Reconciliation
Xwla ye toteló:met qas ye slilekwel
Reconciliation is about repairing relationships. Our Senior Advisor on Indigenous Affairs, Shirley Hardman, reminds us that we make reconciliation all the time. We know how to do this. UFV Elder Siyamiateliyot (Elizabeth Phillips) has translated Reconciliation as Xwla ye toteló:met qas ye slilekwel (Towards Understanding and Harmony). In a national sense, Reconciliation is “improving the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people” (Hardman).
This garden was created as an act of reconciliation towards the builders of the former garden, and in memory of the Chilliwack community-based theatre program at UFV. As Ian Fenwick, founding director of that program, told us, “How institutions can take care of and honour the past and their own roots as they grow and change” is important, and it is important to acknowledge and care for the past.
The new garden was also created with attention to the national meaning of Reconciliation, with the intention of contributing to the indigenizing of UFV’s campus. Indigenization of the campus has been defined as “a process of naturalizing Indigenous knowledge systems and making them evident to transform spaces, places, and hearts.” In the context of post-secondary education, this involves bringing Indigenous knowledge and approaches together with Western knowledge systems.” (https://ufv.ca/teaching-and-learning/inclusive-teaching/indigenization/). The garden includes Indigenous plants and was designed through interdisciplinary courses with guest speakers including Indigenous knowledge-keepers. It is the hope of the garden designers that by being an indigenized space for conversation and dialogue, hosted in Stó:lō Temexw, the garden may contribute to the process of truth and reconciliation in Canada. As Justice Murray Sinclair has said, repairing the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Settler Canada will take time and requires “restoring that balance to that relationship.”
Sxwôxwiyám, Sqwelqwel, Shakespeare, & Reconciliation in Dialogue
Stó:lō sxwôxwiyám are “oral histories that describe the distant past ‘when the world was out of balance, and not quite right'” (Sto:lo Heritage Policy Manual, p. 8). Sqwelqwel are “’True Story’ (or stories); oral narratives relating to personal history (Sto:lo Heritage Policy Manual, p. 8).
A personal understanding of story has many layers that unfold with reflection and life experience, and in relation to the storyteller’s shaping of a story for their listeners (a process that has been shared by Elders and knowledge keepers, including Joanne Archibald in Indigenous Storywork and Lee Maracle in Goodbye Snauq, How We Work with Story). Stó:lō story embodies a millennia-long tradition of intellectual, ethical, and practical knowledge.
“A very useful resource for a Stó:lō perspective on reconciliation is “Envisioning Genuine Reconciliation in S’olh Temexw,” at stolo.reconciliation.com, which says: “Reconcilliation is an aspirational concept expressing the hope that Xwélmexw (Indigenous people) and Xwelítem (non-Indigenous people) can find a way to live together in a good way; to be of good mind.”
stoloreconciliation.com
The reading, teaching, and performance of Shakespeare carries a European-based and now global tradition of stories that are retold and reinterpreted to explore human experience. Shakespeare’s works have a history of being used in colonial education, or of being used to glorify English language and culture above others. A Shakespeare enthusiast is credited with introducing the European starling and the house sparrow to North America. Moreover, the oral and performance tradition that Shakespeare’s plays embody have been profoundly textualized and associated with written literacy. So how can Shakespeare’s plays be relevant to reconciliation? One answer is that they are part of the colonial history and present reality that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Another is that they have at times been used to question and support resistance against colonialism, for instance in South Africa. the Borderlands on the US-Mexico border, and in Canada. Another is that they offer one language in which reconciliation can be explored. Shakespeare’s plays and poems have for centuries carried a set of stories through which people have reflected on issues of importance to them.
Shakespeare’s plays are one expression of a diverse and complex tradition that includes, responds to, and questions Greek and Roman, early British, Renaissance Italian, Biblical, and other histories and stories. The plays are dialogic, holding many voices and perspectives with their structures. They were written at a time of transition and change–in terms of how the land was understood and inhabited, and in terms of economic and family structures, and in terms of religious, philosophical, and scientific beliefs. They are the work of a theatre artist in collaboration with his fellow actors, observing and responding to their world, originally developed through performance practice. And they continue to be reinterpreted.
Discussing Native Earth’s workshop adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, The Death of a Chief in 2006, playwright Yvette Nolan said that she and her collaborator, Kennedy Cathy Mackinnon, “both believe that [Shakespeare] talks about things that reflect in almost anyone’s communities, and that everyone should be able to say those words if they feel like it. He coined so many words that are in the English language and so many phrases. We all go around quoting him, fighting him all the time without knowing it. That’s a pretty hefty influence on language. And language is power” (“The Death of a Chief”). In the same interview, Nolan mentions the power of theatre in working out conflicts and promoting resilience in response to colonial harms, saying “I guess that’s why this story [Julius Caesar] is so fascinating to us, because if we can work it out in this play, then maybe we can work it out in our lives, too.”
Shakespeare’s works do not provide many tidy quotes about reconciliation. Julius Caesar ends with battles that prefigure more battles. But the plays do explore ranges of human experience, violent histories, and cultural attitudes, and the true difficulty (as well as joy) of achieving good relationships, founded on truth and mutual respect. Some of the late plays (The Winter’s Tale, Pericles) particularly address coming together as a community after losses. Characters articulate experiences of loss, violence, grief, hate, love. All of the plays end with some form of tragic catharsis, tragicomic wonder, and/or the (sometimes tenuous or partial) affirmation of community continuity. It’s actually not so easy to find a Shakespeare quote that encapsulates a reconciliatory thought and that makes sense outside of the context of one of the plays. One additional place to look is the sonnets. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 describes grieving about past mistakes and losses, beginning with the lines “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought/ I summon up remembrance of things past.” The poem ends with an image of the restorative power of a strong and sustaining relationship:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
What happens if we consider what is at stake in thinking with or through these traditions, or in comparing their approaches and what we can learn from them, comparing stories with similar elements or themes?
What if we consider how the intellectual traditions embodied in Stó:lō story and in the performance, reading, and study of Shakespeare’s works address truth and reconciliation?
Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely/Each one demand and answer to his part/Performed in this wide gap of time since first/We were dissevered. (The Winter’s Tale, 5.3).
“We live in a beautiful garden that we were never cast out of ever, by anyone” (Tomson Highway).