Photo Credit: Leah Dorion
Tansi Nîtôtemtik, good morning everyone,
Some people find writing in public scarier than standing naked in front of a crowd. Maybe because the world might catch a glimpse of a writer's heart, not just their skin.
Since January, this journey of writing with reconciliACTION has taught me to trust my heart when it speaks. Maybe I found the question I've been answering as I write my way through law and reconciliACTION [1]:
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring.
I think of her,
her four black fists,
flicking the gravel,
her tongue.
Like a red fire,
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question;
How to love this world.
As a team, writing this blog has given each of us the chance to deepen relationships with people we know, and form some inspiring new connections.
Everyone who read, shared, commented, wrote us, called us!! - a most big hiy hiy and thank you to you.
We stand together in the reflection, relating and learning that is possible because thousands of people stood up and showed their hearts, and shared their words, and listened -- to make the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Reports possible [2].
Those many, many acts of bravery brought important truths out into a wider open.
Truth comes before reconciliation.
Action, also, comes before reconciliation.
There is much to be done.
And this, I think, is part of how to love this world.
And as we gather here in this little blog each week, more truths are coming. More people speak in recognition of the children and unmarked burials at residential schools. [3] More people continue to stand up and share their own stories. And more people are creating space for new possible futures in other ways: taking actions.
Being a part of this team, writing with this reconciliACTION community, has filled me with tears and hope. It has been an honour. While my part in the writing is done, I have this good feeling that it is only the beginning of something much more.
So this week, we say to you farewell, and welcome: a whole new season opening up for us and, perhaps, for truth and action towards a brighter future, too.
Thank you for coming along with all of us here at reconciliACTION this year - Gavin, Casey, Amy, Amanda, Liz, and me.
Kinanâskomitin, thank you for reading and take care,
Hero and the ReconciliACTION team
[1] Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Press: New York, 2017) at 317.
[2] Home / Your Records / Reports (2022), online: National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, University of Manitoba <https://nctr.ca/records/reports/#trc-reports>.
[3] Topics / Unmarked Graves (2019), online: <https://www.aptnnews.ca/tag/unmarked-graves/>.