The Long September

September is usually my favourite month of the year, given that it heralds the start of fall, the start of school and the start of a new year for me—as my birthday falls in September. But, as it has all year, 2020 continues to reshape the familiar and expected. Case in point—I originally wrote this post on September 1st, and then just became completely consumed in getting my six-year-old ready for her Cayuga language immersion class (choosing to follow the paper option because the internet where I live is so terrible), and then felt like it was hard to know what to write about when there were so many things on my mind and in the news cycle that were affecting my community and Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island. I’ve also had a tremendously hard time letting go of the summer—a definite first for me. 

And while I am someone who thrives on creating things: books, art, and stories, my great unwavering hope for this entire year has been for the continued good health of my family, my loved ones, my community members—the entire world, really. Still, it is only now, as we head into the last few months of 2020, that I’m able to fully process that this “new normal” will likely be the way of things for another year, if not more. We have been told all along that we’re in this for the long haul; that we’re grappling with change of enormous proportions, and witnessing firsthand how long it takes for humankind to learn about and develop a resilience to new ailments and illnesses. 

All of this makes it feel impossible to take anything for granted, and yet, there seems to be an open invitation to do just that, especially in these these days when goods and services are delivered almost instantly (depending on your location) and where anything can be streamed or consumed on a whim (also depending on your location). There is this sense, something approaching an expectation perhaps, that there should be immediate and unfettered access to the things we want. And this too, is not so, because, of course this is only one way the world can feel. For many, the world is experienced in a vastly different way, one where gaining access to goods and services is difficult, if not impossible and where seeking help might not always feel or be safe. Where seeking justice is even less so. Indeed, as I write this, members of my community are being targeted by police and the Ontario judicial system for drawing attention to the still unresolved land matters our community has been actively been seeking to address for hundreds of years using a variety of available mechanisms, and all while the land is further developed. These are hard things to watch for many reasons, not the least of which is that there appears to be no sign that the history of this matter will be well understood and approaching resolve by the time my own children, and the children of many of the people who I attended school with in Caledonia, are grown.

And now we are here, on September 30, a day known across Turtle Island as #OrangeShirtDay, in which we collectively remember and honour the experiences of our children and family members who were taken from their families and placed in residential schools for the purpose of cultural genocide. Some of those children never returned home, and the impacts of attending these schools for those who did, have been felt through the generations. It is important to remember these happenings, even as we work to recover, repair, restore, rebuild what was lost—such as we can. And yet—as recently as a week ago, I saw mean-spirited, hateful and inhumane social media posts calling for the reopening of these schools in response to the exercise of treaty rights by our Indigenous brothers and sisters on Turtle Island’s east coast. To me, this kind of hateful response to the exercise of inherent and treaty rights is not only deeply disappointing, it’s another example of how the desire and effort to eradicate and assimilate Indigenous Peoples is very much tied to the intent to subsume land and resources. To own and control them.

#LandBack. #OrangeShirtDay. These movements are connected and they always will be, until efforts to confront systemic racism include a genuine and fulsome examination of the purpose, intent, and structure. For until that intent is examined with a truthful, honest lens, and shifts are willingly made along every policy corridor, it is difficult to see a future where reconciliation between the Canadian State and Indigenous Nations will ever be possible. But I am a hopeful person, something that is hard to be when people have and are losing their lives to this inaction and the biases, attitudes and prejudices it fosters. And so I know that change of this magnitude will be slow, even as I know that the state appears to actively fight its own efforts to restore peace and justice at times. The response to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal confirming Canada’s discrimination toward First Nations children through the child and family services program are just one example of many that signals the road will remain long and arduous, and the discussions equally so.

Slow or not, we need this machine to reckon with itself. Just as we need to focus on fulfilling our own responsibilities and honouring our own intent in the meantime, however we can, however we are called. It is a lot of work. And it looks different for everyone. Some are called to language. Some are called to ceremony. Some are called to organize. Some are called to care for others. Some to art, to law, to writing, to teaching, to learning, to gardening, to entrepreneurship, to health care, to leadership, to archaeology, to museum work, to academia, to dance, to film, to music. And some are called to defend, with their bodies and their presence, on land and on water.

All of this work comes with its own challenges, and many of those challenges have shared origins: the cumulative, cascading impacts of colonialism. It has shaped us. It has shaped our treaty partners. It has shaped our responses for tense moments of resistance, when suddenly everyone wants a conflict resolved right away, instantly even though Indigenous Peoples are urged to be patient while the slow-moving wheels of process play out: tribunals, legal decisions, policy frameworks, legislation, program delivery, mandates to make any kind of change at all. And as we have seen in the case of the tribunal, even when we are winning—there is a desire to reverse and reject actions to rectify and resolve. A desire for things to stay as they are—whether people are being hurt by the status quo or not. 

And at times, I think I understand, in some small way, this desire for things to remain the same. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that I am not immune to mourning how things “used to be”. There are days when I want life to resume exactly as it was, or when the desire for normal, precedented times is so great I could cry. But even though I long for that—it hasn’t changed the fact that tomorrow, I will wake up to a world where we will still need to take simple steps to safeguard ours and others, and more importantly—where we are still not unified in the fight against climate change, still have not undone these oppressive systems of power. The pandemic hasn’t changed those things after all, it has simply laid them bare in another way. This is no future to leave to anyone’s children. And not choosing a side here or engaging some way, some how, would feel like betrayal. And so, the work remains.

My work right now while on maternity leave from Deyohahá:ge: is mostly with my children, and my oldest daughter in particular, doing what I can to support her learning with one of the local immersion programs she attends Grade 1 through. Even before my husband and I enrolled her, we knew there would be challenges with this. Schools are not perfect, infallible places after all; they weren’t for either of us and as much as we wish they were, we doubt they will be for her either. And Cayuga is a critically endangered language with few speakers and few learning resources. Learning it in a school environment creates this need to balance teaching language with teaching in the language, and we can appreciate that this balance isn’t always easy to strike. Still, curriculum development has been ongoing throughout the community and several schools at Six Nations are responding to and growing their programs to better reach language proficiency goals in ways that align with their school’s particular educational approach. Learning to speak language amidst all this development and growth will not be easy. Learning other parts of the curriculum, are also challenging in this current environment. Fortunately for my daughter, my husband Kehte is actually quite a good language speaker and there are a ton of great grade 1 resources that can help us become regular users of Gayogoho:nǫ’. This is, essentially, what I’ve spent much of this month doing, looking over the content, the various curriculums and thinking about activities we can do to really immerse our whole family in language—and asking myself where and how I can help with the language skills that I have? And while there are still so many resources that would be useful to this effort—indeed, it’s part of why we started writing our own little Cayuga books a few years back—I’m heartened to think that those are also something we can create together.

It is now then, when I reflect on all these happenings and news items on today of all days, and about the opportunity for learning and creating that our little family has over the next six or so months until I return to work, I can’t help but feel a profound sense of gratitude. I am probably not alone in sometimes wishing that I could be everywhere, helping everything all of the time. That I could retrain a dozen times and be at once: a lawyer, an educator, a language teacher, a linguist, a land defender, a water walker, a seed keeper, an everything, all-the-timer. Instead, I am at home doing a little bit of gardening, a lot of art, reading and my own particular kind of writing, working on my Cayuga language, signing petitions, donating, watching webinars and lectures, and doing an obscene amount of planning and house rearranging. And definitely, absolutely sending my appreciation and support to those people who are doing all of this aforementioned, specialized work. Much of the time, this is as lovely and fulfilling as it can be during a global pandemic. Some of the time it is stressful because I’m pushing myself too hard to be “productive”. But in truth, all of it would feel incredibly, unbearably lonely if I couldn’t spend my days with the girls and our awesome new baby, Hugo. Which I suppose, brings me to my point: our school aged daughter is home and she is safe. She can learn her language with us and her siblings, with the support of our local schools and educators who want and value a parent’s role in their child’s education, and who know and use her Ogwehoweh name. I am a part of her educational journey. These are good, simple things—the very least of what we might expect of an education system—and they were not possible for Indigenous children in the not so distant past. It will never stop being important to remember that, to remember them, and to know in the very core of our beings that we should never let something like it happen again. 

Until next time, happy creating. Hug your little people close. Sign up to support the Spirit Bear campaign. Listen to podcasts. Donate to the Woodland Cultural Centre and the #1492 Land Back Legal Defence Fund. And Happy Orange Shirt Day. 

Nya:weh,

S.