Reconciliation initiatives are yielding positive results
There were almost more women in a hijab than a ribbon skirt among the teepees of Bent Arrow’s National Aboriginal Day celebrations last year.
It’s a sign of progress, of bridging and respect between cultures, and there’s more good news coming from the non-profit that works with local Indigenous families in Edmonton’s Parkdale neighbourhood.
Five years since the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in Edmonton, executive director Cheryl Whiskeyjack says that in addition to the new cross-cultural respect and partnerships, they’re seeing more respect for traditional ways from government.
Those hearings fostered a slow, cultural change. In that context, Bent Arrow officials have been able to research and build a uniquely Indigenous approach to child intervention. What’s more, they’re teaching what they have learned to other child and family workers across the city in an effort to save more children, of every ethnicity, from the often traumatic experience of being fostered with complete strangers.
It’s the real beauty of reconciliation; when we stop and listen with respect, we can find common ground and a better path forward for everyone.
Those Truth and Reconciliation hearings marked a significant moment locally. From March 27 to 30, 2014, roughly 20,000 people filled the halls of Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre. They told and heard stories of the lasting legacy of Canada’s residential schools, which robbed children of their identity and were rife with abuse. For many Edmonton residents, it was their first chance to hear that pain with such raw emotion.
It brought soul searching. Governments promised to follow a long list of recommendations; local organizations and residents wondered what they could do.
Now, five years later, I turned to Whiskeyjack to see if she’s seen a change. There’s still frustration; people fighting racism and heartbreaking examples of how the legacy of residential schools continues in broken families and addiction. But there are also signs of progress.
One source of hope is Bent Arrow’s new relationship with the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers.
The Mennonite Centre reached out after the hearings, realizing their newcomer community often held negative images of local First Nations. Newcomers arrived expecting to see Indigenous culture in a place of honour, but soon heard negative stereotypes. Those stereotypes were reinforced when the most visible people of Indigenous heritage were struggling with homelessness and addiction.
Now the Centre invites elders to their classrooms, works with Bent Arrow to have drummers and an Indigenous welcome committee when families arrive, and together they once took two busloads of Syrian refugees to the Enoch annual powwow.
“In our daycare, I saw kids imitating a jingle dance,” says executive director Erick Ambtman. “Our stereotype is now positive; elders are funny … Something really special is happening.”
Bent Arrow’s work on child intervention started before the hearings. They used a $200,000 provincial research grant to meet with elders, going through pipe ceremonies and into the sweat lodge. What came out was a new teaching.
Their work is like the sacred ceremony of the sun dance, says Whiskeyjack.
At a sun dance, people come with prayers, symbolized by pieces of cloth. That cloth is attached to a pole in the centre of the arbour and, for four days, the sun dancers give up food and drink to dance and sweat until exhausted around that pole, sacrificing for the prayers of the community.
The dancers are held in a place of honour, says Whiskeyjack. In the new teaching, those dancers are the parents. Their work to fight addiction and find healing is sacrificing for the good of others.
The social workers are the oskâpêwis, the helpers who encourage when the dance is hard. And the whole community comes together to care for the children while that dance goes on.
It’s a shift in thinking that focuses on strength rather than deficits, plus it encourages families to smudge, pray and create a relationship of trust at each meeting, says Keleigh Larson, senior manager with Bent Arrow. She comes from a European background and has been inspired by this new approach.
The teaching helps workers find children safe temporary homes, too, she says. In Western social work, officials use a “genogram” to follow bloodlines and track down relatives for a kinship care placement. That practice is linear and limiting.
The Indigenous way now being taught in Edmonton is called kinship mapping. Families and workers identify everyone who loves and supports the child, from aunts and cousins to friends’ parents and coaches.
“It really empowers the kid and makes them feel supported,” says Larson. Even if those people can’t host the child in their home, they can offer support and love.
I think it’s beautiful. In my head, I map the love surrounding my family and it stretches far beyond bloodlines. It’s also helping to keep children in their communities, said Larson. In the last three years, the number of children placed with extended family doubled to nearly 1,400 from 700 in the Edmonton region.
But this is just one story of what’s happened since the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. There’s much more to tell and more change needed. Whiskeyjack will be part of a panel discussion on this at the Arden Theatre in St. Albert Saturday morning.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to learn first-hand about this rich culture with such deep roots here, you can also go to Bent Arrow’s National Aboriginal Day celebrations June 21 or drop in for culture camp May 2 to 5. Reconciliation is a journey we desperately need to continue together.