Statement

My piece is an illustration or a kind of map of the inner work of healing trauma so that something new can grow.  The idea of the outline of a seated person came to me as I sat in the sweat lodge where we began Round 4.  The seven spinning balls of energy around the outside of the figure represent the Seven Grandfather Teachings of love, courage, humility, truth, respect, honesty, and wisdom.  These Indigenous teachings strongly impact how I live my life.

I have been working with healing ancestral, personal and collective trauma for a number of years now.  As a settler, I feel a responsibility to heal some of the traumas that were brought to Turtle Island by my ancestors so that they are not re-perpetrated onto Indigenous Peoples as has been the case for hundreds of years.

The building on the left is a cotton mill in Lancashire, England where my ancestors worked for a number of generations.  They were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and became part of the machines in a way.  I still feel that alive in me in a need to be efficient and punctual.  Beside the mill is a representation of a church.  I carried the broken stained glass from Negik’s work into this church.  I grew up in the United Church and acknowledge that something there was broken like the glass in our paintings that injured so many Indigenous children through the Indian Residential Schools.  The third symbol is a potato to acknowledge the Irish Potato famine which is a part of my ancestry.  I still carry a fear of scarcity from that ancestral trauma that I am working with.

I surrounded these with a red wash representing all the blood shed that has occurred in European history.  And then the blue of the ocean which my parents crossed from England when they emigrated to Canada.  I used to feel that the ocean separated me from my ancestors but I have come to see this body of water as a connector instead.

One of my teachers, Thomas Hubl says that as we acknowledge these kind of traumas and feel them, we can digest and integrate them into our lives.  This creates a kind of inner soil, he says.  So you can see the base of the mill, church and potato turning into soil that connects to the land that the figure is sitting on.

The next symbol is a feather painted in the style that Negik uses.  When he initially told me about his piece, he said that he was going to paint a Thunderbird that was purple and white, hence the colours of this feather.  This symbolizes that not only do I have my ancestral influences but I also have the influences of Indigenous Peoples about how to live here in a good way.  And that is a huge gift.

I included a heart as well because having an open heart is so important in doing this work of Truth and Reconciliation.  Below the heart is a blue flame.  In a conversation with Anishinaabeg artist Paul Shilling, he explained how once we lift off the layers covering our spirit, the spirit will rise up.  I pictured a blue flame when he said that. It seemed to be rising up towards the heart in my imagination.

And finally, from the soil that is being created through healing, a scarlet runner bean plant is growing.  It reaches up to the spirit, the heart, and into the head as well.  This shows the new growth that is possible through healing and that it influences everything.  The bean plant was the last thing I painted and it filled me with hope.