Truth And Reconciliation - Tumblr Posts

I Lost My Talk

 I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

So gently I offer my hand and ask,

Let me find my talk

So I can teach you about me.

Rita Joe

Every Child Matters (for National Day of Truth & Reconciliation)

Song of the Day

"Call of the moose" Willy Mitchell, 1980 As you might know, September 30th is Truth and Reconciliation day (more commonly known as Orange Shirt Day), a national day in Canada dedicated to spreading awareness about the legacy of Residential schools on Indigenous people. Instead of just focusing on a song, I also wanted to briefly talk about the history of the sixties scoop and its influence on Indigenous American music and activism.

The process of Residential schooling in Canada existed well before the '60s, but the new processes of the sixties scoop began in 1951. It was a process where the provincial government had the power to take Indigenous children from their homes and communities and put them into the child welfare system. Despite the closing of residential schools, more and more children were being taken away from their families and adopted into middle-class white ones.

Even though Indigenous communities only made up a tiny portion of the total population, 40-70% of the children in these programs would be Aboriginal. In total, 20,000 children would be victims of these policies through the 60s and 70s.

These adoptions would have disastrous effects on their victims. Not only were sexual and physical abuse common problems but the victims were forcibly stripped of their culture and taught to hate themselves. The community panel report on the sixties scoop writes:

"The homes in which our children are placed ranged from those of caring, well-intentioned individuals, to places of slave labour and physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The violent effects of the most negative of these homes are tragic for its victims. Even the best of these homes are not healthy places for our children. Anglo-Canadian foster parents are not culturally equipped to create an environment in which a positive Aboriginal self-image can develop. In many cases, our children are taught to demean those things about themselves that are Aboriginal. Meanwhile, they are expected to emulate normal child development by imitating the role model behavior of their Anglo-Canadian foster or adoptive parents."

and to this day indigenous children in Canada are still disproportionately represented in foster care. Despite being 5% of the Total Canadian population, Indigenous children make up 53.8% of all children in foster care.

I would like to say that the one good thing that came out of this gruesome and horrible practice of state-sponsored child relocation was that there was a birth of culture from protest music, but there wasn't. In fact, Indigenous music has a long history of being erased and whitewashed from folk history.

From Buffy Saint-Marie pretending to be Indigenous to the systematic denial of first nations people from the Canadian mainstream music scene, the talented artists of the time were forcibly erased.

Which is why this album featuring Willy Mitchell is so important.

Willy Mitchell and The Desert River Band

This Album was compiled of incredibly rare, unheard folk and rock music of North American indigenous music in the 60s-80s. It is truly, a of a kind historical artifact and a testimony to the importance of archival work to combat cultural genocide. Please give the entire thing a listen if you have time. Call of the Moose is my favorite song on the album, written and performed by Willy Mitchell in the 80s. His Most interesting song might be 'Big Policeman' though, written about his experience of getting shot in the head by the police. He talks about it here:

"He comes there and as soon as I took off running, he had my two friends right there — he could have taken them. They stopped right there on the sidewalk. They watched him shootin’ at me. He missed me twice, and when I got to the tree line, he was on the edge of the road, at the snow bank. That’s where he fell, and the gun went off. But that was it — he took the gun out. He should never have taken that gun out. I spoke to many policemen. And judges, too. I spoke with lawyers about that. They all agreed. He wasn’t supposed to touch that gun. So why did I only get five hundred dollars for that? "

These problems talked about here, forced displacement, cultural assimilation, police violence, child exploitation, and erasure of these crimes, still exist in Canada. And so long as they still exist, it is imperative to keep talking about them. Never let the settler colonial government have peace; never let anyone be comfortable not remembering the depth of exploitation.

Every Child Matters

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

I really wish my northern neighbour would do the same for its Native people, or at least take some responsibility for its misdeeds for its other minorities (androcides included).

Hey remember when they found over 200 bodies of native children buried behind a residential school and the world cared for... what, a week?

They've counted about 6,000-7,000 now, for those of you who do still care

Truth and Reconcilliation Resources

Today is truth and reconcilliation day in Canada. Today, we wear orange to recognize those hurt in the horrible time of residential schools.

We often think it was very long ago, but in fact, the last residential school closed in 1996. People are alive right now that have gone through this-- and many more are unfortunately not with us anymore.

I have made a small presentation with some info and included links for further research. Please do your part to raise awareness and help indigenous people who still have to go through racism and inequality to this very day. If there are links with resources or charities, please let me know and I will edit this post to add them.

Some links for more info:

TRC Mandate

TRC official Governement of Canada Info

Phyllis's Story

UN Declaration of Indigneous Rights

NCTR Reports

Whenever we talk about Truth and Reconciliation, we use very passive language. These tragedies did not only “happen” or “occur” to the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Genocide doesn’t come out of nowhere. These heinous, violent, racist crimes were repeatedly and purposefully perpetrated by the white, European colonizers who settled on stolen land that was never signed away, sold, or surrendered. Some of the monsters who committed these crimes are still alive and have not faced trial. There can never be true justice for the victims of residential schools, the ‘60s scoop, and the other abhorrent acts against Indigenous peoples until those still alive who were in power at the time—the people who either perpetrated the crimes themselves or who did nothing to stop them—are brought to justice. Shame on the Canadian government, shame on the Anglican and Catholic churches. There is no pride in genocide.

Indigenous Canadian dolls 🧡

Today is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, also known as orange shirt day, we wear an orange shirt, typically with the slogan “Every Child Matters”, in remembrance and acknowledgement of what happened to Indigenous children in residential schools.

As a doll blog I feel like it is only fitting for me to highlight some amazing Indigenous Canadian artists and dolls on here!

Saila Qilavvaq from Maplelea Girls

Saila Qilavvaq is a Maplelea Girl doll who is from Iqaluit, Nunavut. She wants to be a fashion designer who brings an Inuit flair to her looks. Each Maplelea doll comes with a journal and Salia’s is the first to be written in English, French, and Inuktitut!

Along with the dolls, Maplelea Girls also makes fashion packs you can buy. Here we have the orange “Every Child Matters” shirt, Saila wearing a traditional Amauti coat, and Canyon’s Dress which was designed by Teresa Snow (the outfit is based on an outfit she made for her own daughter, Canyon)

Ribbon Skirt dolls by Tracy Boucher

These custom Ribbon Skirt dolls are meant to show women, girls, and two-spirit individuals their worth and bring attention to the MMIWG movement. Ribbon skirts are meant to be floor length and touch the ground to have connection to the Earth. Boucher further discusses the dolls and the meaning of the ribbon skirt in this interview.

No-Face dolls by Audrey “Bill” Wilson

Wilson is a Chippewas woman who based these dolls off an indigenous story of a girl who is too vain and so the Great Spirits take away her face. The story is meant to be a lesson to children about humility. More of this story can be found in this interview. 

Whetung Ojibwa dolls

In the 1960s the Whetung family began crafting more to sell at their store (now the Whetung Ojibwa Centre, a museum with indigenous art to purchase). The doll in the blue dress is named Waboose Whetung and if you find her hidden around the Whetung Ojibwa Centre you can get $5 off your purchase. More information about the Whetung history can be found here.

Post for Orange Shirt Day 🧡

I have the day off today for the Truth & Reconciliation holiday, and wanted to do some learning about the history of my area as part of that. I live and work on the traditional and unceded territory of the Semiahmoo First Nation, part of the broader Coast Salish peoples, and closely related to the Lummi Nation, also called Lhaq’temish People of the Sea. Although I am not a member of that group, I’m surrounded by the indigenous history of the area. Many of my favorite places nearby have a long local history that predates colonialism. In Crescent Beach, where I take my son and swim in the ocean, there is a rock with a faded inscription detailing a great flood in the area, and I learned today that Semiahmoo oral history has a powerful song about that flood. I am grateful I have heard it, and now better understand the history of that area.

At least once a week, often several times, I find myself on the Semiahmoo trail. Online sources say that the origin of that trial was a wagon route built by European settlers in the late 1800s, and make reference to verbal legends of any earlier origin as myth and a "romantic notion". These sources show the importance of respecting the word-of-mouth stories of indigenous peoples as valid history. Especially, how they’re often ignored, erased, and invalidated in historical accounts with a colonial bias. It certainly isn’t hard to imagine, like much of modern colonial society, the Semiahmoo trail being built upon an unrecognized or unacknowledged foundation laid by indigenous people. Much of history, to me at least, is the beliefs we form from a collection of often-contradictory rather than complementary sources. That certainly seems to me to be the case with the Semiahmoo Trail. Regardless of who first used that route through the forest, I won’t ignore the fact that many of the trails I use and enjoy today were originally created by those who were here long before my ancestors came from Europe.

That’s what I choose to believe, and that’s what I will teach my son.