Humboldt’s annual Truth and Reconciliation Walk, cohosted by the Westminster Affirm Team and Humboldt Department of Cultural Service took place on September 29. The walkers, all adorned in orange shirts, gathered under the mural at City Hall to make the trek north to a gathering at the Westminster United Church Hall.
Special guest at the walk this year was poet Louise Bernice Halfe, also known by her Cree name, Sky Walker.
Louise Bernice Halfe is a well-known figure in Canadian literature, having held both the posts of provincial Poet Laureate and Parliamentary Poet Laureate. She is a residential school survivor from Maskwacis in central Alberta. Halfe interpreted her own experiences as a youth and young woman in the residential school and during a time of living in the mountains in a teepee and tent community of elders seeking to reclaim their customs and heritage.
She talked about straddling two worlds as the wife of a white Ontario physician. She said her over 50 years of marriage has provided her into insights in classism and racism. Through the years, her experience bridging these worlds, and as a practicing social worker, has helped her to see what she called the commonalities among people.
She spoke about how she arrived at writing, which she explained was not a clearcut process. She revealed that she had been at residential school, but she had spent a two-year period with her parents when they reclaimed her. She recalled how she had been returned to the school as her parents, residential school survivors themselves, were not able to parent her amidst their own turmoil.
“My husband and I run a sweat lodge,” Halfe said, illustrating an example of sharing understanding. “I have a friend from Malaysia who is Muslim who sweated with us. I’ve had Chinese people, some Black people, people from Israel and all kinds of non-Native people. I don’t like the term ‘building bridges’ because it implies I am going to walk over you. It’s about dialogue, and sometimes dialogue is very difficult.”
Halfe acknowledged the hardship faced by the early European settlers who established their homesteads with very little, and sometimes with great cost. She said that such stories are always tempered with “white privilege” - the sense that despite those hardships, the white ancestors have a “walk through the door” not shared by members of the Indigenous community.
Among the lasting impacts of residential school for Halfe was that she was not a reader or a writer. However, she was a dreamer, and that quality proved to be a gateway for her years later. Her return to her reservation led to a voyage of discovery whereby she eventually undertook social work. She said her study in university did not prepare her for the shocking realities of the practice she would undertake.
Escaping into the bush, she found the contemplative spirit that allowed her to capture her dreams in writing. Her children were voracious readers, and she felt their influence. Along with the power of spoken language, notably from CBC broadcaster Peter Gzowski, Halfe produced poems that would eventually find their way into print. Her books gave her a powerful avenue of connection for her thoughts, experiences and hopes.
Louise Bernice Halfe continues to be active as a writer with a new book expected. She eschews the term “building bridges,” but there is no doubt in her ability to challenge her listeners, foster dialogue and nurture the connections so important in working toward an understanding of Truth and Reconciliation.