A letter to you –

“This program has been designed for women working to reclaim our traditions within their families and personal lives and who are healing their families from centuries of colonization.

Chances are, you’ve struggled to deal with…

• Working through feelings of grief at all that was lost, and celebrating all that is being learned and brought back into our families.
• Finding a balance in living a healthy life yourself, and serving community, while supporting your own family.
• Begining to not simply learn our teachings, but to bring them into your life in a deep and meaningful way.
• Feeling overwhelmed with all there is to learn personally, and all of the support needed in community.
• Wanting to retun to a traditional diet, but not knowing where to start.
• Wanting to learn about medicines for your health but not having someone to turn to in order to learn.
• Wanting to move past beaded earrings and ribbon skirts into deeper ways of embracing your culture and identity.
• Finding people who still live a traditional lifestyle to learn from.
• Speaking our language, with no one to practice with.

And, you’ve tried. You’ve started learning, looking for hints. But its honestly not easy. Unlearning colonial worldviews, values, and trauma, while relearning land-based, culturally connected ways of being… all while tending to your physical health, working, and supporting your family.

Maybe You’re Asking Hard Questions

Should I be digging back into the traditions of the past? Do I have any right to want these teachings? Shouldn’t I have an elder close to me who can teach me these things? What If I don’t have an elder or am far from my nation, am I still allowed to connect with my culture and learn our teachings?

Culture is taught gradually over time by those who are immersed in it. Normally you would be taught as a child by your parents and grandparents, and every interaction with you community beyond your family would reinforce that sense of belonging. Your wellness would be reinforced everyday in your lived experience.

But, families have been broken up. removed from our traditional lands. Their lands taken, dispersed far from our original homes. Children were taken, by residential schools, the 60’s scoop, and by the eventual belief that is perhaps most damaging, that they never really had a culture that was beautiful and unique. Not only that their strong, proud, complex culture was truly not valuable or worthy of pride, but that it never existed.

For generations this has been overtly and subtly introduced into the minds of our people, so completely that many families honestly do not know their origins, let alone the teaching that root our lives in wellness.

Perhaps like many of us, you grew up knowing your heritage, but not knowing your culture and the worldview that connects us to the land and our ancestors. You can say, with pride even, that you are indigenous. Perhaps it was your parents that discovered your ties, or your grandparents. You know where you come from. And yet, what it means to be us, our values, traditions, skills, language and cuisine and now, most importantly, our traditions as mothers…those are still mysteries. 

You know you want these teachings and to raise your child with them, so now what?

Finding and learning our culture takes time. Not just because it requires that you experience it regularly and over time, but because it was hidden so thoroughly in many places, that unless you live in a community connected in culture, it can be difficult to piece it all together. Little pieces of it wait for you on websites, in archives, in books and at gatherings with elders. You feel it must all be there, and it is.

Like the rest of us, you have school, a family, a career and bills to pay. You’re curious about this culture of yours, yes. But, life has a way of continuing, of continuing to place demands on us. And now you have even more to do.

Finding those who can share our teachings can be difficult, especially if you don’t live close to your nation. Not to mention awkward…to approach someone you don’t know, and ask for the gift of your culture. And perhaps that’s where shame still lives. Not that you are Indigenous. You’re proud even if you haven’t fully learned why. But shame that you dont have it. Perhaps you feel worried you won’t be accepted. That it won’t be a beautiful homecoming. That you will be an outsider. You would turn to your grandmother, but as your family members are not quite sure, or have a hazzy recollection at best of our traditions, or spirituality, our songs and food, you will have to rely on others for this knowledge. So you accept that you’ll accept what you’re able from those who do know their culture.

Perhaps you make an effort to go to the community events. You know the names of a few people who will be there. But, in the end, these events aren’t designed to teach you to practice your culture and to build a healthy life with it. They show it to you, with dancing demonstrations and of course, people wearing mocs and beadwork. But, maybe it still feels a bit alien…beautiful, enticing, but it doesn’t sing within you, though you appreciate it being sung by others.

For some, this is all our proud, beautiful and vivacious culture will ever be, a song sung by others that we can hear and appreciate. Make no mistake, this is an incredible leap forward for a nation and culture that had to hide in their own homeland for generations. To be able to publicly enjoy and watch aspects of our culture is a beautiful thing. A thing to be cherished.

But that’s not likely why you’re here. It’s about more than being a spectator.

I would guess, this is why you’re here. You want to ways to build a healthy and rooted life. And so I say to you, Tanisi, Tawaw. Hello and welcome, there is space for you here.”

– Natalie Pepin 

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