When asked to think about our relationship to place we both thought about our shared relative, the late Leonard George from Tsleil-Waututh, Jade’s grandfather and my uncle. Through the lens of his love for his people and the land we are best able to describe our sense of home and place. Jade offers an ode, a prayer in Squamish speaking directly to her grandfather. It is in Squamish with no translation as part of what it means to honor the land we come from and the language the land and our ancestors remember. It represents a type of relationship to place that is in our bones and something that cannot be translated or defined. My piece is a conversation around my daughter in the relationship to teachings from Len and together we paint a picture about who we are and where we come from by holding up our dear relative who moved so many.
Squamish prayer for Leonard George
When asked to think about our relationship to place we both thought about our shared relative, the late Leonard George from Tsleil-Waututh, Jade’s grandfather and my uncle. Through the lens of his love for his people and the land we are best able to describe our sense of home and place. Jade offers an ode, a prayer in Squamish speaking directly to her grandfather. It is in Squamish with no translation as part of what it means to honor the land we come from and the language the land and our ancestors remember. It represents a type of relationship to place that is in our bones and something that cannot be translated or defined. My piece is a conversation around my daughter in the relationship to teachings from Len and together we paint a picture about who we are and where we come from by holding up our dear relative who moved so many.
Welcome figures
old ones, arms stretched out
Open and aging, ancient
chief robes, woven root, mountain goat
speaking to this world and the other
history, tongue and law
through territory and space
don’t mistake the message
What does it mean to welcome, and to be displaced? To be open, colonized and be sovereign.
As I raise Alíla7 in her territory I wonder about how to show her that she is home. To explain that she comes from beautiful people. That she is not simply one of many in her home. Rather, she comes from royalty, from the ancient ones, the people who know secret languages, who carry keys passed down from generations that can unlock abundance. Keys that open the doorways of care for both the land and also for who we are as Salish people. Keys to song, food, medicine, dance, healing.
Alíla7’s territory is expansive. Along shoreline, to mountain, valley and river. It has been cared for since time immemorial by people who speak a tongue she’s learning and have chins and cheeks that look like hers. Her territory happens to be on one of the largest settlements in Canada, the city of Vancouver.
When I do anti-racist training, we talk about institutional racism. We talk about colonialism as a structure; not an event, but rather the whole basis for the very fibres of this country and all of its structures. I talk about my love for my territory and the advocacy of those who came before me to protect the different sacred aspects of what make us Squamish. How to reconcile that with the fabric of a city that tells my daughter she doesn’t matter. A city where marches have to happen every Valentine’s day to honor, advocate for and pray for the ones who have been taken, murdered and have gone missing. A city where a young native child gets arrested on the street with her elderly grandfather as they go to open a bank account. Where baby and I get followed in stores or see posters of missing Native women being torn down by local residents of the neighbourhood we live in proximity to.
To this end I have been asked how I cope, how I move through time and space outside of constant anger, rage, grief for all that has transpired and all that goes on. I lean on the teachings of my late uncle, Leonard George. For this piece we were asked to think about place and our relationship to our territories. Len had a type of boundless generosity that you don’t often see and a deep drive to protect his lands and waters that was uncompromising. A balance like this is not easy to strike. A balance seemingly at odds with the constant siege against our peoples and territories. Len talked about welcoming, he talked about open arms, but he also talked about a contract of a care. What I took from him was the notion of a contract wherein if people are here, they are welcome, but they have a responsibility to learn to care for these lands. That the Tsleil-Waututh people are not to stand alone at the banks of Burrard Inlet protecting the lands and waters for generations to come. For it is your children that will rely on these lands and waters too.
Len helped me see the welcome figure in a new light. To see it as radical, as calling people in, but also holding them to account. Of showing Alíla7 she is home, but that she is not alone. That the ways of the ones she comes from are etched into earth and skin and that there will always be people on this side, and the other, looking out for her, caring for her, marked in space and time in tall cracked cedar, arms stretched out, ancient and loving.
Jade is active in her Tsleil-waututh community, acting in various cultural capacities. She comes from a strong family who are cultural leaders in the Tsleil-waututh community. As a weaver, singer and language speaker, Jade has many crucial teachings about how to be in community and navigate the traditional laws and practises of her people. She brings this depth of knowledge to Host Consulting, helping clients to consider how to move through a community in a culturally sound way.
Salia Joseph (she/her) is Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Snuneymuxw, British and Jewish. She is a graduate of the First Nations and Indigenous studies program at UBC and cares deeply about decolonial and intersectional approaches to learning and caring for one another. Salia is the executive director of The Sníchim Foundation, a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh non-profit focused on language revitalization and immersion based learning. She is also part owner of Host Consulting Inc., a Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh consultancy focused on public art and decolonial dialogues.
