Jordan Abel - NISHGA

Copyright 2020 by Jordan Abel

Hardcover edition published 2020

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ISBN9780771007903

Ebook ISBN9780771007910

The interview from The Hardest Thing About Being a Writer, originally published January 12, 2017, is used with the permission of Sachiko Murakami.

Cover art by Jordan Abel

Cover design by Terri Nimmo

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For the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

An Open Letter to All My Relations

Its taken me a long while to gather up the courage to share this book with you.

This book has been difficult for me to write and for me to return to.

This is also a book with painful subject matter.

This book is about intergenerational trauma, Indigenous dispossession, and the afterlife of Residential Schools.

It is also a book that is about sexual and physical violence, lateral violence, depression, suicide, and self-harm.

While I ultimately hope that this will be a book that helps people, I also want you to take care of yourself first.

If now is not the time, there will be another time.

When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.

JOHN A. MACDONALD ,

1883

I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. That is my whole point. Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole objective of this Bill.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT ,

1920

It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a Final Solution of our Indian Problem.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT ,

1907

It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these [Residential Schools] did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT ,

1913

Im sick to death of the lateral violence in our communities! Im sick to death of the constant stream of hate and ugliness; the identity-bashing politics and the cruel ways in which we judge and ultimately throw one another away. Were all trying to find our way home as best we can. Some of us were fortunate to grow up with our languages and culture, some of us were not so fortunate. Some of us have had to crawl back to ourselves with both eyes shut. And most, if not all of us, have had and continue to carry our family traumas and the effects of a system not our own. The Governments policy has always been to destroy our communities, our families, our individual selves. We are all trying to find our way home as best we can. Yes, it is good to hold one another to account, to remember our responsibilities, and the protocols that govern us. But we also have a responsibility toward one another. We come from the circle, which by nature of its shape has room to expand without breaking. Room for many hands. Room for many voices. Room for many experiences. Room for many who, by no fault of their own, have grown up disconnected. I ask everyone to think about this the next time youre tearing someone down, the next time youre hauling them out to be humiliated and shamed. These are not our ways. These are not our teachings. These are the teachings of the church and Residential School. In nehyawewin, in Cree, the Old People say, peyhtihk, which if translated accurately means to walk softly around something, to give something a great amount of thought before acting upon it. For everything our words, our thoughts, and actions are maskhkiy, medicine. Everything holds consequences. Were all just trying to find our way home as best we can. No one has the right to say who can or who cannot come home. Home is the lodge we were all given at birth.

GREGORY SCOFIELD ,

FACEBOOK POST, APRIL 14, 2018

Scan of an oversized promotional business card

Scan of the reverse side of an oversized promotional business card

Too many Canadians know little or nothing about the deep historical roots of these conflicts. This lack of historical knowledge has serious consequences for First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis Peoples, and for Canada as a whole.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Notes

I remember being at a club on Granville Street watching a band. I figured out later that I loved this band. But at the time it was just a band that I had heard of. I was there with a friend of a friend. She had come with me because I had asked her to. At some point my phone rang and I stepped outside onto the street. My Dad was on the line. We hadnt ever really had a conversation before. Actually, this was the first time we had ever spoken to each other. I had come to Vancouver that summer to see if I could find him, and after calling dozens of places, I finally managed to leave a message with a stranger who confirmed that my Dad lived there. I dont fully recall what we said to each other. It was all so unreal. Is that your voice? Is this what you sound like? What are we supposed to talk about when its been twenty-three years of silence? What I do remember is that we worked out some plans to meet the following day. I was going to go to Waterfront Station at some specific time in the early afternoon and hope that I recognized this person Id never met before. If I had been more organized I might have told him what I was going to be wearing or asked him what he looked like. When I finally went back inside the club I was in a daze. The band played a song and then another song and I started to feel okay again. When the music paused, the lead singer said, Its Fathers Day today. This is a song about my father. So thats a thing. The song turned out to be dark and dreamy, ambient and without words.