Letwílc – Healing

I feel bad for the distortedness of how government has torn us apart, the unity that has been torn apart as a breaking the family up, breaking our values, our belief system, our way of life, how we survive, and what we need to do to survive. We have to learn how to care take right from like I said, the water, the mother earth, to the plants, to the animals, to even the rocks and to the air, and to the universe. We understand how they’re all connected, and knowing that and believing in our work as a Secwepemc person. It’s a big job. It’s not a little job. It’s everything we do every day. It’s what we believe in, it’s how we portray our self as a Secwepemc person, and a lot of our families are broken up. The unity isn’t there, and having to practice and relearn all these things and reteach it to give that value back as to be a Secwepemc person is really difficult because we have all sort of other obstacles in our way.

Julianna Alexander, Splatsín

Our ancestors suffered greatly. They were put under … How do you put it? I’ll call it a state of siege, because if they practiced certain things, they were thrown in jail. If they didn’t send their children to residential schools, they were put in jail for six months at a time, a year, simply because they didn’t obey the white law. That fear also permeated into our spirituality, where our pipes and all those things, instruments we use, were actually buried and hidden away. If we’re doing ceremonies, they would close off rooms. They would put it in the dark. There was a great fear because if we practiced who we are as Secwepemc, we would be sent to jail. And that happened. So, I think that fear is an understanding that we don’t have to do that anymore. Contained within us is the ability to do those things in the open and have no fear because what you’re doing, whether you understand it or not, is the way of your ancestors. They’ll stand with you and you call upon them to help you, they will help you. That’s the important part of prayer, sqweqwentsín, is that we can do it in such a way as individuals we can pray for that support and how collectively we can pray for that support, and it does come. They show us what to do. I think it’s really, really important. A lot of influences have happened to our people from the outside world and tore our people apart, you know, addictions … You start listing all the negative things that have happened to our people, the residential school, all the abuses that took place, the beating of the language out of our people, the sexual abuse, the spiritual abuse, the physical abuse, all of those things, and that we need to find a way to heal ourselves so we can look after each other. So healing has become a real critical component of the work we’re doing when we go out in the territory of connecting to the land and talking with each other and how we heal each other. And we can do it through our medicines. We can do it through our sqílye, the sweat lodge. We can do it through, actually, that connection with each other.

Wayne Christian, Splatsín

Healing starts with me. I need to heal me before I can even help somebody. That’s a challenge because outside people don’t understand to live in Esket or Secwepemcúlecw. Our standards are different, we are more group and I think that presents a challenge for social workers. Oh, this house is crowded but for us that would be like inter-family. For me, try to put yourself into that parent or parents. I always tell people try to understand, go there, be there, go sleep over there. Not in the same house but be in the community. Don’t run off to Williams Lake or Kamloops. Your books are over there but come here and you’ll understand.

Fred Johnson, Esk’ét

I understand that us as humans, we struggle with emotions and we struggle with our socio-economic need for healing and everything that’s happened with the genocidal approaches of the Catholic Church and how the earth and history has gone. I think that the healing would begin with healing the ecosystems, healing of the air, of the land, the water, because ultimately that is our mother, that’s our feeding source, so if we don’t heal her, we’re not going to get healed ourselves.

Travis Marr, Tk’emlúps