My 3 Paths to Reconciliation

My journey through reconciliation and decolonization as a non-Indigenous person has been beautifully uncomfortable. I am inviting you to walk with me as I tell a part of my reconciliation story.

It is important to note that your reconciliation journey will look different, and that’s okay. What matters is that each of us commits to learning, listening, and taking meaningful steps forward.

This is reconciliation for me. 

These are three of the many paths toward reconciliation that I have discovered:

• The path of fear
• The path of truth
• The path of identity

As you will see, these paths all intersect.

For me, the only way to do the work of reconciliation is to walk through them.

The Path of Fear

I will start here for an obvious reason: I am scared.

If you’re a non-Indigenous person, you’ve likely asked yourself questions like these:

• What if I make a mistake?
• What if I say something wrong?
• What if I offend someone?
• What if I hurt someone’s feelings?

I’ve asked myself these questions.

I still do.

In my past, I would have probably categorized these fears as white fragility – and they were – but now I’ve come to see them as self-awareness. I’m now at a place where I would call these healthy fears – the kind that make me more mindful and aware. They keep me in the present where I can grow, learn, evolve, and recentre myself.

After reading Robin DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, I learned that it is not what if I make a mistake, it’s I will make a mistake – what matters is how I allow myself to be corrected.

The fact is I am white, cisgender, born female, and raised in a colonial world. I will say something that is outdated, racist, or evokes negative feelings in another person. This isn’t because I am a “bad” person – rather, it’s because I have been colonized and live in a context where my whiteness is the “norm.”

The difference for me now versus 25 years ago is my awareness. I am doing the work to know my past, my truths, and my story.

Awareness is key.

Recently, I sat with Natasha Turner, an Indigenous Knowledge holder whom I consider ceremony family. She is an incredibly kind-hearted, wise woman who comes from a long line of healers and helpers. 

I sat with her out on her land, which she calls “The Farm,” sharing how I had recently been told by a long-time friend (Indigenous) that I had known for 15 years that I said three things over the course of our friendship that upset her. That she spoke with other people about this recently and they decided it was best our friendship end.  After 15 years as dear friends, she stated: “You do not get it Heather, you never will. You are not brown. You should never work with brown people again.” After these words, they terminated our friendship stating “there is no room for you to speak; just listen and accept”.  So, I did.

Whatever you are most scared of, walk into it and through it. Take it and learn from it. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

This hurt – badly. 

My intention in sitting with Natasha was to talk about my fear of walking this path as a non-Indigenous helper. I was questioning my place in life and my worth in this work, which felt like a painful contradiction. How could it be that for the past 14 years, Natasha and her whole family had invited me to walk alongside them, and this friend for the past 15 years tells me I should ‘never work with brown people again?”.

I asked Natasha, “Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this work?” I spoke about my fears of going forward as a non-Indigenous person, walking and working alongside Indigenous people in both traditional and nontraditional ways.  The last thing I wanted was to cause harm.

I shared that my fear, combined with other people’s reactions to me, was leading me to consider quitting.
In her wise way, she in turn shared her story with me. 

She said that one day she was sitting with her father, David Blacksmith of Pimicikamak Cree Nation, talking to him about her fears – fears that were taking over and preventing her from doing the work she was called to do. She told me she was scared to present in front of others. 

Natasha and her family have dedicated their time to teaching and sharing traditional ways and spiritual teachings across Canada. They are healers and helpers. They work with everyone.

Her father asked her, “My girl, what are you most scared of?”
She responded, “I’m scared because I do not have my language. I’m scared people are going to call me out for that.”
His response was, “Then start where you are most scared. Say it before they can say it to you.”

She advised me to do the same. Whatever I was most scared of was my starting point.

I hold this close to my heart on this journey.

As I stated earlier, one of my fears is making a mistake – getting my words wrong. Now this is where I start. When I introduce myself, I acknowledge the land and water and the privilege I walk with. I then say, “When I make a mistake today – not if – I would appreciate and am open to you letting me know. You can do this publicly in front of this group or privately. I am here to listen and learn. The only thing I ask is that it’s done in a good way, not with hate.”

Whatever you are most scared of, walk into it and through it. Take it and learn from it.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

This is reconciliation for me.

Weaving Indigenous and Western Healing Approaches

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The Path of Truth

How can we discuss fear if we do not address truth? Can we truly understand our fears without first facing the truths behind them?  Naming the realities of our history, privilege, and identity gives our fears context and meaning.

This is reconciliation for me.

Allow me to share another story of who I am and where I come from.

In 2006, I went to university for the first time. At that stage in my life, I was a white, middle-class woman living in a predominantly white, middle-class neighbourhood. My thoughts about my own life (and life in general) were neutral. I was on a path to earning my BSW, and the program was designed to be part-time, with classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays so students could continue working and managing their personal lives. The school was located in the city’s North End – Winnipeg’s inner city – where the population is still primarily marginalized and faces significant oppression. 

This is when I first learned about residential schools, colonization, and the truth of Canada’s history. I can still recall how it felt to hear the history and stories. Over the next few years, I remember listening as those words sank into my body and connected with my mind and my thinking:

• I am that person they speak about.
• I am a white European colonizer.
• It was my ancestors who did this.

White guilt set in quickly. The shame crashed over me, deep and real. I felt horrible, and I wanted nothing to do with who I was or where I came from.

I began to distance myself from my own culture and heritage. I didn’t want to be me because it was too painful. I tried to avoid it all.

I found myself entrenched in more education. I began learning about the Indian Act and how the Canadian Confederation came to be. I also started reading about Indigenous ways of knowing – ceremony, spirituality, culture, the land and territories across Canada. I began to romanticize Indigenous peoples and their ways of knowing, living, and being.

But I was doing this while villainizing my own ways of living, knowing, and being. This is where appropriation crept in. I desired a culture that sounded as beautiful and loving as Indigenous culture, while all the time trying to avoid mine.

When I share these vulnerable parts of my story now, I often use humour in my healing: “It was like I was wanting a different culture so badly that I was trying to be Indigenous.”

I began to romanticize Indigenous peoples and their ways of knowing, living, and being.

This wasn’t far from the truth, but what I was really doing was avoiding being me.
Unbeknownst to me, from 1998–2012, I was doing the work. I did the mental and physical work. I went to school part-time, worked full-time, and built a family of my own. I was learning about who I was.

In 2012, another white student and I were told we could not walk in with our graduating class at the Grand Entry Pow Wow because we were not Indigenous. I humbly accepted this and stepped back. I moved to the sidelines and thought to myself: This is fair. For hundreds of years, white people haven’t allowed Indigenous people to participate in the world. I get it. 

Truthfully, I was sad, hurt, and slightly ashamed of myself. But still, I moved aside.

It was one of my dear mentors who shared that, “This is not our way; we do not exclude people.” He went directly to the university administration in that moment, and before we knew it, my white classmate and I were in line with our peers for the Grand Entry Pow Wow graduation ceremony.

We were accepted and included for who we were. We were invited into the circle.

This is reconciliation for me.

This is also where the emotional and spiritual work began. When you start learning, centring, and relearning truths, you are bound to cross paths with your identity, or lack thereof.

The reality is, I cannot be Indigenous – that is not my culture, my ethnicity, or my way of knowing. But what I can be is me. 

The Path of Identity

On this journey, I have had the honour of walking alongside many knowledgeable and patient people. I have walked with Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, youth, families, teachers, allies, knowledge holders, and academics. I have also had the honour to get know my history, my family and history. It’s on this path that I have learned who I am and where I came from.

The reality is, I cannot be Indigenous – that is not my culture, my ethnicity, or my way of knowing. But what I can be is me. 

To truly know who I am and where I come from, I had to explore those paths – my fears, my truths, and my story. I needed to embrace the discomfort – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. I had to learn, unlearn, relearn, and centre myself. 

This was decolonization and reconciliation for me.  

For over 25 years, I have been walking in the exploration of my identity – discovering who I am. 

I have learned that I didn’t know who I was for most of my life. I was walking around oblivious to a world that was designed to benefit my whiteness. This is part of the problem for me and for Canada as a whole. Canada’s history and the colonization of this country have assimilated everyone. It has colonized everyone. To authentically practice reconciliation, I realized I needed to acknowledge my privilege and uncover my story. There is beauty in every story.

I now know that my ancestors come from Russia, Poland, and Germany. I am a fourth and fifth generation settler occupier on this land. For so long, I was blind to the fact that I was absorbed into the power and privilege of whiteness.

Reconciliation was walking into this fear – this truth – and standing in my identity. Yes, along with my ancestry and their actions came an abundance of hurt.  There is also space for me to find the beauty in my identity.  My role is to grow, learn, evolve, and recentre myself.

What I have learned is this: I can’t be anyone other than me! I can now choose how I walk in this world. An Elder once told me, “Once you know, you cannot unknow, and it is what you do with the knowing that is so powerful.”

Conclusion

For me, reconciliation means walking into my fears, learning my truths, and standing in my identity. None of this happens in a linear or individualistic way – it is circular, and each piece is interconnected.

My journey to finding myself meant leaning into others to uncover my fears, truths, and identity; it was full circle. I was so busy avoiding who I was and trying to be someone else, that I was missing the beauty and relationships that were happening within both worlds. 

It is because of people like Natasha Turner, David Blacksmith (including their whole family), along with the many children, youth, and families who invited me to walk alongside them that I was able to see the beauty.

And it was because of my own family and my loved ones their stories, their patience and love that I was able to take the time to ask myself and find the answers to:

• Who am I?
• Where do I come from?
• How did I get here?
• Where do I want to go?

Our stories hold our truths.

It is also deeply healing to take the time to ask others:

• Who are you?
• Where do you come from?
• How did you get here?
• Where are you going?
• How can we walk together?

Reconciliation in our context invites us to repair a relationship that was never truly healthy. Now, we have an opportunity to build something new – rooted in truth, identity, and the beauty of walking together. By knowing ourselves, honouring the land and its original peoples, and embracing the relationships within both worlds, we can create a relationship that is authentic and healing.

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