau on the concept of reconciliation. Advisors for the event included Wayde Compton, Barbara Kelly, Megan Langley and Renée Sarojini Saklikar. The debut reading took place on February 27, hosted by Vancouver Public Library as part of the City of Vancouver’s Year of Reconciliation activities, across the street from where the 70,000-person Walk for Reconciliation had assembled just months before, a fitting indicator that the legacy of the Walk continues.

—Robin Prest, Program Analyst

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue

Please Check Against Delivery

by Jordan Abel

former students  have  spoken  but  as  you  became
parents,        cultural   practices   were   prohibited 
federal                partly in order we  are  now
joining you on this journey.                          Most
schools families, strong communities       remove
and isolate children             a renewed implemen-
tation   of   the   Indian                    never   having
received   a   full        Anglican,   Catholic,   Pres-
byterian           new relationship between
and a desire to move forward
    First Nations, we apologize for failing to
now recognize that      in separating sad legacy of
                                 the  Government  of  Canada
        system in which very young children
        and an opportunity to
recognizes  that  it  was  wrong          Years of work 
In  the  1870’s,  the  cultures  and  spiritual  beliefs 
were                   and  their  separation 
and cultures,  and  to  children  from  their families,
inadequately fed, clothed        understanding that
strong            to  adequately            own  children 
from  suffering         powerless  to  protect  Resi-
dential  Schools  system       Canadians
              built  an  educational  said,  “to  kill  the
Indian  in  the  child”.         Government 
        sincerely apologizes sowed the seeds for 
              all Canadians on the Indian apology 
                  caused great harm, and         are sorry 
federally-supported    schools                        Ste- 
phen   Harper,   inadequately  controlled,  and  the
abuse       It is to healing and reconciliation
asks  the  forgiveness  of  the  Aboriginal Inuit and
Métis                    and  You  have  been  working 
on  recovering          while  attending  residential
schools  Residential  Schools                no  place
in our country. housed.             students are
and  communities,  and  we  far  too  often, 
               Many were a lasting and damaging im-
pact            institutions  gave rise to abuse having
done this.                  is  a  sad  chapter  in  our  his-
tory.          Residential Schools           forward to
speak           publicly about the same experience,
and for     assimilation 

A Love Letter or Considering Reconciliation in Canada

For Chief Robert Joseph

by Juliane Okot Bitek

Dear Kas, today Vancouver is as beautiful as ever. It rains sometimes; sometimes it doesn’t rain.

Dear Kas, talks about reconciliation are happening in the context of young people walking to Ottawa, walking for miles and miles and miles.

Dear Kas, people haven’t remained idle—they never were; just simmering, like porridge simmering, like thick, thick soup.

Dear Kas, reconciliation walks, protests, drums, tattoos, and this year, marks the coldest winter in memory. A bus ride to Kamloops reveals a landscape in which people were loved.

Dear Kas, spring isn’t a promise, it just is. Otherwise you would be here.

 Dear Kas, exactly a month after the funeral there’s a brilliant blue in the sky. A woman in a yellow kimono, at Oppenheimer Park, remembers the murdered and missing women. She releases red balloons into the sky.

Dear Kas, I can no longer depend on dates and times. I don’t know where you are.

Dear Kas, there are at least 20 women missing from the Highway of Tears. I still don’t know all their names.

Dear Kas, here are some echoes. There was a Trail of Tears and the Long Walk of the Navajo in the United States and I only knew of them after you were gone. Dear Kas, there were children walking in our homeland during the wholesale murder—sometimes they call it slaughter. Hundreds of huts spontaneously burst into flames. I think of it as a culling.

Dear Kas, here are some echoes. We remember and we forget. We remember Gassy Jack and Captain Vancouver and we forget the dispossession and displacement. We remember the murdered and missing women and forget the dispossession and displacement. We remember Hogan’s Alley and Vie’s Chicken but forget the dispossession and displacement.

Dear Kas, we often forget that we’re guests on this land. How can we reconcile this with the insistence on nightmares and tears?

Dear Kas, we remember tight jeans, cowboy boots, Elvis wannabees and we forget why these are markers for our youth.

Dear Kas, I miss you.  

Dear Kas, this crisis has been going on too long. Young people are walking to Ottawa and I’m remembering how your eyes sparkled the last time you said goodbye.

Dear Kas, we may cover the landscape with our bodies and memories but we cannot; we cannot forget.

Truth & Wreck,

To Fill the Sky

excerpt

A poem in honour of Chief Joseph

by Daniel Zomparelli

by Joanne Arnott

    I stand before you today in order to meet its obligation.
White linen folded over wood, folded
over dirt, over earth. Dry grass press
skin leave marks on body.
The sun, not yet visible, lights the clouds
that surface the earth, that dips around
the spaces between us and them. In the distance,
there is a building, heavy with stone bricks
that weighs the earth, press against
the same dirt that pushes against your skin,
that presses grass, or
how do we reconcile with the land?
    Before today, I order you to stand in its obligation, meet.
Start from the land, press against the sky
and make
shapes.
You fill the sky with words
to constellate each night
asking where to start again
or how do we reconcile with memory?
    Stand in order today, to meet in its obligation, you before I.
A poet goes inward, asking what it is to reconcile
and all he can think of is him,
or more dangerously, her.
We meet again,
and you say goodbye, and goodbye.
He thinks of her now and the way
the body is pressed between earth
she takes a space within the question mark
do you remember, mother, that we 
never finished that conversation, or 
how do we reconcile with the dead?
   I stand before obligation, in order to meet in its, you today. 
The comments are closed, and I watch as you 
make shapes with words, build homes
with a story.
I would be
nothing without you. Rewritten,
poetry would be nothing without you. Descending 
from mountains, the sky
doesn’t ask the question, it does 
fill in the blanks, you and I. 
or how do we reconcile the space between? 

I have a multiplicity of stories
within me
some are the bones of me
some are the blood
some are the meat of me
some are the stagnant pools of qi
some are the resuscitation of being

rising up

I feel a cool wind blowing through
when I hear the truth
the truth about who is dying from neglect

who is lied about, who is suppressed
who is showcased and honoured and no, wait, listen—
who is allowed a natural life
who is interfered with, who is taken rising up

rising up

a cool wave of truth flowing through
aligning the bones and the meat of my stories
cousins disappearing from the left hand
new cousins arriving on the right hand
who is interfered with
who is paid to raise whose children, how
indigenous families became outlawed
how settler economies feed upon me

the cool truth has a hot heart
the cool truth has a sober word for you
the cool truth is a mind-blowing instrument

blowing through the dead leaves of the fallen
blowing away the grit of snow under which
the stories were buried, frozen

taking up a shovel

for redemption