At the top of a squat hill overlooking the Shubenacadie River, Dorene Bernard swings her SUV around to face a building clad in blue plastic siding. It’s a nondescript factory for plastic packaging, but the space it occupies is distinct. “[It’s] sitting in the footprint of where the school was,” Dorene says.

Between 1929 and 1967, more than a thousand Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqiyik children from around the Maritimes, as well as the Gaspé region in Quebec, were sent to this spot in Nova Scotia: the site of the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, the only federal residential school in the region. (The Maritimes includes New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland and Labrador had its own residential schools, but these were not part of the federal system and only received an apology from Canada in 2017, nine years after the prime minister apologized to residential school students on behalf of the Government of Canada.)

In 1986, the school was demolished, and the plastics factory built in its place. Still, something of the school remains: in a semi-circle at the bottom of the school’s former driveway, three plaques lay out the history of the Shubenacadie residential school in English and French, as well as two orthographies each of Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqey.

From 1828 to 1997, 140 federal residential schools operated across Canada. When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its Calls to Action in 2015, recommendation 79 addressed incorporating reconciliation in heritage work — including developing a national plan and strategy for commemorating school sites. Since then, the federal government has designated a handful of former schools as national historic sites; Shubenacadie was one of the first, in 2020. This fall, a commemorative park will open a short distance from the school, culminating the work of memorialization. 

For survivors and their descendants, many of whom have worked for years to have sites officially recognized, the designations are a complex phenomenon: former schools remain profoundly painful places and some communities have fought to have schools demolished. But while the history of residential schools is indelible for many survivors, collective memory is slippery, and among survivor groups, a patient effort is underway to preserve something of that past — to ensure Canada doesn’t forget what happened in residential schools, and what it took to survive them. 

“We want our descendants, and the ones that are to come to have a place to come learn about who they are … what our ancestors came through, [and] honour that, so that they can take that strength,” Dorene says. “That’s what this work is all about.”

Survivors led process for Shubenacadie commemoration

Dorene’s family bookends the school’s existence. Her father started when it opened in 1929; she and her siblings were some of the last to leave. When Dorene recalls the years she spent there, her voice is quiet. She felt abandoned, she says. Her older sister tried to take care of her, but despite those efforts, Dorene witnessed and was subjected to beatings and other forms of physical abuse; in one particularly awful moment, she remembers a nun sitting her on a stack of phone books while a travelling dentist pulled eight of her teeth without medication, resulting in jaw pain that affects her to this day. 

After the remaining children left in 1967, the imposing brick building sat empty for nearly 20 years, growing increasingly derelict. In the 1980s, a fire tore through the school, and shortly thereafter, the structure was demolished. In her book Out of the Depths, survivor Isabelle Knockwood recalls survivors gathering for the demolition and cheering as the wrecking ball tore through the walls. “There was no sadness, no tears at seeing the building finally being punished and beaten for having robbed so many Indian children of the natural wonders and simple pleasures of growing up,” she wrote. 

The demolition, and the visits survivors made to the school in the days leading up to it, marked a beginning for survivors collectively unpacking their experiences. In 1995, a group of Shubenacadie survivors led by Nora Bernard filed the first class-action lawsuit against Canada for compensation to residential school survivors. The suit precipitated a flurry of additional lawsuits that eventually resulted in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007, which compensated tens of thousands of survivors. Another outcome of that agreement was the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Years later, when the Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre, an organization founded to preserve Mi’kmaw history and historic sites, began to work on the recommendations of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, survivors were once again clear what they wanted: “[They said] ‘We want to make sure Canada — the world — never forgets what has happened to us at this place. So, we want to see the school designated as a national historic site,’ ” Tim Bernard, executive director of the cultural centre, says.

Tim’s own experience is a testament to the importance of having a record. In 1998, an Elder showed him a photograph of residents obtained from the archive of the Sisters of Charity — the nuns who staffed the school — vowing she was going to track down the name of every child in it. When she came back, she pointed out two boys: Tim’s father and uncle.

Tim had had no idea they had been taken there — his father had passed away, after a struggle with alcoholism, having never discussed his experiences. “For me, it heightens my awareness around trauma, and the impacts of trauma,” he says. It also made work to have the school designated personal, though he emphasizes it’s been led by survivors. 

Guided by those survivors, Tim sent a request in 2019 for a designation to Parks Canada, and in 2020, the federal government declared the former school a national historic site. The plaques were unveiled on Truth and Reconciliation Day a year later. Dorene, who led engagement work for the centre, says survivors had a lot of input into the wording — and insisted that it state that survivors considered residential school policy to be genocide. 

Being a national historic site doesn’t come with a lot of resources, Tim says. Still, the designation is a testament to the fact that survivors’ stories are true. 

“Other than us putting the plaques up, you would never know that the school was there,” he says. “I think that was [survivors’] intention, to remind people that this is a dark part of our history.”

Indigenous communities vary in approaches to former school sites

The National Program of Historical Commemoration has existed for more than a century. For much of its existence, its tone was celebratory, but that’s changed in the last several decades, Dominique Foisy-Geoffroy, director of history and commemoration for Parks Canada, says.

“Commemoration was seen as something generally positive, something to celebrate. Now it’s a bit different.”

The program is driven almost entirely by public requests and there are two main sets of criteria: sites must have national historic significance and have existed for at least 40 years. The federal government also designated the residential school system an event of national significance in 2019.

Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, Foisy-Geoffroy says, Parks Canada began collaborating with Indigenous communities to determine what they wanted done with former schools. While some wanted a historic site designation, responses ranged, and others turned down federal commemoration: for some, demolishing buildings has been the more important step towards healing.

So far, five sites have been designated. Parks Canada focused its outreach on larger institutions where the main buildings are still standing, though Shubenacadie was prioritized as the only former site in the Maritimes. “It’s the history that is at the core of it, not [the buildings’] architectural value, of course. But the building is still important,” Foisy-Geoffroy says.

Since the 1960s, many school buildings have been torn down, though roughly 50 are still standing and in use — as gymnasiums, staff residencies and other outbuildings, including as schools. Others serve as offices, cultural centres or housing. At one — the former St. Eugene Mission School, on Ktunaxa territory near Cranbrook, B.C. — the Ktunaxa/Kinbasket Tribal Council applied for a national historic site designation in 1996. That application was rejected after the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs intervened, arguing commemoration decisions should be delayed until after the release of the final report by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, according to an essay published in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. So instead, the five bands who share the land turned the school into a golf course and resort owned by the Ktunaxa Nation.

At other sites, communities have set aside school buildings as testimony to the residential school era, including the Portage La Prairie Residential School in Manitoba, which operated from 1891 to 1975. It’s on the Treaty 1 territory of the reserve lands of Long Plain First Nation, for which Dennis Meeches served as chief for 20 years, starting in 1998. 

By the time Meeches entered politics, the federal government had transferred the 45-acre school site to the nation, as part of a treaty land entitlement claim. For a time, the building hosted Yellowquill College, Manitoba’s first Indigenous-owned and operated post-secondary institution. Then, in the early 2000s, a Knowledge Keeper told Meeches the building should be converted to a museum. 

“I thought that actually made really good sense, in terms of being able to provide some education and awareness to [not only] Indigenous people … but everybody in general,” he says. “It was a sacred project in my eyes.”

In 2003, Long Plain declared the former school a historic site and began amassing material for the collection of what it named the National Indigenous Residential School Museum. Seventeen years later, the federal government issued its own designation— a step Meeches says was important, given the federal government’s role in the residential school system. Ultimately, he hopes being a national historic site will serve to bolster the vision for the museum.

Watching the plaque unveiling this past August, Meeches thought of what it took for his parents and grandparents to survive the system. Survivors are aging and passing away, he says, even as denial about the reality of residential schools continues to circulate — making it important to preserve a record of that history.

Nonetheless, not every community has wanted schools preserved. For years, c̓išaaʔatḥ (Tseshaht First Nation) on Vancouver Island has been demolishing the buildings of the former Alberni Indian Residential School. Today, just the gymnasium and the main building, called Caldwell Hall, remain, with demolition of the hall set to happen within a year. 

Elected Chief Councillor Wahmeesh (Ken Watts) says the presence of Caldwell Hall is an open wound in the community. While the nation’s leadership has had discussions with Parks Canada about a designation, they haven’t made a formal decision about how to proceed. “We were a little bit worried about what that actually meant … does that restrict us?” he says. “Even internally we asked ourselves, ‘Why should we let somebody designate something a historic site they were a part of creating in the first place?’ ”

Watts says they haven’t closed the door on a designation eventually, but for now, they’re listening to the community — and the community has been clear they want the buildings gone. “More important than giving some place a designation is actually tearing down and rebuilding new so that our community can heal.”

Other existing schools, like Shingwauk Indian Residential School on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory in Ontario, accepted a designation but turned down a plaque; survivors opted to use the money to restore an existing monument instead. 

Federal funding allocated to supporting national historic site designations ended in March 2025, but Foisy-Geoffroy says Parks Canada is committed to continuing to work with interested communities, with several more designations in the works. 

“All this is part of who we are … so it’s a way for us to make sure people — non-Indigenous and Indigenous alike — better understand their own history, and eventually try to build a better future, she says.

Commemoration honours survivors, keeps history alive

When Elmer Lewis started at the Shubenacadie residential school, he was five years old. He was given a number — one — which also put him first in line for punishments like humiliation for wetting the bed. “It’s hard to ever forget anything,” he says. “It’ll always be with me.”

For three years, Elmer stayed at the school year-round. It wasn’t until he was eight that he was allowed to return home for the summer, via the “freedom road” — the school’s driveway, which Elmer still dreams about, decades later. 

In 2021, on June 21— the annual date children were allowed to leave for the summer — survivors and their descendants gathered on that driveway and walked the half-kilometre route children once took to the train station that would take them back home.

The march now takes place every year. Elmer’s daughter Tara Lewis, from Eskasoni First Nation, started the event to honour her father after he shared a dream about a march on freedom day. Tara grew up visiting the site with her dad, and now takes her own children there. She says it’s important to keep the history of residential schools alive, and seeing survivors and descendants travel the route from the school to the train station made that history real. 

“I was so moved, because I could just picture my dad as a little boy. And I could see my dad, you know, 75 years old, walking and marching, not with sadness but with pride because he’s resilient and he’s a survivor,” she says.

This fall, Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre is unveiling a commemorative park and monument to celebrate the resilience of survivors and descendants, close enough to the school to see the former site, but far away enough that people feel safe. Tim says when the centre asked survivors what they wanted out of a commemorative park, they talked about a place that centred not on the school, but on hope and reclamation and how despite “everything that’s happened to us, look at all the good news stories … that we’ve been able to achieve.”

For Dorene, the park is the culmination of a long journey: first as a survivor, then as someone who’s spent over a decade working on commemoration. “This has been a long process and I think maybe it had to be that way,” she says, watching heavy equipment prepare the park in early September. 

She says it’s hard that in the time it’s taken to get the designation and start commemoration projects, so many survivors of the school have passed. There are at most a few hundred left. But the monument will stand as a reminder for future generations of what their ancestors came through.

Back by the school site, Dorene puts down tobacco at a place set aside for ceremonies on the banks of the Shubenacadie River. The day before, she had drummed for a baby-and-me group. Watching children do the things residential school had once taken from her, Dorene says, was like seeing her prayers come to life in front of her. “That’s where we should be,” she says. “That’s the power of our people coming, and I don’t see that going away ever again.”

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On a swath of frozen ocean outside Cambridge Bay, Nvt., a company has been testing an approach to thicken sea ice to prevent it from disappearing as the climate warms.

The U.K.-based company, Real Ice, is wrapping up its second season of tests outside the Arctic community, which lies on the coast of Victoria Island alongside the Northwest Passage. Its experimental approach involves drilling holes through the ice to pump water to the surface during the coldest months of winter, where it quickly solidifies in the freezing air.

Ice thickening is an example of a category of highly controversial interventions aimed at modifying the climate to combat warming. Real Ice has drawn sharp criticism from scientists, who question the environmental impacts of the company’s experimental efforts and the feasibility of scaling up. 

But unlike many geoengineering projects, Real Ice’s experiments have garnered local support so far. According to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the work to date is unlikely to cause adverse environmental impacts. Although not all Cambridge Bay residents are aware of the project, those who have heard about it tend to be on board with the initiative.

The community—known as Ikaluktutiak in Inuinnaqtun, which is often translated as “place of many fish”—is home to nearly 1,800 residents, roughly 80 per cent of whom are Inuit. Located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Cambridge Bay sits above the Arctic Circle and serves as a hub for the western Arctic. Sea ice forms the backdrop of life for much of the year. As the climate warms, residents have been witnessing drastic changes.

For some, the goal of saving sea ice resonates because it supports the continuation of cultural and traditional practices. Others see applications for sea ice thickening besides fighting climate change. At a smaller scale, it could be useful for building roads, reinforcing snowmobile routes or supporting fish and wildlife populations.

Five Cambridge Bay residents tell us what sea ice means to them, as well as how they see their home changing and, if they have heard about Real Ice, what they think about the effort.

The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Talia Maksagak, executive director of the Kitikmeot Chamber of Commerce, born and raised in Cambridge Bay

There’s a lot of things that the sea ice provides to our communities. People travel on the ice to harvest on the mainland, a.k.a. Canada. People travel from Cambridge Bay to Kugluktuk on the sea ice, too. My sister is one of them. They camp along the way, so they go for about a week. It’s better than spending so much money on airline tickets.

Here in the bay, the ice is all smooth. But once you get out into the ocean, to the actual sea ice, it’s like all of these boulders. The way that the ice freezes and moves, you have to really be careful where you drive your Ski-Doo. Cracks in the ice happen earlier and in different areas than they used to be. It’s terrifying because there’s fresh snow that covers the cracks so you can’t always see them.

What we were taught as kids growing up is that there’s a sea ice monster called the Qalupalik who will steal you and take you under the ice forever and eat you. We teach our kids that because we don’t want them to get into dangerous situations. The Qalupalik have really long, stringy hair and really long hands.

I don’t remember the other sea ice legends, but that’s one of the ones where it’s like, ‘Do not go near black ice. Do not go near ice cracks because they’re gonna steal you.’ Terrifying — especially as a little kid.

I was part of some of Real Ice’s engagements. I also put them in touch with my grandfather, and we had a separate meeting. He was sharing cool stories about how they used to sell ice to Japan. They would go out to lakes and harvest all this ice and ship it by cargo to Japan for a special drink they had there. This was in the 1970s. He had some really good stories to share that I honestly don’t think I would have ever heard if Real Ice hadn’t been doing engagements.

We have a bunch of Elders who tell us stories about when they used to go on the ice. From their time to our time, we can’t go at the same time. I’m hoping that when I tell my kids stories, that they can have a similar experience and it’s not drastically changed. I’m very supportive of the Real Ice project because I do have a legacy and a family. I would like them to experience sea ice. But who knows how much it’ll change between now and then.

Henry Ohoilak, a Cambridge Bay Elder who was born in Igloolik

Long ago, we used to live in tents or snow houses in the winter. That’s how I grew up. I was mostly out on the land until I was 14. I would go into town only to resupply. We would fish, hunt, do chores. I was never bored and never lonely. You always have something to do when you’re out on the land.

One of the best parts was when my parents would bring a sled-load of fish to the co-op in Paulatuk. We would make an ice house to keep the fish in. We would build ice walls and then cover the top with plywood, so no animals could get in. Once in a while, we would go out in the ocean and go seal hunting.

We would go by dog team and see what kind of animals we could see. Dogs, they can find where the seal area is. When you find that area, you make the dogs go away a little bit and stand there really quiet, until you hear breathing. When the water comes up, you harpoon. The last time I went seal hunting like that was around 2003. I miss being out on the land.

The weather’s been changing quite a bit. The decreasing ice is kind of hard to detect with snowmobiles, but with dog teams it’s okay. Snowmobiles, you can’t hear the ice cracking, but dog teams know which way to go. They know when the ice is too thin. They just feel it. I grew up using dog teams, then I tried snow machines, and I don’t like machines. There was a dog slaughter, so the dogs are just coming back slowly.

I worry about melting sea ice for the younger people. It doesn’t matter to me because I can’t go out anymore. I worry about how the younger people are going to survive. Most of them are only playing with their phone, not paying attention to who’s teaching them. I feel sorry for the generation to come. When we’re gone and they want to do something for themselves, who’s going to teach them?

I only heard about Real Ice for the first time recently. That could be a good idea, but I don’t know. They can try. If the youth can learn about ice, it could be good for the future.

Navalik Helen Tologanak, a journalist and Elder in Cambridge Bay

I was born in that time before Cambridge Bay was ever built, or when it was just being built. It was quiet back then. Less people, there were no vehicles, barely any snowmobiles. No housing. Planes once a month. I was just a young girl, so I never really knew the difference, but now I know the difference, that it was very quiet and peaceful.

I went to school from kindergarten to grade three by dog team. We would travel across the bay to the federal day school. By that time, we all had to go to school as little kids. Then I was forced to go to residential school and move away from my family and my grandparents and my Elders, my community.

I’m not a hunter, but I’ve seen changes on the land. We don’t have any caribou anymore. I used to sit and watch caribou go by, heading from the ocean up towards the calving grounds. You don’t see that anymore. Muskox used to be everywhere. When you drive out onto the roads or out to the ocean, you could see muskox grazing everywhere. Not anymore.

We’re finding more grizzly bears coming to the island. They live more in the tree line area, but now they’re coming further north because it’s warming up. We never had that before. The grizzlies are very wild. They’re starting to wreck tents and cabins and look for food.

I went on a cruise ship a few years ago. What I saw really saddened me. The ice breaker was crushing the ice to make a trail for the fancy cruise ships coming through the Northwest Passage. That’s not right, that’s too much noise and pollution. It’s scaring all the animals away. I was at a hamlet meeting yesterday with the manager there, and he said we had 14 ships here last summer. That’s a lot.

I haven’t heard about Real Ice. But the changes make me sad. Breaks my heart. I miss the good old days. Life has changed here. But at same time, there’s lots of good things too.

Brent Nakashook, board member of the Ekaluktutiak Hunters & Trappers Organization and general manager of Kitikmeot Foods

Seeing if you can thicken ice from the bottom by flooding the top, that’s something that’s definitely interesting. There’s a project that’s proposing a road from Yellowknife right to the Northwest Passage, which potentially could connect us to the mainland by road. I think this project may play a role in that. There’s a lot of funding that’s been committed to the road project. They’ve been coming to the community. I actually asked one of the representatives jokingly, ‘When’s the earliest I’ll be able to drive from here to Las Vegas?’ Having something other than access by air would definitely help us as far as cost of living.

Having ice around longer could help our fish stocks too. The best fishing happens when the ice is melting and still there. The invertebrates that localize under the ice feed on the bugs that die on top the ice, and then the whole chain starts basically with ice.

There was a project that I took part in that took climate change into consideration and actually measured the biodiversity that’s happening from it. They said that there’s more life happening because of the warmer temperatures.

The polar bears are doing better. Grizzly bears are obviously doing better. The only things that are struggling are the herds of muskox and caribou, which seem to be, for the most part, struggling because there are more wolves and grizzly bears. And I guess humans play a role, too. But I think the more active environment might have a little more pressure on them because they’re not used to having all these other animals in their environment. That’s something that I’ve noticed personally. 

The ocean seems to be having more life right from the bottom up. So that’s something that needs to also be considered. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and paint everything grim. I’m not saying it’s a great thing happening. I’m just saying there are some winners in this and there’s losers.

Jim MacEachern, chief administrative officer of the Municipality of Cambridge Bay

I’ve been with the municipality since 2010. I also help coordinate with search and rescue. The ice melts sooner and it freezes up later in the year, which for travellers out on the land causes life and safety issues. When individuals are travelling, whether it’s on the ocean or across a lake, if the ice is not as thick as it should be at that time of the year, there’s more of a chance that the traveller is going to go through the ice. We’ve had that happen several times now in the past four or five years.

It takes a significant toll on the community, especially on the search and rescue crews. It’s challenging for them. It’s not easy work. And it takes an emotional toll as well. Almost everybody is related in one way, shape or form. When they’re out there, they’re rescuing their family members, their relatives.

Real Ice did a presentation up at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. They explained a little bit about what they were looking for, and they were taking feedback on who they should engage with and who they should talk to.

My initial thinking about the project, and it’s still the same [now]: Anything that we can do to improve the safety and the ability for the Inuit to get out on land, anything we can do to improve that, the better. One hundred per cent.

This story was supported by a field reporting grant from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, funders have no editorial input.

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Stuck in traffic on Highway 401, heading out of Toronto on a humid waabigwani-giizis afternoon, sweat begins to trickle down my forehead as the two frozen deer hides in my back seat begin to thaw.

Squished amid a tent, clothes and camping supplies, a blue tote bin houses the waawaashkeshiwayaanag. Each one is neatly folded into a square, flesh-to-flesh, and wrapped in a black industrial-strength garbage bag. Six months ago, the deer roamed the bush in Keswick, Ont., before they were hunted by the father of my fellow camper Alessia, an annual family tradition he has taken part in since childhood. 

Alessia’s father carefully cut off all the meat and generously saved us the skins, packing them into a deep freezer. “I saved you girls the brain too,” he proudly declared through the phone after returning from his hunt, a sentence that would undoubtedly concern anyone unaware of the context.

For the third year in a row, I’m attending Niizh Manidook Hide Camp, a week-long hide tanning revitalization camp for Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ Indigenous youth. Niizh Manidook means “Two-Spirit” in Anishinaabemowin, a term used by some Indigenous people to describe their sexual orientation, gender or identity. Campers learn the process of traditional hide tanning using the “brain tan” method, which is exactly what it sounds like: the brains of an animal are used to transform its hide into leather.

For generations, Indigenous Peoples tanned hides and used the soft, supple leather for moccasins, gloves, clothing and bedding. What was once necessary for our survival and a form of currency has become an old way that persevered through devastating colonial policies like the Indian Act, residential schools and the ’60s Scoop — all of which aimed to eradicate our culture. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of brain hide tanning across Indigenous communities and there are now a handful of tanners across the country who are teaching the process to generations both young and old, through camps, workshops and social media. 

Animals are honoured at hide camp — but it’s not for the faint of heart

Growing up in my home communities of Garden River First Nation and Batchewana First Nation, I was no stranger to wildlife. Both of my parents are skilled fishers, and various critters like bears, deer and foxes routinely ate the vegetables in our garden. But I had never heard about hide tanning. Each fall, I peered with awe at the massive, brown and bloody moose that would hang from my neighbour’s tree during hunting season. In the Anishinaabe worldview, it’s important to honour the life of an animal, including by using all its parts to leave minimal waste. At Niizh Manidook, I had the opportunity to follow this teaching by giving the deer a new life and purpose.

In my first year, I was overwhelmed by a sense of hesitancy, and my stomach fluttered over my abysmal knowledge of tanning compared to some of my peers. I asked our camp Knowledge Keepers and teachers a million questions about the steps in the process, how they learned, what not to do and everything in between — questions they happily and patiently answered. But as I approach the campgrounds for my third year, I feel I have something to prove. It’s my first time tanning my own deer hide.

Within a few hours, I pulled onto the dry, dirt rez roads of the Delaware Nation at Moriviantown, fittingly nicknamed “Bucktown,” about a 30-minute drive northeast of Chatham, Ont. A small craft shop sits at the bumpy entrance to the grounds of Niizh Manidook, which is hosted on the family property of Beze Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and one of the camp’s co-founders. A large white canopy, two tipis, a smaller canopy and a variety of wooden frame configurations make up the work area. I pull up alongside the row of cars parked on the grass and within a few minutes I’m embraced in the arms of fellow campers and teachers who I’ve come to consider family. 

In 2019, Niizh Manidook was founded by Two-Spirit hide tanners, artists and activists, Hunter Cascagnette and Beze. The pair had a bit of hide tanning experience, a small batch of tools and the dream of creating a gathering space for Two-Spirit youth to become immersed in hide tanning. Since then, the camp has grown to host around 20 youth each year from Indigenous Nations across Ontario. This year, one participant even flew in from Alaska to attend.

“If you wanna get started on your hides you better get going,” Beze says, gesturing towards the workstation under a canopy. “It’s 2 p.m. now and you’ve got a few hours before we stop for the day.”

I quickly weave my hair into a braid and pop the lid off the blue tote bin, bracing myself for the smell of the thawing hides. With a quick tear, the hides are unfurled with a thump, landing on a blue tarp sprawled across the grass. Mary Ann Maiangowi-Manatch, one of the camp apprentices, pulls a knife from a sheath and precisely removes chunks of fat, meat and stray skin to square off the edges. Blood, flesh, veins, bug bites, hair follicles and even rib marks can be traced across the underside of the skin. Each hide tells a story, and if you look close enough, you can see yourself in it.

Wearing thick waterproof aprons and black rubber gloves, Mary Ann and I drape the hides over a long wooden beam to “flesh” them. Standing at the end of the beam with one foot braced behind me, I hold a steel rod tool with both hands and push down against the hide using my body weight. The remaining meat and fat peels off with a tearing noise and are discarded into a “bits” bin.

After an hour or so of the repetitive downward scraping, the hides are ready to be rinsed in clean water and prepped for the next step. They’ll soak for a few days in a solution that will cause the hide to swell and loosen the hair follicles, making it easier to remove.

Brain hide tanning isn’t exactly for the faint of heart — it’s messy, smelly and labour intensive. Tanners get covered in animal fluids, hair and flecks of skin. In comparison, commercial tanning uses toxic chemicals to tan the hides in large batches. 

After the hair is removed, the membrane layer from the inside of the hide will need to be scraped off. Next the hide will be stretched on a frame, dried and scraped to remove the grain layer from the hair side. Each animal has enough brain to tan its own hide, which is made into a mixture with laundry soap and water and spread on it for a few days for softening. Afterwards the hide is wrung out and softened by hand before the final smoking.

Processing hides connects us to the land, but also to ourselves

Over the next few days, campers work alongside teachers on hides in various stages: some are removing hair, some are scraping off skin, others are rolling the hide into a doughnut shape to wring it out before it is stretched. We all take turns at the different stations, not only to gain experience but to avoid too much sun and strain on our muscles. I wander between the stations, trying my hand at doughnut wringing, stretching and softening while taking notes and socializing. A few campers retreat to the shade of a picnic table, carefully beading sets of earrings, medallions and even a full purse. A roar of laughter erupts from their direction every few minutes or so.

According to Beze, hide tanning helps youth to understand nature in a different way and build community. “I think it’s really healing. When you’re processing a hide, you get to process yourself,” Beze tells me. “It’s a good practice for youth to learn because it’s so interactive and thoughtful and is [connected] to a part of an animal that is usually discarded.” 

After a few years with the camp, I understand more about what Beze means by “processing yourself.” In the repetitive, scraping motions, I feel the heaviness of my body and the weight of learning this practice. It’s not just about softening a hide, it’s about softening into yourself. We share stories, speak our languages, put in our blood, sweat and the occasional tear, accidentally cut holes, sew up those holes and celebrate the small victories of each step. Hide tanning teaches us to slow down, listen and be in relation — reminding us that to return to the land, is to return to ourselves.

In the crisp, dewy morning hours after a cup of coffee, I lug my soaking wet hide over to the scraping beam. Donning protective gear, I push a metal scraping tool down into the hide and the hair slides out with ease, each movement splashing murky water and fur onto my boots. As I carry the hide and bin over to the hose to rinse off and change the water, the opening chord progression of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” calls out from a speaker. It feels as though everyone pauses their work as a blend of voices from all directions join in to chant the lyrics. Gathered on the rez in the glaring heat, a song celebrating a queer space made up of chosen family, community and self-expression makes Niizh Manidook feel like a “Pink Pony Club” in its own right.

For the last task of the day, a few campers and teachers help me to string up the hide on a frame to dry overnight. The sun is starting to go down, so Alessia and I return to a clearing where a small village of colourful tents are set up alongside the Thames River. My body is heavy from the strain of continuous scraping, lifting and sweating. Unfortunately, my tent also waged its own battle of wills, losing against a heavy rainstorm that left the poles in shards and the ceiling collapsed. Alessia and I lug our sleeping bags, lumpy air mattress and backpacks into Niizh Manidook’s tipi for the night.

A small group of us settle down in our flimsy ten-dollar camp chairs for an evening fire. The sweet smells of roasted marshmallows and salty hot dogs fill the air as we swap stories from our home communities, plans for the summer powwow trail and, for some, upcoming drag shows. Overhead, waawaate dance above our heads in shades of green, red and purple as the stars illuminate against the backdrop of the night sky. 

Hides are a testament to resilient Indigenous knowledge and science

On our last day, I sit under a canopy and with guidance from camp co-founder Hunter, use a scraper to remove my hide’s grain layer, which holds the hair follicles. As I press hard against the hide and pull down, the dry skin peels off with sh-sh-sh sound and falls to the ground in the shape of pencil shavings. This is as far as the hide will get for now as there isn’t enough time to fully tan it within a week. Even for experienced tanners like our teachers and Knowledge Keepers, the full process can take between five days for a deer hide and up to two weeks for a moose. 

A few hides are ready for the final step in the process, smoking. Brenda, one of the teachers, demonstrates to campers how to sew a hide to a canvas material and create a “smokestack.” The final smoke gives a hide a beautiful amber colour and a water-resistant “seal.” I haven’t seen the smoking process yet, so after spotting a tipi with smoke billowing out the side, I head over to get a closer look. To satisfy my curiosity, I lay flat in the grass with my feet in the air and peer under the tipi’s tarp. Met with heavy grey smoke, my eyes sting and brim with tears. I see a moose hide strung up in the poles as punky spruce wood burns in a metal garbage can below. 

“Is the wood supposed to be flaming?” I ask Hunter, who immediately runs over to smoulder the fire into coals. “Don’t put that in the story,” they say with cheeks beaming and a wink. “Can’t have people thinking we don’t know what we’re doing.” The smoke wafts upwards to penetrate the hide, preserving the work done to soften it before the final smoke. 

Every camper takes home a piece of luxuriously soft, sturdy, caramel-brown deer hide. As I run the hide between my hands, breathing in the gentle smoke, I’m reminded each hide was touched countless times by dozens of hands and is a physical testament to generations of traditional Indigenous knowledge and science. Despite long-standing efforts to eliminate our culture and remove us from the land, our people are creating spaces of resurgence and this is where I feel most connected to who I am as an Anishinaabekwe. 

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Five First Nations in northern Manitoba’s Hudson Bay lowlands say an era of healing, hope and self-determination is on the horizon.

As the first brisk winds of fall arrived, members of York Factory, Shamattawa, War Lake, Tataskweyak and Fox Lake First Nations gathered at a cultural camp on the banks of the Nelson River northeast of Gillam, Man., for a landmark event.

After four years of patient work and community consultations, the five Cree — or Inninew — nations were ready to launch their proposal to establish an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) across their shared homelands.

Called Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which translates to “the land we want to protect,” the proposal would recognize the nations’ long-time stewardship of the region and offer an historic opportunity to formally manage and protect the land and waters under Indigenous laws and governance.

More than 50 Indigenous-led conservation projects like this one have popped up across Canada since the federal government introduced funding in 2018, in an effort to preserve biodiversity and nudge the country toward its goal of protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

For the five Inninew nations, Kitaskeenan is about a lot more than meeting conservation targets. The nations were once a single community living along the coastline around York Factory, at the mouth of the Hayes River.  But they have been separated from each other — and their homeland — as industrial developments expanded across the north.

Most impactful: a series of hydroelectric developments on the Nelson River that came with what Fox Lake’s leader, Morris Beardy, called “devastating” consequences.

Manitoba Hydro dams along the river caused widespread flooding, erosion and mercury contamination. The Nelson was once a key transportation corridor for the nations, as well as a source of sustenance and clean drinking water. Today it’s too dangerous to travel on and too polluted to drink.

“We’re a resilient people. We’ve been through much,” Beardy says. “We just have to adapt.” 

Kitaskeenan offers an opportunity to do just that. While any formal protected area designation is still many years away, the nations are hopeful the project could help to mend the divisions of the past and redefine the region’s future by preserving the land, water, language and culture for generations to come.

Here’s what the project — and the land — means to those who hope to protect it, in their own words.

Jimmy Beardy, a York Factory First Nation Elder

All my life I’ve been fighting for the northeast section of Manitoba, to keep it away from any more destruction than what I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen these Hydro dams go up. I want to keep one section away from any kind of development for the future generation. I used to go out on Split Lake back in ‘65 and travel around with my father and my brother, and we used to be able to drink from the water. Today I wouldn’t even touch it, I buy bottled water. I don’t even trust the water treatment plant, that’s how bad the water’s got and it’s going to get worse.

When I was 18 or 19 years old, I was living in York Landing, working there. They asked me if I wanted to go up [to York Factory] with an older gentleman to train me as a guide. I fell in love with that land. I couldn’t believe how pure it was. The air was clean. The water I could drink right out where it ran off the creeks. And I always thought I would never ever let that get away from us.

I took young people [to York Factory] over the years and they didn’t want to come home. They fell in love with it. … It’s rough country, people think you can go up there and build things — you can’t. The seasons are different. Wintertime gets very cold. In the springtime when I used to take people up there, we were walking through four feet of snow sometimes, so we had to hunt along the shore to get our geese.

We have to protect our land. We were given that task, a responsibility, to protect Mother Earth. We’ve seen enough destruction in our lands. I’m tired of seeing it. I talked to people at home and we will not let any other development happen in our territory. I know there’s ideas of what they call economic development planned for that area, but I can’t see it completely destroyed — the last of our fertile land.

Nelson Henderson, a Manitoba Hydro journeyman from Wabowden

This is where I learned everything. When you’re out here, you’re not alone. Even though you are alone, if you’re not with anybody, you’re not alone. It’s going to sound weird but I sit in the bush, I make a fire, have a coffee and I can talk to people. I hear people talking to me. I don’t know if it’s spirits or just in my head but it’s so relaxing, tranquil. I can hear my brother laughing.

Look at these little ones. That’s what this is about.

Phyllis Sinclair, a musician based in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., with family from Kettle Rapids

It’s really important to come back and to honour what the [ancestors] did and to protect what they did because nothing came easy. We come back to ensure that this place is always honoured in their memory, out of respect for them and for what we have to leave our children.

In the non-Indigenous way you think of everything as a right. … In the Indigenous way of thinking, sure we have rights but more than that we have responsibility. When people come in to develop, they don’t have an intimate connection to the land. When they come driving out here, all they see are big vast areas of land, trees … it becomes a commodity. We don’t see things as commodities, we see things as our responsibilities. It’s important that our people who have this connection are the stewards of these places. That’s why self-governance is important. Somebody coming in will not have the same interest, the same connection to the land that we do.

Lillian Spence, Kitaskeenan community coordinator representing War Lake First Nation

I grew up on the land. We had plants, berries, animals that I knew where they came from, I knew it was their home too and we had to share. Keeyask was the first dam I really encountered. There were all these consultation talks and then all of the sudden it was right there. It was kind of a shock that they just put it up there, I felt that we were not consulted enough.

I don’t want the government or any other agencies to develop any more projects within our territory because it’s already affecting our wildlife. Our caribou used to walk right through our reserve, now they walk way over there, we don’t even see them. We’re lucky if we see even three moose in the hunting season, they don’t hang around where we are. Our fish? The mercury [and] the zebra mussels are there. We’d never heard of zebra mussels 20 years ago. The mice that live there, the insects, when they built Keeyask, where did they go? The bears, the foxes, the wolves — that was their land too, we shared. The trees are limp, they’re dead. The berries that once grew big are just tiny. Our medicinal plants, you can’t see them anymore because there’s not as many as there was before.

I’m glad this project is moving forward and maybe now we can get more lands protected before Manitoba Hydro or the government tries to take over. That would be my wish or my dream. We want to protect everything within our territory — that’s what I want to do.

Jimmy Lockhart, a Gilliam-based member of Fox Lake Cree Nation who works on environmental impact assessments

They tried pushing us out of here way back in the day — I wasn’t born yet but I heard a lot of stories passed down about how development tried to push us out. And we stayed. We all come from the one York Factory, we were all split apart by the government. They gave us pieces of land to fight amongst ourselves. It was this way to divide and conquer. I know we’re not going to be able to stop development … but I’d like for us to be part of the planning process and have a voice to be heard, not just pushed aside.

What matters so much is that we have land and areas, not just for our children but their children and the children after them. That it’s not all destroyed and getting developed.

Sophie Lockhart, councillor with Fox Lake Cree Nation

I was born at Whitefish Lake, I was registered at York Factory, but I went to live in Shamattawa. We moved from Shamattawa in 1959. When we first got here, we came by two little boats — my grandpa, my dad, my mum and my sister, Mary. We stopped over here, Mile 352, and that was the first time I saw the train. I was so scared, crying and everything when this train came by going to Churchill. That’s where we lived, in Churchill, and then we started going to residential school from there. I think I was eight years old [when] they put us on the train all the way to my first school [in] Brandon. I’m from Shamattawa. I’ll always be from Shamattawa, even though I transferred to Fox Lake. All the Elders you see there, they’re my relatives. 

I get along really good with everybody. I like to joke around, make friends and, you know, being in residential school and then over here living where the three dams are built, it was really devastating. Our land was destroyed. But you get used to it when you live around here. You go on your healing.

Morris Beardy, Okimaw (leader) of Fox Lake Cree Nation

We use the water for navigation, we used it for hundreds of years and now we can’t do that. We used to go from Gillam all the way to Shamattawa, to York Factory and all the way to Churchill. My mother was telling me how when she was a little girl, with my Uncle Robert, they used to start around here [Fox Lake]. [Her dad] would be hunting and fishing around here and go in his canoe with my mum and Uncle Robert all the way up the coast to Churchill on a boat to go work on the train over there in Churchill. After the summer was done, he would come back again. He did that for years. Those waters that we’re talking about are very crucial to our livelihoods. Those are our roads. 

Fox Lake has been impacted by flooding. We all know that. It’s devastating. We live with that every day. There’s very little water to use to launch our boats when we go to Conawapa. Five years ago I went to Conawapa and I walked three-quarters out on the river just in my running shoes … three-quarters of the way on the Nelson River, that’s how shallow the water was. We couldn’t go hunting or fishing or moose hunting … there was no water.

We’re being told that we can’t eat some of the fish out of the Nelson River … because of high mercury content. That’s very concerning. The fish are our livelihood. The animals … that’s what’s sustained us for thousands and thousands of years, and now look where we are. We’re having to fight to protect what we rely on.

We’ve been fighting 76 years to get our land back. Our footprints are all around here.

Matthew Naismith, a resident of Gillam, age 13

I just started [learning to fry fish] today. I learned that I had to cut out the blood vessels, I learned how to actually cook a fish and I learned that trout is really good.

Whenever there’s events I usually come [to Fox Lake’s culture camp]. Everybody is together, making friendships and bonding. [I like] sleeping in the tents, dancing and helping the Elders. It’s somewhere I can come and feel welcome, be nice to other people and they’re nice to me. It’s somewhere I can go and be myself.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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Jacob Beaton’s name has become closely tied to food sovereignty and food security in British Columbia. His successful training program at Tea Creek Farm in Kitwanga, B.C., — a 1,200-kilometres drive north of Vancouver — has equipped hundreds of First Nations trainees in trades, food production and project management since it launched in 2021. 

In 2023, 140 trainees graduated from the program. More than 60 First Nations across Canada have reached out wanting to partner with Tea Creek and learn from its holistic model, which aims to provide the tools graduates will need to pursue food sovereignty projects in their own communities — from growing seeds to carpentry to bookkeeping — all while maintaining a culturally safe space. 

Beaton says the demand is so strong the program can hardly keep up. In addition to trainees, the farm hosted more than 1,000 visitors last year.

Food security is top of mind for First Nations. Tea Creek has quickly become a leader in the food security world, but despite the energy and excitement — graduates have found the program empowering — Beaton says it’s still “fragile,” like a seed that’s just taken root. The program has largely been relying on private donations.

In the documentary Tea Creek, released this month as an episode of CBC’s Absolutely Canadian, Beaton highlights how Indigenous people are showing passionate interest in the program, but it still faces difficulty scaling up.

He says the root of First Nations food insecurity is the systematic dismantling of Indigenous food systems by the Crown. The Indian Act restricted Indigenous people from hunting, fishing, farming and selling goods. They were restricted from buying land and equipment and paid less for work than settlers. As Indigenous people were pushed into poverty, keystone species — animals especially crucial to the survival of an ecosystem, like caribou and salmon — began to decline drastically. The ongoing impacts of these policies continue and Canada has done little to assist in the repair of generations of damage, Beaton says.

“I do see it as an issue of justice. Wrong was done — very clearly — and so there needs to be repair done,” he explains.

Beaton, who is Tsimshian and carries the name Dzap’l Gye’a̱win Skiik, emphasized Tea Creek isn’t looking for piecemeal grants. 

“We’re just looking for fair contracts to deliver services,” he says. “Holistic services that work.”

Tea Creek’s main training contract is with SkillsTrade BC, a Crown corporation, through which it provides training and services for unemployed and underemployed Indigenous people.

He says 2024 is the first year the organization has a small federal contract, and it received a two-year grant from the B.C. Ministry of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation in 2023 that is ending. While they did receive a grant through New Relationship Trust this year, Beaton and his team have been unable to secure any new or additional contracts or funding directly from the provincial government in the past two years.

“Not a single penny provincially this year, and not for lack of trying,” he says.

Tea Creek seeks core funding to sustain mental health services, free meals and more

Beaton says one of the most misleading and persistent tropes about First Nations is that they were solely hunter-gatherers. In reality, he emphasizes, First Nations in what is now called B.C. have cultivated many foods at large scales for generations. They managed individual species, like clams and camas, and entire ecosystems through practices like controlled burns and selective logging. 

While B.C. and Canada interfered with First Nations accessing traditional food sources, First Nations were also excluded from the new system, Beaton says. They often got taxed, fined or just simply pushed out of opportunities to prosper in the new economy, all while being confined to reserves.

When Beaton first bought 140 acres of land to start his farm off-reserve, he “didn’t realize it was an act of resistance” in the shadow of all that history, he says. Three and a half acres are actively farmed, and 50 acres are covered by a Gitxsan food forest.

Today, food insecurity is exacerbated by climate change and biodiversity loss. It’s daunting to take on an issue as mammoth as food insecurity, and it’s hard for local projects to scale up. On top of that, Beaton’s priorities include having the initiative be Indigenous led, culturally safe and inclusive. He says Tea Creek needs core or multi-year funding to support its services. The program also addresses issues that continue to impact many of their trainees’ communities: food insecurity, addiction and higher rates of suicide, all of which are linked to discrimination. Tea Creek provides access to counsellors and therapists for trainees, and served more than 11,000 free meals in 2023. Indigenous families can also receive free seeds for their home gardens.

“We’re not just a farm,” he says. “We’re a restaurant that serves free meals. We’re a taxi service that picks people up. We’re a university that provides post-secondary education. We’re a healing centre.” 

At the end of day, the program’s goals come down to the personal level, helping each person who comes to the farm to bring back skills to their community. 

“It’s too overwhelming for us to go, ‘Yeah, let’s go and solve even just this region’s food problems,’ ” he says. “But what we can do is we can take you [on as a trainee]. … And you’re going to be able to build a team in your nation and you’re going to be able to get going on Indigenous food sovereignty.”

Practices to exclude First Nations from economy remain ‘embedded in institutions’

Tea Creek has other funding partners including the Real Estate Foundation of BC, United Way, the Vancouver Foundation and MakeWay. In March, the BC Assembly of First Nations passed an unanimous resolution calling on the province to provide Tea Creek with additional support. Tea Creek also received accreditation from SkillsTradeBC as a horticulture training centre in 2023, making it the first designated Indigenous provider in the province.

But Beaton is still waiting to see sustained support from the provincial and federal governments. 

“There’s no hand reaching out from the government side to say, ‘We want to partner, we want to be a part of this reconciliation,’ ” he says.

“My main complaint is that reconciliation is all talk, no action.”

First Nations still face barriers participating in farming and food production across the country, he says. According to Statistics Canada, there are 4,830 First Nations farmers nationwide, and 16,705 Indigenous farmers total. Beaton is willing to bet that most are “micro-scale.”

In the Tea Creek 2023 impact report, the top issues reported by visiting First Nations were “access to land, money and training.”

Beaton points out banks don’t like to loan on reserve since they can’t seize collateral, and says First Nations people can still face issues getting loans to buy land off-reserve.

“Often, policies that are embedded within institutions are a result of the old Indian Act and the old colonial policy and practice of disenfranchising First Nations people and keeping us out of the economy,” he says.

“We are not looking for any special treatment. We just want fair access to all that money that’s already there,” he says.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada told The Narwhal in a statement it is “working to improve access to funding and resources for Indigenous individuals and organizations” through initiatives like the Local Food Infrastructure Fund and the AgriDiversity program (which has supported Tea Creek) and through implementing the federal United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

“While we acknowledge there is still work to be done, [Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada] remains committed to ensuring that Indigenous communities have improved access to the tools and funding necessary to thrive in the agriculture sector.”

Becoming community leaders and ‘working on your voice’

Justice Moore, a Gitxsan and Tsimshian horticulture apprentice at Tea Creek, began as a trainee. He’s from Gitwangak Village, just a few minutes up the road. Learning to care for a seed and watch it grow “helped me take care of myself,” Moore says in the documentary as he digs his hands in the soil.

“Everything up here I’m trying to bring down to the village. I want to make people down there feel the way I feel up here — comfortable, safe, secure. Up here is a constant. You’re always appreciated, you’re always valued, you’re always respected,” he said.

“We don’t have a constant in most villages. Everyone’s dealing with their own past traumas … part of that is colonialism. A lot of that is losing our Elders, because residential school taught them to keep to themselves. Their knowledge didn’t get passed down as much as it should have been, and it impacted us a lot.”

“I go out of my way to try to communicate with everybody now,” he says, smiling. “I found out recently it doesn’t matter how educated you are, where you are from in the world, what minority you are, if you can communicate healthily with everybody, you’ll become a leader because you’re working on your voice.”

In a survey for Tea Creek’s annual impact report, 86 per cent of respondents said they felt an improvement to their mental health after participating. Many First Nations communities are still facing immense struggles due to the ongoing impacts of colonization, including residential schools.

As director Ryan Dickie was working to get the film off the ground in 2021, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced survey findings about unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. It was a raw and emotional moment, and the history of residential schools is closely connected with the work Tea Creek is doing, Dickie said. That year the filmmaker, who is of Dene and Kwakiutl descent and a member of Fort Nelson First Nation, saw many non-Indigenous people were still not aware of the full impacts of these institutions, and the trauma and disruption in cultural knowledge they caused. What reconciliation really means was top of mind when making the documentary.

“[Tea Creek] created essentially a healing center and a place where people feel safe, a place where people feel empowered because of the skills that they’re learning. And it really harkens us back to the way things used to be in our communities,” he says.

At community screenings, he says several viewers stood up and spoke about how their people need programs like this one. 

“Our people are dying, they need something to grasp onto, because we need them here. We need them to stay here.”

Dickie says he hopes Indigenous viewers feel a sense of empowerment looking at the history of food production among Indigenous people. He hopes people see the healing in people like Moore and see “what can be done when we’re given an opportunity, and what can be done when we’re given a safe space to really break free of all that trauma.”

Updated on Oct. 24, 2024, at 2:30 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to clarify the size of Tea Creek Farms, which is 140 acres. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated three acres, which refers to the area currently being farmed and not the total property.

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Today is the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Before it was a federal statutory holiday, Sept. 30 was known as Orange Shirt Day, originated by Secwépemc activist and residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad in 2013. For non-Indigenous people, it’s a day for learning about and reckoning with the ongoing trauma inflicted by the residential school system; for Indigenous people, it’s also a day of mourning. 

On Truth and Reconciliation Day, we remember and honour the children who attended residential schools — many of whom never returned home. Those who did carried profound trauma after being separated from their families, cultures, languages and communities, often enduring physical and sexual abuse. Many of those survivors are still with us; many more are just one or two generations removed. 

The residential school system, which persisted for more than a century, did not operate in isolation. Its effects persist not only in the families whose lives continue to be shaped by its dark legacy, but extend outward like the spiderweb cracks in a pane of glass: disrupting the transmission of hunting skills, displacing Indigenous people from their territories and continuing to impact food security. 

At The Narwhal, we tell stories that illuminate the connections between past and present: between residential schools and the traces they have left on the land and water, but also in the contemporary and vital expressions of colonial force. After all, the abduction of Indigenous children was a tactic, not a goal; the ultimate aim was to seize control of the valuable lands and waters belonging to Indigenous nations. Other tactics were used as well: eroding citizenship through forcible assimilation, as Ojibwe journalist Gabrielle McMann describes in a new explainer on Bill C-38, and banning Indigenous ceremonies and gatherings.

Many other tactics continue to be used, such as militarized raids against Indigenous land defenders, the obstruction of Indigenous conservation and the politically motivated stoking of resentment toward Indigenous Rights. Progress on the 94 calls of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has stalled entirely, according to the Yellowhead Institute. In a recent two-week period, six Indigenous people were killed by police, and our people continue to be overrepresented in police-involved deaths. As Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel — who has been at the forefront of the movement for Indigenous sovereignty since 1990, when she was appointed the spokesperson for Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke during the so-called Oka Crisis — told me in a recent conversation, “the government has not changed. They just repackaged colonization.”

On Sept. 30, I’ll hug my sweet, joyful five-year-old daughter and think about my own grandmother being taken to residential school at exactly the same age. But this occasion should not keep us looking backwards; to imagine that the worst of colonization ended with residential schools elides the truth of what is happening on Indigenous homelands today. Reflection is important, but it isn’t action. To honour the 150,000 children who attended residential school, we need to fight for the future and the “faces not yet born,” as Gabriel told me. “We need to learn how to love the Earth again,” she said. “I think we all did at one point, but we need to respect her.” 

On National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, remember this: Indigenous people are still here, despite everything, and we’re still fighting. But we can’t do it alone. The work of reconciliation — the work that belongs to everyone — is building a future that respects Indigenous people and the lands we all share.

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Thirty-four years ago, Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel was thrust into the spotlight when she was chosen as the spokesperson for the Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) communities of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke, as they resisted the planned expansion of a golf course on into their sacred lands and burial grounds in southern Quebec and police and military attempted to subdue them by force. 

“You do not call it the Oka Crisis,” Gabriel tells me, of the village near the golf course that media and Canadians generally use to refer to the confrontation. “Oka caused the crisis. It was Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke that were under siege, and were attacked because of the municipality of Oka and the private corporations behind the project.”

In the decades since the 78-day standoff ended, Gabriel has remained a steadfast defender of Indigenous homelands and an advocate for Indigenous Rights and sovereignty, particularly the rights of women. She has spoken at the United Nations and addressed Parliament, and served for more than six years as president of the Quebec Native Women’s Association, drawing connections between the protection of Indigenous lands and the rights, dignity and future of Indigenous nations. 

In a new book, When the Pine Needles Fall, Gabriel and settler historian Sean Carleton chart a course from the events of 1990 to the present, while extending into a generous and expansive vision of the future. The book, which they began writing in 2019, evolved during the pandemic, taking shape as a series of conversations that articulate the urgency and necessity of Indigenous resistance. Centring Gabriel’s own words through dialogue, Carleton writes, was a way to “divest my power and authority as an academic to create space for Ellen’s brilliance … to hold space and amplify Ellen’s voice, while also co-creating through conversation.” 

In a conversation with The Narwhal, Gabriel discussed the intentions behind the book, what’s changed (and what hasn’t) since 1990, and her vision for the future.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In the book, you discuss the biased and incomplete media coverage during the 1990 crisis in Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke. How can media do a better job of covering acts of Indigenous resistance and Indigenous land rights?

Learn about Canada’s real genocidal history. That’s one of the frustrations that I had, and that many of my community members had about the media, is that sometimes they had no clue. You know, there was the assumption that we didn’t exist anymore, that everything was taken care of, everything was settled, right? Media just took that at face value. But armed resistance is not new to Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island. It was the way of the land when the colonizers came. 

So the approach by journalists was very naive and racist and ignorant, especially the French media. Overall [the media] is just a propaganda machine, as far as I’m concerned, for Canada and the provinces and the corporations. And we’re deemed to be the radical, ridiculous ones for defending our rights. So they didn’t see our rights as human beings, they didn’t see our rights to self-determination. 

All the commissions and reports that had gone out — from the [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples — there are recommendations for everyone at every level to learn the truth about how Canada was formed. But we see today that this is still not the case. They’re still teaching history the way I learned it in the ’70s: that we’re savages, and all these stupid stereotypes. So I think the media has a responsibility to search for the truth, and to dig deeper.

There have been some very significant victories in the recognition of Indigenous Rights and title, like the legislative recognition of Haida title over Haida Gwaii. But we’re still seeing Indigenous land defenders met with militarized violence in nations like Wet’suwet’en, and the same kind of justifications for that state violence provided by the media. Do you think that things have changed, in terms of how Indigenous struggles for recognition of rights are understood by non-Indigenous people? 

I think we’ve come a little further in the public understanding. But in terms of sovereignty and what that means, or land back and what that means, it’s superficial. And government has not changed. They just repackaged colonization. We’re still at the same point in regards to our land rights, our rights to self-determination, as we were in 1990 — and as we were since Canada’s inception. 

I see that there are more opportunities for Indigenous artists, filmmakers, writers — but how do you change the curriculum in the schools that would teach future lawyers, judges, policemen? To be sensitized to the history of colonization that we’re aware of, that we know and feel on a daily basis? If I look at my community, and it’s lawless, there’s nothing that has changed. We’ve lost more land. I don’t see anything as far as where I’m from — I don’t see any improvement whatsoever. In fact, I see us going backward. The community that was directly affected [by the siege] is still reeling from that trauma.

There’s so much more work to be done in regards to education, in regards to respecting our human rights. There’s a lot of rhetoric about inherent rights, but I don’t hear any politician talking about respect, and that’s a vital part of reconciliation. That’s a vital part of reparations. 

If I respect you, I will respect your personal space. I’ll respect your right to have peace, to live in security. I won’t interfere in that right. I’m not going to push you around. That’s not what Canada does. Canada creates a police force that continues to brutalize our people and laws. There is no justice when we go to court. 

If there was respect for our human rights, we would be getting land back without having to pay for it. We would not have the provinces interfering in the education of our children and youth. And we would have the resources needed to restore all of our pre-contact institutions, and to restore the authority of women in our communities. There’s a long way to go. It’s nice to think that everything has changed, but it really hasn’t.

You write about how the understanding of the crisis focused on the Mohawk men who were at the forefront of the standoff, whose photos appeared in media, while women were marginalized — both in the immediate and long-term narrative. Can you talk about the role of women and how decolonization, as you say in the book, requires restoring that balance?

I heard something really interesting, which is that instead of using the word decolonizing, it’s “Indigenizing”. And I think that really goes to the point of what we’re talking about as Indigenous Peoples, in the restoration of those values and institutions that helped our people survive for centuries. 

I can only speak for Haudenosaunee women — I can’t speak for your nation or other nations — but we have title to land. The clans are passed on through women. The women choose the chiefs. The women had an equal role in the Constitution of Kaianere’kó:wa, the Great Law of Peace. 

That summer, the men looked to the women for decisions. And the women would be the ones who were leading, through the words that were being said, and the support given to the men who were defending the people. But you never really saw that in the media; the focus was on the men, not the women who were negotiating and trying to help people not lose their minds. 

You know, people forget it was two communities that were under siege, denied our basic human rights. [In Kanehsatà:ke, closer to the golf course,] we went without food, water, medicine, that kind of stuff. And in Kahnawá:ke, there were 40 women on Highway 207 blocking Canadian Army tanks from coming in to raid the Longhouse. So the women were out there physically as warriors, but we were not recognized as that. 

It was this whole patriarchal perspective, but actually the women were in charge. 

As I was reading, I was thinking about the connections between extractive resource economies and violence against Indigenous women — which is an epidemic everywhere, but is concentrated in these regions where there are resource-based industries. 

Indigenous women who have been working on this issue for a long time — in 2004, my good friend Beverly Jacobs and Amnesty International wrote Stolen Sisters — have talked about the root cause, which is colonization and the dehumanization of Indigenous women. For us, this is not a woman’s problem. This is a man’s problem. The majority of the violence is by men. And the man camps are no different than when the first explorers came to Turtle Island and wanted to have women for sex, right? We’re seen as a commodity. We’re not actually equal to them as human beings. 

I think the rape of the land is personified in the rape of the women, and the murdered and missing Indigenous women, because we are not valued. The Earth is a commodity only — they don’t respect the land. They dig. They create destruction and devastation, and prevent future generations from enjoying those lands. And one of the things that I think is important to connect is that if there is a healthy environment, then there are healthy people.

The babies inside the mother’s womb, the water that keeps them growing and floating, all those aspects for us as Haudenosaunee — all those things that the women are responsible for — have been attacked by colonial laws and policies. [Mohawk scholar] Dawn Martin-Hill [is working on] a map of the majority of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and they are all near man camps. It goes to the respect of women, which is a value that is not taught to the little boys and young men, and that’s where the change needs to come from. Along with Indigenizing Canada’s laws.

I’ve noticed commitments to Indigenous people being framed as “economic reconciliation,” the idea that prosperity and security will come from getting a cut of resource projects. In the book, you say many Indigenous leaders are challenged by the real urgency in many communities to meet basic needs. How do you think Indigenous nations can resist those short-term economic survival prospects in order to protect their homelands?

Well, colonial-rooted poverty will not be solved by more colonial solutions. On our traditional homelands — which extend far beyond the reserves that we’re allowed to live on — the government’s perspective is always “accommodating concerns” of Indigenous people, and talking about consultations rather than free, prior and informed consent. There are many court decisions that talk about the different levels of consultation. But free, prior and informed consent is much stronger, because you cannot be coerced into accepting, like: well, this will create jobs. That’s a form of coercion. What are the consequences of having this in our communities? 

I think often the band councils are making choices as politicians, and not as Indigenous Peoples — as if their role as an Indigenous person is secondary to their role as a leader in their community. So you have these rich corporations coming in and saying: ‘Oh, you’ll benefit from this.’ But what will it mean for picking our medicines — will that area be gone? What about the biodiversity? What about the long-term consequences? 

We are not creating sustainable economies. Service providers are the majority of our employers. I hear, ‘You’re against every kind of development.’ Well, I’m not against sustainable development. But if we’re looking at the climate crisis, the desertification, the floods that are erasing good agricultural soil … there has to be a better way to get out of this colonial root of poverty, where we’re not accepting these destructive forms of extraction. 

For traditional people — I’m not talking about all of the Mohawk Nation, I’m talking about traditional people — we think about the faces not yet born, and how our decisions today will impact the future, as our Elders did when we were those faces not yet born. We need to come up with a better approach if we’re going to be part of that solution for your children, your grandchildren. I think we’ve lost that. We’re just duplicating what Western society wants us to duplicate. 

What’s the way out of that?

Understanding your own culture. Having a strong sense of identity. And having discussions like, how are we going to get out of this? How are we going to survive? How are our teachings, our identities, our languages, our cultures going to survive? 

And we need to start using our minds for better purposes, other than trying to survive and doing whatever is the priority of the Canadian government to issue grants and financial arrangements.

Looking beyond our Indigenous nations, in the book, you and Sean discuss how important allies are for Indigenous resistance. What would you say to non-Indigenous people who want to be allies? 

Educate yourself. Don’t try to speak on our behalf. Support us. But more important, change the laws of Canada. Indigenize the laws to the First People’s values, those original values that helped us survive colonization. 

I have always believed that we should be assimilating the settlers and not the other way around. In small ways, we’re doing that, and getting them to understand who we are and our perspective.

But as human beings we’re flawed. We can be of the same nation but have different approaches, different beliefs. We’re not a monolithic culture, or a static one. And we have to have our rights respected, which includes our right to self-determination on our lands.

There need to be better discussions. There has to be stuff out there that they can use to Indigenize their institutions. Because reconciliation is not our job. Reconciliation is their job. They have to step up to the plate, and not be afraid to say, ‘You know, the Indian Act is pretty racist. Why are we still using it?’

Learning the genocidal history of Canada, but also looking at Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal: all those countries that came and killed our people. Then they’ll understand why we’re so angry sometimes.

One last question: what is your vision and hope for the future?

I go back to the constitution that I’m a part of [Kaianere’kó:wa]. The main mission of it is peace. And what does that mean? For me, I hope that the people on this beautiful little planet will wake up and see what really matters. Not just here on Turtle Island, but everywhere. I hope the Indigenous youth will start learning their languages and cultures. 

And I hope that we have time to heal. Every day, I see that in people who have been traumatized. You know, the six people who were killed in two weeks by the RCMP — some had mental health problems and probably some, if not all, had residual effects from the Indian residential school system. There’s a whole issue of feeling worthy, right? Our people need that, in order to have this future. But we don’t have time. Because what is coming will be worse than what we’ve seen. 

We need to help those who will survive, the faces not yet born. We need to do that today. To make that road a little bit easier for them. To push back against corporations, against corrupt politicians. We need to change our lives, to change how we consume. We need to learn how to love the Earth again. We need to respect her. 

I just hope that there will be peace — peace, love, compassion, respect. Those are some of the elements that our people believe in. I know it sounds like a really lofty dream, but it’s okay to dream.  That’s what people need to know: you don’t have to feel so alone, if you feel like something isn’t right in this big, capitalistic, colonial world we’re living in.

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This is an excerpt from the new book, When the Pine Needles Fall, published September 24, 2024 by Between the Lines.

Sean Carleton: Many people will recognize you as the Kanien’kehá:ka spokesperson from the summer of 1990 during the Mohawk Crisis, the siege of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke by the Sureté du Quebec (or SQ, the provincial police) and the Canadian Army. The images of you from that summer are iconic, instantly recognizable by many who remember that conflict. But what was your life like before that summer?

In A Short History of the Blockade, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson states that being on her Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Homelands taught her about life as being “continual, reciprocal, and reflective.” How did you learn about your relationship to the land, as an Indigenous person, as a Kanien’kehá:ka from Kanehsatà:ke, and what made you want to put your body on the land and your life on the line to defend your Homeland?

Ellen Gabriel: Well, that’s an easy answer: the land is everything to me as a Kanien’kehá:ka person, as an Indigenous person. The land is a teacher. Land is life-giving and life-sustaining, and it’s a privilege to be able to use some of my life’s energy to help protect the earth and ensure it can support the next seven generations. That means everything to me, that is an important part of my life’s purpose.

Growing up on a farm I learned how to love the land, Mother Earth, and appreciate all she has to provide us. I was out on the land daily, learning what is safe to touch and what we should stay away from. As children we’re fearless and love to explore. Laughing and playing on the land, I was always outside enjoying nature. My siblings and I worked on the ranch feeding horses, cleaning stalls, bailing hay, and doing other chores outside. There were no video games when I was growing up, and TV was kind of a special treat at that time. My mother Annie was a skilled gardener and could do anything she set her mind to. During summer vacation, she would send us outside to weed and tend to the garden, as she had learned to do growing up with seven siblings. There was a special connection for me right from the beginning. I would say it’s innate, and inherited somewhat from both sides of my family and Kanien’kehá:ka ancestors.

Land is everything for us as Indigenous Peoples. After my mother passed away, my aunties on my mother’s side became like our second mothers and kept us grounded in our identity. In fact in Kanien’kehá:ka culture, aunties are called “Ista” which means mother, followed by their names. So aunties are important in the raising of children and strengthening the family unit. I’m grateful for having them in my life as they also shaped who I am today.

When I learned that Québécois developers were planning to cut down the Pines — a most sacred part of our community and an integral part of our identity here in Kanehsatà:ke — that motivated me to pay greater attention to what was going on around me. I began to realize I had to join the Onkwehón:we (Indigenous) Peoples’ movement to protect the land, to stand up for the land, if I wanted to continue enjoying it and make sure future generations can too.

I started going to the Longhouse where I learned the songs, dances, ceremonies, and participated in the political discussions. Kanonhsésne (or the Longhouse under the Haudenosaunee) is a form of governance that existed before European Contact. In the 1980s, when I was in my twenties, I wanted to learn more about our history and our ways as Kanien’kehá:ka. Being a part of the Longhouse, and connect- ing with traditional people, became something I identified with and could feel an affiliation or belonging to.

The Longhouse was a very educational place for me and others. It was also where I learned more about how to protect our lands and was taught about what had been done for hundreds of years at that point. I learned more about our history, and about the Pines in particular, as a kind of last vestige of our common lands in the community, a symbol of our freedom. So, it was an easy decision to become part of the movement to protect the Pines and our land from more colonial development.

In terms of relationships to land, I can’t speak for anybody else except myself and my perspective, of course. The Pines remain a very magical and spiritual part of the environment that I live in and grew up in. That connection to land is just something that you feel inside. And to know that it’s being threatened because someone just wants to extend a golf course was frustrating—that’s what was proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you know? What was even more insulting is that the developers were going to dig up our family members, our ancestors in our cemetery, to do it! That was just too much. It was an affront to us as Kanien’kehá:ka. Our community of Kanehsatà:ke has been fighting these kinds of incursions on our lands for three hundred years now. That fight for our survival is in our blood. The land is really important. If you don’t have land, you don’t have anything. And that’s something I was taught early on by my parents and other community members.

My parents were both Kanien’kehá:ka and they spoke Kanien’kéha (the Mohawk language) and so it’s my first language. We spoke Kanien’kéha at home and I was surrounded by first language speakers growing up. I also experienced racism at a very young age, which made me fearful because as a child, racism is scary especially if it’s adults who are carrying it out. I became angry when I learned why it was happening and that certainly shaped my view of the wider world.

I understand the determination of Indigenous Peoples to protect all parts of our identity, and why we may be perceived as fierce. That fierceness to protect ourselves and land is misinterpreted, conveniently mind you, by government and society as being violent. It’s become a stereotype used to influence the public to oppose our human rights. But we’re strong and determined, like the many generations before us, and so the will to protect ourselves and our Homelands is something we have inherited. We know who we are and why protecting our land is so important to us, it’s for our survival’s sake.

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The voices of the singers and the rhythmic beat of the drum fill the powwow arena, as the children dance in the sun on this August afternoon. Looking around the crowded wooden bleachers, I see a smile resting on most faces. All of us are sharing in a moment of pure joy, as we watch the next generation of knowledge holders dance with pride around the circle. 

Overhead, an eagle hovers above the young dancers. As a member of the Eagle Clan from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, I don’t take this sight for granted — especially since I live in Toronto, where you don’t see many birds other than pigeons. But this weekend, I am far away from the condos, the traffic and the sirens. My friends and I have taken a road trip to Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, to camp out on the powwow grounds for the Annual Cultural Festival. 

In the Anishinaabe worldview and cosmology teachings that I have received, the Eagle is respected as a great being in Creation. Because the Eagle soars at high altitudes, it is believed these beings fly the closest to Creator. As such, they are one of our connections to the spirit world, carrying prayers and messages from the physical world.

After the eagle floats above the circle for a few minutes, it soars into the clouds, slowly becoming a dark speck in the sky. I wonder if it’s carrying a message to the spirit world today: letting our ancestors know how many people from different communities across Turtle Island (the land now known as North America), have gathered together today to celebrate. To watch our people dance in their sacred clothing, to listen to our songs and to eat some good powwow grub. 

Though powwows originated in the 19th century, Indigenous people have had ceremonial dances and gatherings for centuries. This included gatherings of different nations. Michael Doxtater, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who comes from Six Nations of the Grand River, says the gatherings originated as trading events. “They would gather in Detroit, Manhattan, Toronto and Montreal. Where there was a confluence of water ways, where a bunch of the Nations would get together and trade. But they would also have social dances, races, gambling and other things going on there,” Doxtater says. Doxtater is also head of Saagajiwe, a home for participation, action and research in Indigenous creative practices and knowledge that is part of The Creative School of the university. I also work under Doxtater at Saagajiwe as a research assistant and events coordinator. 

Trading is still an essential part of powwow culture, but it has also evolved to become a celebration of Indigenous cultural traditions and ways of being. Many elements of the gathering are grounded in our connections with the land, the natural world, our ancestors and our history. 

Our revered Eagle relative is present in many forms at Anishinaabe powwows. One or more Eagle staffs lead the grand entry of the powwow, each with its own design but always dressed in sacred feathers. These staffs are often used at ceremonies such as spirit naming ceremonies and seasonal feasts — in powwows they lead the way because they honour community, culture and history, including inviting the ones from the spirit world into the powwow circle. The Eagle is also represented in many dancers’ individual regalia, and each feather holds meaning and significance.

The styles of social dances and traditional dances performed at powwows, vary across Indigenous Nations. This summer, travelling from the GTA, to Walpole, to Six Nations, to Wiikwemkoong, just a small part of the powwow trail, I have seen the Hoop Dance and the Smoke Dance, which are only performed at certain powwows or in certain communities. Each dance has a different origin story and carries different teachings. But all of the dancers that step into the circle dance to the big drum, known as Mother Earth’s heartbeat. 

‘We’re not just dancing for our physical self, we’re dancing for our spiritual self’

As dances carry cultural meaning and generational history, the dancers carry a responsibility to their communities. 

DJ White, a fancy feather dancer from the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe nations, has travelled across Canada to dance at powwows. 

“We’re not just dancing for our physical self, we’re dancing for our spiritual self,” White says. “We’re dancing for our families, our Elders and our babies, who came to be in the present with us, but they don’t get to partake in the dancing [because of] physical limitations. I also dance for the ones who can’t dance, the ones who are yet to come from the spirit world. And for those who have passed on, like some of my friends and my ancestors.” 

In the 20 years White has been fancy dancing, the designs and elements of his regalia have evolved he has had to remake all of it twice: once because he outgrew the set he was given when he was younger, then again after his regalia was destroyed in a house fire. Each time, it took him around five years to remake all of the pieces. 

White sees regalia as a representation of growth throughout one’s lifetime. “It’s almost like a tree when they add a new layer of bark in their lives,” White says. Some of the original beadwork designs belonged to his big brother, while the beadwork on his cuffs was added later, reflecting something that appeared to him in dreams. “I kind of think of it as a rainbow from the spirit world,” White says. 

The colours in his design — black, white, red, yellow — are used in the Ojibwe medicine wheel, a visual representation of many complex cultural and cosmological teachings. Across Indigenous Nations, there are many variations of the medicine wheel and its teachings. 

In Ojibwe culture, the four colours each symbolize a sacred direction, a cardinal points on the medicine wheel. But each quadrant also stands for a time of day, a season, one of four sacred medicines, an animal, one of four states of being, and four stages of life. Each element of the different quadrants carries teachings and meanings.

The teachings carry through other elements of a powwow. The wheel’s circular form references the cultural belief that everything and everyone in Creation are connected and valued as equals within the community. Some Indigenous communities gather in a circle for meetings and ceremonies to honour this belief. At powwows, the dancers’ arena is always a circle. 

Two spots in the circle that are left open: the eastern doorway and the western doorway, invoking two of the sacred directions in the medicine wheel. Dancers enter the powwow circle through the eastern doorway and exit through the western doorway, to pay homage to the sun. 

Once outlawed, the resurgence of Indigenous powwows is a cause for celebration and a sign of resilience 

Indigenous cultural practices and ways of being are intertwined with the natural world. In the Anishinaabe teachings I have received, our people have been the caretakers and protectors of their ancestral lands for time immemorial, following teachings passed down for generations that allowed us to live in harmony with the land and nature spirits. 

Land-based knowledge has also shaped the teachings and cultural practices of powwows, including dances. Dances like the men’s prairie chicken dance imitates the rooster’s efforts to attract a hen in mating season. The women’s fancy shawl dance evokes the graceful movements of a butterfly. 

However, colonization across Turtle Island led to the oppression of Indigenous Peoples and their cultural practices. Efforts to assimilate Indigenous Peoples began before the Dominion of Canada was even established in 1867. The first church-operated residential school opened in 1831, aiming to replace Indigenous knowledge with colonial and Christian education. In 1857, the Gradual Civilization Act encouraged Indigenous people to give up their Indian Status — including many land-based rights — through a process called enfranchisement. However, not many people were keen on voluntarily assimilating into colonial society. 

In an effort to separate Indigenous Peoples from their cultures and remove them from their ancestral lands, colonial legislation became increasingly oppressive and restrictive of First Nations, Mėtis and Inuit Rights. The 1876 Indian Act built upon the Gradual Civilization Act, and made the existing provisions even harsher. This included outlawing Indigenous Ceremonies and traditional dancing. Indigenous Peoples were also restricted from leaving the small lands “reserved” for them by the Crown, while their vast homelands were plundered for valuable natural resources. 

Under colonial law and legislation, gatherings like powwows and Potlatch ceremonies that celebrated Indigenous ways of life and strong community relationships were almost always outlawed unless sanctioned by the colonial government. Doxtater tells me that Indigenous Peoples were only permitted to wear their regalia in pageants or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, primarily to entertain settlers. In 1887, after Canada began funding residential schools nationwide, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald said “The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.” Weakening community relationships and destroying the pride that Indigenous Peoples had for their culture and identity was seen as necessary for “successful” assimilation. 

By the 1920s, the Indian Act enforced mandatory attendance at residential schools for the children of First Nations, Métis and Inuit families, separating them from their homelands, languages and ceremonies. But while colonial family separation has had devastating impacts on individuals and communities that still continue today, the resilience of Indigenous Peoples has kept many cultural practices alive. The resurgence of powwows and ceremonies began again after the ban was removed from the Indian Act in 1951. In the decades since, Indigenous Peoples have been reclaiming their ancestral spiritual practices, clothing, dances and ceremonies, and every summer, there are thousands of powwows across Turtle Island.

“I like to work on the land and show hunting stories when I dance,” Mary Ann Manatch, a woodland traditional dancer from Wiikwemkoong and Rapid Lake First Nations, says. Their unique dance style also incorporates elements from men’s traditional dance. Manatch said telling stories of animals through dance, connects them to the spirit of those animals.

As I travelled the powwow trail this summer Manatch was one of many of the dancers I spoke to who felt like they were connecting to the land that they dance on. This connection can be very healing for both, as the dancer and the land imbue each other’s beings with spirit. 

“When I dance, I feel very emotional. I have always gotten through my emotions through dance,” Alex Jackman, a Mohawk and Algonquin jingle dress dancer, says. Jackman, who is also Bajan, did not find out about her Indigenous ancestry until later in life, and said she finds healing and liberation in dance as she reconnects with her culture. 

The modern powwow is a celebration of Indigenous cultures and community. But it is also a space for healing the generational wounds caused by forced oppression and assimilation. The revitalization of these ceremonies sparks hope — not just for the future generations of Indigenous Peoples, but for the future of Turtle Island. 

In the Hopi Nation, the hoop dance is known as a medicine dance or a healing dance. “So the idea is that as we pass these hoops around our body we are giving out medicine to the people around us,” River Christie-White, who has been practicing the hoop dance for around 11 years, says. 

Dancers tell stories by using their entire bodies to create flowing movements and designs with the hoops, some of which come from their individual creative expression and others from working with the spirits of Creation. 

Christie-White’s regalia is another creative and cultural way to honour parts of their being. “I have Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. And a lot of the colours here, the green, the red, the yellow, all of those are different colours used to represent autism,” Christie-White says. Ten years ago, Christie-White started Hoops for Hope, which educates people about autism, neurodiversity and other intellectual differences.

The colours of their regalia also express part of Christie-White’s identity as a queer individual, evoking the pride flag and the idea of unity. 

“The hoop dance is about unity and bringing things together. So I think about how those traditional practices come together in everyday life.” 

The history of Indigenous fashion is embedded in regalia

Clothing, blankets and beadwork have transmitted information for a long time, Doxtater says. Hand-signing was a method of cross-cultural communication that allowed Indigenous people from many nations to communicate with others who spoke different languages. 

“They couldn’t understand each other’s languages but they could understand the hand signing,” Doxtater says. He explains that physical items, including some floral and geometric designs featured in Anishinaabe beadwork, built upon and used the hand-signing symbols understood by speakers of many languages. “They would tell a story and you would be able to sign it.” 

Before settler contact, Indigenous Peoples mostly made clothing out of the materials found in nature: buckskin, deer hide, sea beads, sinew and porcupine quills. Colours came from dyes that were similarly obtained from natural resources. During the fur trade period, Indigenous Peoples were introduced to new materials from European settlers. 

“Throughout the fur trade, Indigenous textile artists are introduced to a whole new set of materials that they find fascinating,” Cory Willmott, a professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, says. “One of those things was colours.” She emphasises that the incorporation of these elements was deliberate. “They are choosing what resonates with their worldview, their traditional values and their aesthetic traditions.”. 

Dyes and coloured ribbons were adapted into Indigenous fashions. Because of the cultural teachings that everything in creation has a colour, including our individual spirits, it became a pattern for colours featured in the designs on clothing and beadwork to be an expression of identity and oral history. 

“It is indigenizing European materials into their own Indigenous fashions,” Willmott says. 

Though traditional elements like deer hide, sinew and quills are still used in some pieces on regalia, ribbons and other pieces of clothing are now usually made out of woven materials and sewn with thread. Faux feathers are also used alongside genuine feathers. Still, traditions are being passed down through regalia, which continue to be used to express history and personal identity. 

“It’s very healing for me”: dancers connect to generations of meaning and culture through powwow 

Just over two years ago, I attended my first powwow. I didn’t grow up connected to my Anishinaabe community or cultural practices, and I was just a few years into my reconnection journey. I had so many questions about the different dances, the different styles of regalia. 

As I have continued building my relationship with my community and my culture, I have had the privilege of receiving teachings about powwows, many of which have come from travelling on the trail. But I also challenged myself to learn while doing work in and with the community. For the last two summers, I have worked on the powwow planning committee at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

While attending powwows, I’ve noticed a pattern. Often dancers are bombarded by people who take pictures of them in their regalia — a few told me this feels tokenizing, especially when picture-takers don’t even ask first. I’ve often wondered if people understood or even cared to understand what they were taking a picture of: if they miss the significance, value and respect that Indigenous people have for their regalia, and the layers of meaning and significance they carry. 

“Generations of regalia can be on a dancer,” Madison Noon, a member of Thunderchild Cree First Nation, who has been dancing the jingle style since she was a tiny tot, says. “My yellow beadwork is so important to me because it helped me understand the generation of my aunty and my late mushum. I am wearing my family’s legacy on me, without even knowing the depths of it.” 

Traditional dancing has been an important part of Noon’s journey to becoming a professional dancer. She recently graduated with a bachelor degree in performance dance from Toronto Metropolitan University, and works as a dancer for the Toronto Raptors. “Powwow was my first dance world, so I always consider myself a jingle dress dancer and a powwow dancer first.”

Many Ojibwe communities have their own origin stories for the jingle dress dance. In the teachings that I have received, the dance appeared to a Medicine Man in his dreams, to help heal his ailing granddaughter. Some powwows include jingle dance specials that honour the stolen life of a missing or murdered Indigenous woman, or the children that attended residential schools. 

“It’s very healing for me and for everyone else at the ceremony because the jingle dress dance is a healing dance,” Lauren Porter, a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the female head dancer at the 2024 Na-Me-Res powwow in Toronto, says. 

The distinctive jingle dress style was introduced after colonial contact, and uses new metals imported into Turtle Island by settlers. It features rows of cones that are typically made from the lids of Copenhagen brand snuff tobacco. As the dancer moves, the cones imitate the sound of rain. It’s one of the most beautiful sounds at the powwows — only war cries or moose calling competitions might top it. 

Noon has trained in classical ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, modern and street styles and around age eight, took a break from powwow dancing to focus on her passion for competitive dance. 

But despite other connections to her culture and identity, and doing well in both school and in dance, Noon felt incomplete. “When you’re in a world like my classical dance world it’s demanding. And it’s hard on your spirit as an Indigenous person,” she says. “I realised it was powwow that I was missing.” 

Before long, Noon was to get back in the circle. “When I dance jingle it heals my spirit. Because you’re dancing among your people and you’re in a space where you feel safe, and you’re celebrating culture.”

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In 1876, Canada adopted the Indian Act. The legislation established which Indigenous people were legally recognized through the Indian status system and implemented colonial structures like the reserve system, which restricted First Nations people to lands “reserved” for them to live on, a fraction of their ancestral territories. 

The Indian Act still dictates much of Indigenous people’s lives, including many land rights. Only a status “Indian” has the constitutionally protected right to hunt, fish, harvest and live on reserve lands, the last of which is no longer mandatory.

The more status “Indians” there are, in other words, the more people for whom Canada is legally obligated to uphold treaty promises, including to share lands and resources. Which is why, from the beginning, “Canada was very clear that the goal of the [Indian Act] was ultimately to assimilate all First Nations individuals,” Vancouver lawyer Ryan Beaton says.

To expedite assimilation, Indigenous people were pushed to accept enfranchisement, which meant renouncing Indian status in order to gain Canadian citizenship. Although enfranchisement was framed as voluntary, coercive policies outlined in the Indian Act would suggest otherwise. Status holders couldn’t own property off reserve, buy alcohol or vote. Indigenous men were automatically enfranchised if they got a university degree or became priests.

And enfranchised Indigenous people — usually men — had a choice in whether or not to send their children to residential schools. These institutions were designed for “Indian” children; there was no need for a non-status child to attend. 

Indigenous women had even less choice regarding assimilation, because of gender discrimination in the Indian Act. If an Indigenous woman married a non-status or a non-Indigenous man, she lost her own status and was no longer recognized as a member of her First Nation. If she married an Indigenous man with status in a nation other than her own, she lost her own status number and band membership, becoming legally recognized through her husband’s First Nation and seen as an entity attached to his status number. And if an Indigenous man was enfranchised, his wife and children lost their status too. 

And very rarely could women make individual applications to enfranchise and renounce their status to become Canadian citizens. This means, Beaton says, that many women were cut out of a decision that affected their descendants’ access to land and rights forever. 

Now, Beaton is representing three families taking legal action against the federal government, framing Indigenous women’s loss of rights through their male relatives’ enfranchisement as an act of gender discrimination that violates the constitution. The group launched its constitutional challenge, Nicholas v. Canada, in 2021, then put it on pause in 2022, when it looked like the federal government might deal with the issue through Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu’s introduction of Indian Act amendments in Bill C-38.

This year, frustrated with the slow pace of change, the plaintiffs decided to relaunch their challenge. 

One of them is Kathryn Fournier, whose grandmother first lost her status when she married and was forced to move off her natal lands, St. Peters Reserve in the Red River Valley (which no longer exists because the local government argued settlers could make better use of the natural resources). Then, Fournier’s grandfather, Maurice Sanderson, renounced his membership in Pinaymootang First Nation in Manitoba in 1922, choosing enfranchisement to obtain the right to own property and vote. Sanderson’s decision stripped his wife and all of their children of their status too; Kathryn’s mother, Edith Fournier grew up without status. 

In 1985, amendments to the Indian Act allowed some people with a familial history of enfranchisement to apply for Indian Status — Edith was approved, but granted a category of status that could only be passed down for one generation. This means her grandchildren, including Kathryn’s children, are not entitled to status.  

“We just thought that was how the Indian Act worked,” Kathryn says, of her inability to pass status and all the rights it entails on to her children. Then, in 2020, the Fourniers learned about a family who had pushed to regain status rights lost to enfranchisement and won. 

“That notion that you might begin to say, that there’s a way we can actually challenge that Indian Act, is a very powerful notion. And I’ve always known that it’s a battle every inch of the way,” says Fournier, who says her mother fought for her grandchildren’s status until her passing in 2021. 

Here’s what you need to know about the gender discrimination Fournier and the other plaintiffs are fighting, and what it has to do with land-based rights and residential schools. 

What is the goal of Bill C-38?

In simple terms, the part of Bill C-38 Beaton’s clients are focused on would restore status to approximately 3,500 individuals with a family history of enfranchisement. 

When Beaton and the plaintiffs launched their constitutional challenge in 2021, they based their legal argument on two sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: section 7, which deals with life, liberty and security, and section 15, which covers equality. Beaton explains that the Indian Act continues to enforce historical gender-based discrimination today by denying status to the descendants of a woman who was enfranchised alongside her husband. He also argues that denying an individual status because of a family history of enfranchisement should be recognized by the Charter as a prohibited basis for discrimination. 

After these Charter violations were first brought to the attention of the federal government, Beaton says, there was a consensus among all political parties that they needed to be remedied. This led to Hajdu introducing Bill C-38 in Parliament in December 2022. The bill primarily deals with ongoing discrimination towards those with a family history of enfranchisement, but also seeks to address or amend other sections of the Indian Act. 

When the bill was introduced, Beaton and the plaintiffs put their constitutional challenge on hold. But despite the political support for Bill C-38, it has been stalled for almost two years, which is why the challenge is on again. 

Why is Bill C-38 stalled?

“The federal government just has not had the political will and has not made this a priority,” Beaton says, despite his assurances from Hajdu’s office that the government wants Bill C-38 to move forward. 

In the past, Canada has expressed budgetary concerns over legislative changes that would mean a sudden increase in the number of people that are entitled to register under the Indian Act. But, Beaton explains, while previous amendments would entitle hundreds of thousands of people to gain access to status, only about 3,500 individuals would be eligible under Bill C-38. 

Jenica Atwin, parliamentary secretary for Indigenous Affairs, told The Narwhal that “Oftentimes, these important pieces of legislation will get stalled because of partisan interest,” and that the bill had the “support of all except for the Conservatives.” But at the bill’s second reading last October, all federal political parties agreed Bill C-38 should be passed to address the on-going infringement of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. That includes the Conservatives, with MP Eric Melillo expressing vocal support for its passage. 

What is the constitutional challenge launched by Indigenous families about?

After multiple years without any progress on Bill C-38’s passage through Parliament, Beaton and the 16 plaintiffs in Nicholas v. Canada decided to reactivate their constitutional challenge. 

The hope is that an imminent trial will encourage Parliament to hasten the progress on moving the bill through the House of Commons. Otherwise, Beaton and the plaintiffs will try to see this issue remedied in the court system. 

When Hajdu introduced the bill, she said “This is part of the ongoing work needed and it must be sustained to eliminate outstanding concerns of gender-based discrimination and inequalities, while also addressing colonial laws and structures.”

Beaton says Hajdu has acknowledged the Charter violations as ongoing discrimination towards Indigenous Peoples, “Which is kind of unusual. Often in these cases the government will avoid conceding the legal point.” This admission provides his legal argument with a solid foundation as it moves through the court system. 

Beaton says he told the government that because there is cross-party support for the bill, the families involved are willing to approach the court on a joint basis, rather than individually. But despite that support and Hajdu’s definitive statements, in August 2024, federal lawyers responded to the challenge by denying any constitutional violations. 

Beaton says he and the legal team representing Canada are currently trying to figure out what is actually in dispute to narrow the issue as much as possible. 

What does Bill C-38 and the constitutional challenge have to do with residential schools? 

While the enfranchisement policy in the Indian Act was initially voluntary, many Indigenous Peoples did not choose to renounce their Indian status. Over the years, enfranchisement provisions became increasingly harsh and based around gender discrimination and the suppression of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. 

“The Indian Act was designed to make being an Indian so unpleasant and so restricted, and so devoid of basic human rights, that people would want to enfranchise,” Fournier says. 

A 1920 amendment to the Indian Act made attendance at residential schools mandatory, leading to the forcible removal of children from First Nation families and creating a very strong motivation for many people to enfranchise. Sharon Nicholas, one of the lead plaintiffs in the challenge, has an ancestor who chose to enfranchise in order to keep his children out of the residential school system. 

The interlinked history between enfranchisement and the residential school system is one of the reasons that Beaton argues there is no excuse for Canada to continue to deny status to people who had ancestors that were forced to make these difficult decisions.  

What happens next? 

There is more than one way for these issues to be remedied. 

The first option is that Canada makes Bill C-38 law. Nothing is stopping Parliament from moving it forward once the House of Commons reconvenes this fall. Atwin, whose husband and children are Wolastoqiyik and hold status, says Hajdu’s team is responding to the challenge by urgently pushing to see the bill move forward. The next step would likely be a review of the bill by a standing committee, although there are a few different paths a bill can take through the House of Commons. 

The second option is a legal battle. Beaton explained that he would likely seek a summary judgement, which would mean any trial would be expedited. In this case, his team would provide the British Columbia Supreme Court with its argument that there are constitutional violations related to registry and band membership policies within the Indian Act. After evidence and opposing legal arguments are presented, a judge would decide whether or not there are constitutional violations and how they should be remedied. 

If a judge agrees there are violations, there are various ways to resolve them. Beaton explains that courts typically avoid writing detailed legislation. Instead, judges usually order Parliament to fix the issue by a given deadline — but often grant the government extensions when it doesn’t complete such orders on time. “At the end of the day if we won in court and then the court’s solution was to send it to Parliament to fix it, then we are kind of running in circles,” Beaton says. 

He’d prefer a faster, more definitive solution. Striking five or six words in the registration provisions in the Indian Act “could fix the issue,” Beaton says. This means specific words would no longer be legally recognized, registration provisions would have to be read as if those words did not exist and the descendants of those who were enfranchised would be entitled to Indian status as if their ancestor’s enfranchisement had not happened. 

Beaton explained this is a process courts are generally much more comfortable with than writing new legislation from scratch. And if a court strikes out the words causing Charter violations, Parliament does not need to act. 

Whether or not it happens quickly, the plaintiffs are determined to right this historical wrong. “I remain firmly convinced that we will prevail and that justice will prevail,” Fournier says. 

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“Our hunting values are simple, really. We provide for the family, we provide for different families. We do the best we can to provide for anybody that needs it,” Jordan Williams, a hunter from Lake Babine Nation, says. 

Jordan is part of a pilot program led by Lake Babine Nation to bring youth on the land to learn to hunt. The program connects youth who have never hunted before to those with experience, under the guidance of seasoned older hunters like Jordan.

The program launched in fall 2023 with a hunt that brought about a dozen youth on the land for three days. This year, they are planning a bigger hunt that will last about three weeks. The youth will learn practical skills like firearm safety, along with the culture and values around hunting. The nation is fully funding the program and they hope to make it a long-term annual trip.

The initiative is gaining steam with the recent launch of Lake Babine’s Guardians program in April. Indigenous Guardians patrol, monitor and steward lands and waters according to their own governance and community priorities and values. The Lake Babine initiatives are oriented to the same goal — fostering connections between people and the land.

Steven Bayes, a hunter who played a big role coordinating the inaugural hunt, says the youth started out shy but by the end of the few days, “the bond they all had formed was amazing.”

“I shot my first grouse,” Jesse Heron says. “I shot a gun for the first time.” In two words, he summarized the week as “fun” and “cold.”

For young hunter Thomas Williams, making the nightly fires was his favourite part, and the trip helped him break out of his shell.

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