While reading the European script, it gets to me, telling people
who don’t know about Indigenous people. It hurts me still, when I read it over
and over again. I mess up on saying some words but I re-read them for people to
understand better. Some lady says that I am doing great, looking around and
going up to people and telling them what Indigenous people couldn’t do, what
they wanted to do and went through, what darkest histories that are behind it
all. I am telling people what they never knew, what all happened in the
residential schools.
When we end the blanket exercise we all sit down in a talking circle, to say what we think, what we feel. I see a lot of impact on people who cried when they saw the child in their arms being taken from them and put into residential schools. Tears are going down the women’s faces and trying to talk about it, I hear a pain inside their voices. Some of them have children and they are probably thinking about what if that happened to their children and they couldn’t do anything about it or the police would come and take them. Hearing and seeing what the teachers have to say in the talking circle, thanking us for coming out and doing the blanket exercise, hearing their comments, always touches my heart, and I’m just wondering how much pain that it brings inside the teachers just thinking about it and talking about it.
When it is my turn to speak I don’t use my mind to speak; I speak
from my heart, telling them thank you for your responses, thank you for sharing
what you think and that you try and put yourselves in my ancestors’ shoes, like
trying to imagine if all that happened to you. I am touched by them, tears
rolling down my face, hitting the gym floor, saying thank you to them for
letting us do this blanket exercise to share what dark history is behind it all.
After my turn is done I go for a little walk and wipe my tears, then I go back
into the gym and sit down. When we are done the talking circle we go around the
circle shaking everyone’s hand, getting hugs, even being told “You do have a
big heart. Keep it up, keep on telling people who never heard about the blanket
exercise.”
After that they have lunch for us all and we sit down to get to
know each other, like asking what we think and telling us how well we are
doing. After the veggie, pizza, and various meat wraps we go to a class room
and I want to tell people about our program, what we are doing and what it
means. Showing them our blog, we tell them how many times we did the blanket
exercise showing them pictures of our group. I even want to read my poem to
them. Tears fall down some people’s faces, even mine. Re-reading my poem still
makes me think about what all my people went through and it still hurts me on
this very day, but I was told that I do have a big heart from a woman who is
one of the teachers here. She even asks
about my necklace that I have around my neck and I tell her it’s my mom’s birth
stone and I always wear it wherever I go. I tell her that I really love my mom;
she made me who I am. When we are about to leave some guy gives us t-shirts and
pins that have Sacred Heart High School and some toques from Oskayak High School
in Saskatoon. As we drive away, I say it was a great trip to Yorkton to tell
some people about the blanket exercise.
