Statement

My piece actually came to me in a dream. In the dream I was walking in the woods and I happened upon an Indigenous elder who motioned me to follow him. We ascended a pine covered ridge which overlooked a wide expansive field, on one side was the bright glow of a distant city and the other, the comforting embrace of the darkened pines. He gestured upward toward the sky. I glanced up and saw the milky way, glowing an amazing pink amid the dark sky and it had these bright yellow flickering lights running through it. I ask what this was and the old man said to me, “Those kids are going home.”

My piece emerged after discussions with Xavier Fernandes; we spoke with one another about the trials of growing up different in a world that expected us to meld into their ways of being. We spoke of the horrors of residential schools and the children that had been re-discovered. It made me think about how reconciliation not only means coming to a common acceptance of our differences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, but it also means a return to my ways of being as an Indigenous person; an acceptance of who I am, of my own culture and reconciling that with what I have been taught through a colonial lens my entire life. Anything cultural for me, especially the spirituality aspects, creates great cognitive dissonance; an internal battle about what belief system is acceptable to me.

After I had the dream, some days after my discussions with Xavier, I happened upon a social media post that explained the Ojibway connection to the stars, how we are beings born of the stars and when we pass away here on earth, our spirit travels the spirit road (what is commonly called the Milky Way) and we return to our ancestors. My reaction was utter shock. Up to that point I couldn’t explain the dream. I didn’t know of this legend within my culture.

In the piece itself I’ve depicted an Indigenous person, at his feet are young ones following, in his hands he has a pipe, from the pipe is the essence of his spirit and that essence travels upward toward the sky (it resembles the northern lights - in Ojibway culture, the northern lights are representative of the shadows of our ancestors) where it joins many travelling along the spirit road, making their way back to the ancestors. This is an homage to the elder in my dream, who told me that the children from the residential schools had found their way back to the ancestors.

The person in the painting is centered between two worlds, a delicate walk those of us with non-colonial ancestry can understand. He faces the red road back to culture, to spirit. The two worlds exist alongside one another but for now, they do not meld together. That is part of reconciliation, acceptance of our need to travel along our red road while we live alongside our non-Indigenous brethren. Our ways are not wrong. Our beliefs guide us toward the same good life we all are trying to live. Until we, and our children can live unencumbered and without shame of being Indigenous while living in colonial society, those two worlds cannot meld together. Reconciliation to me is not just about being accepted for who I am as an Indigenous person living in a non-Indigenous society, it is about accepting that I am an Indigenous person at heart; it is about challenging the cognitive dissonance I experience when I try to embrace my culture; erasing generations of inaccurate knowledge and re-learning the world around me from an Indigenous perspective. It is about coming home, coming full circle back to my ancestors.