Learning to Listen #3 - When We Were Alone

 This week I read the picture book "When We Were Alone" by David A Robertson. It tells the story of a young girl asking her grandmother about seemingly innocuous personal traits: her long braided hair, colourful clothing, speaking another language, and spending so much time with family. What emerges is the grandmother's history in residential schools, a time when these "innocuous" things were taken from her. As a result, she feels especially guarded about these freedoms.

Acknowledging the systemic racism in Canada's past has been hard for those of us who have come to define ourselves by our tolerance and acceptance of all. The last residential school closed in 1996. I was 16. It's hard to swallow that this isn't even really history for me - it was part of my present. Reading the goals of the residential schools is horrifying: they range from "assimilation" to "education" to "conversion" to "civilize" to "Christianize" to "killing the indian in them."

I struggled for the first time ever this past week with Canada Day. How do I celebrate the place where I live, and show gratitude for the freedoms I enjoy, knowing that it was built on systemic racist practices? That calling Canada 153 years old feels like a celebration of colonial thievery. I read many people's posts on the topic and was grateful for the thoughtful critique of our past.

"When We Were Alone" made me think of the small freedoms I enjoy and cherish. It also made me curious to hear more about the cultural traditions of others. The way the grandmother speaks is so full of love and admiration I wished I could hear her voice directly.

From the book:

"Nókom (grandmother), why do you wear your hair so long?" I asked.

"When I was your age, at home in my community, my friends and I grew our hair long, just like our people have always done. It made us feel strong and proud. But at the school I went to, far away from home, they cut off all our hair. Our strands of hair mixed together on the ground like blades of grass.

But sometimes in the spring, when we were alone, and the grass had grown so long and thick in the field, we would pick the blades from the ground. We would braid them into the short hair they had given us, and we would have long hair again. And this made us happy. Now, I always wear my hair very long."