It’s been ten years.
With no set deadline.
That was intentional.
Everything is intentional.
On June 2, 2015, the Release of the 94 Calls to Action came out, not a Release as one might think but this was a Release of a decrepit dam decades old, built by colonial settlers and systems not to tame okâwîmâwaskiy (Mother Earth) but to strangle it. See, this particular dam repressed poisonous secrets, whispers of ghosts through cracks of the buried First Nation children in mass graves, and suppressed the flow of 87 years of TRUTH.
I write and speak from personal experience and perspective; this is not meant to speak for all. I began this personal conversation back in 2016, all I knew was I wanted to honor my dad, he was still very much alive and full of life then. I will honor my dad till I leave okâwîmâwaskiy (Mother Earth) to the spirit world.
My healing learning journey started back in 1997 when I was an undergrad in the Faculty of Native Studies, it was the first time I ever heard the words INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. Things we were never taught back in the 80s in High School in an all white school in a very small town that we were bussed into everyday from the Rez, yet this was our birthright to know.
This moved me into wanting to reckon with realities that Blue Quills Indian Residential School had on my dad, my hero, nohtawiy George Dion and my aunts and uncles yet I did not know then how this would make my body viscerally respond in a rage. A kind of rage that crawled up into my throat like fire. It was like a storm I didn’t summon. Yet, a rage that needed to be heard, felt and named.
It wasn't until September 19, 2007, when this conversation about an Indian Residential Schools (IRS) Settlement Agreement came about (the largest out-of-court settlement in Canadian history), to address the cruel and dehumanizing legacy of the Indian Residential Schools. Its main components aimed to provide healing, education, and lasting truth and reconciliation that had a comprehensive report along with Calls to Action aimed at informing the public and fostering reconciliation.
It was an unforgettable day when my dad had to go into TESTIFY to speak his TRUTH about what happened to him in Blue Quills Indian Residential School (BQIRS). My mom Arlene remembers that it took my dad over two years to gather all of his “evidence.” The evidence was buried deep into his soul and burned permanently in his mind. A silence decades old, beginning at a tiny age of seven. A year in the life of a child that is meant to be curious, imaginative, and playful. Yet, for my dad this meant returning to the soul wounds of his childhood to confront the abuse he endured for four years in BQIRS. This truth remains indispensable to his children and grandchildren, to understand the deeper why as to who my dad was. I am certain he once believed he would carry these secrets to his grave. I can only imagine how emotionally exhausting and heart breaking it was for him to finally speak about it. My dad was quiet, shaped by his experiences too deep for language. His silence was sacred as I now know it is where unspoken truths dwelled.
It shatters my soul knowing it shattered his.
I never went in to listen to his testimony. All I told him was “it's time to speak your truth, now dad maybe you will now get justice” (yet silently I was praying for his inner peace). He told me he couldn't bear me hearing his abuse. I sat outside the room for hours, still, silent and praying. He is a grown man now. I knew that. But in my heart, he was still that little boy at seven years old, waiting, needing and hoping. And I stayed there not because he needed me, but because I needed him to survive this part just as he survived being in that school. I needed him to survive this part of telling his truth. My dad’s truth is now a piece of history amongst thousands of other survivors that is forever embedded into the TRC CALLS TO ACTION. It’s a core memory that I will protect forever, not to soothe me but to remind me to speak my truth.
I now realize that another pivotal day was when we sat in chairs row by row listening to the revered late leader Justice Murray Sinclair. It was the TRC’s seventh and final event at the Shaw Conference Centre on March 27-30, 2014. It was the final location to gather the testimonies of IRS survivors. When late Justice Sinclair spoke it was how he was able to move the room, with a quiet power, with integrity woven so deeply into every word. When he spoke it felt like the world paused and I was the only one in it. What an honour it was to be spiritually, physically and mentally be there that day. I will cherish that moment forever.
As I sit reflecting each year to write for The Quad it always begins with I have no idea what to write. Will anyone still care about Orange Shirt Day? Who’s going to read this? Who will this resonate with? And when I write I have huge self doubts. For anyone new here I always ask that if you have time to sit with me mahti (please) grab yourself a maskihkîwâpoy (tea) or nîpiy (water), and find a quiet space somewhere you love the most. Hopefully where you can see pîsim (sun) or tipiskâw-pîsim (moon), and just be as present … as present as one can be in 2025. It is through âcimowin (stories) that we begin to understand the world around us. I simply cannot separate my life from my work or my work from my life because this is where the blood in my veins goes back to: nitsiy (my belly button). Storytelling creates story-listening which creates sharing of wisdom.
I don’t know why this day but it was, Saturday September 13, 2025, a calm 13 degrees at 7:20AM as I sat in my home staring out the window, reminiscing of how the Fall releases all that it has held onto from the past year. Leaves fall for a reason, a kind of dormancy and protection over the tree.
I cry.
With a science lens as each leaf falls, sheds if you will, it creates an abscission layer which is like a sealing of a scar to prevent water loss and infection.
How beautiful is that?
To be honest I’m not a huge fan of fall, even though it is filled with a beauty that overflows with the most intensity of hues and textures. We are no longer just sitting amongst lush and vibrant greens, we begin to live (for even just a moment) enwrapped in rich golds, immersed in deep full reds, and for a quick moment burst of orange, you can still see remnants of flowers still trying to survive even on the darkest chilliest of days, along with so many brightful and joyful yellows.
It’s the most beautiful and precious time of the year.
We even fall back into time, we move into further darkness, even more stillness. It is at this time when this transition begins to happen, I feel like I have to also layer myself in protection to seal off scars that prevent the tears from shedding for far too long. Honoring that there is a much deeper intergenerational and ancestral connection to Fall that one might think. For many it's simply leaves falling for me it is much more dormant than that. Not a season changing, a weight settling in. Like soil refusing to freeze. There is a numbness that comes over me that is pressed deep into the belly of okâwîmâwaskiy (Mother Earth) where harm can never reach.
Okay, back to the epiphany I had on this cool calm morning about when I saw the word RELEASE, it was as if I saw it for the first time. Sometimes that’s all it takes for me to hear or see a word that just resonates, and it begins to swarm my mind then I start to write from ancestral memory and it all begins to flow like a stream of consciousness as it finds its way upon white flat pages.
A flow of emotional honesty, if you will.
Ten years have come and gone after the release of the 94 Calls to Action; that simple and that complex. As I have said for years this is about holding the good and the bad simultaneously because for anyone who has settled here you don't just get the good parts. To truly be present means you must feel, hear and acknowledge what this RELEASE means at its depths;
This was a release of holding back Truth Tellings that were meant to go to the grave with no justice… no peace… along with Indian Residential School Survivors.
“KILL the Indian in the CHILD.”
This was a release of all the emotions bottled up into little First Nation boys and girls who never learned to express themselves in a healthy way.
This was a release of long-lived trauma, a pain they have carried in silence, often coping in unhealthy ways as a means to purely survive.
The release of violence and abuse of an unimaginable cruelty inflicted on little First Nation girls’ and boys’ bodies, minds and spirits.
The release of the reality that this was intentional harm upon First Nation children.
Everything is intentional.
Releasing the loss of truth tellings lost or distorted, the truth lived by our parents and grandparents lived, rewritten, silenced or omitted entirely by colonial hands.
This was a release of IRS Survivors having to no longer carry this trauma of sexual violence, emotional manipulation and physical abuse alone.
The release of an innocence lost.
This was a release of the truth of what really was happening within those cold brick mortared walls, and creaking metal dorms where tiny First Nations children were laid into unfamiliar beds, wrapped in fear, prayed upon by real life monsters; Priests, Nurses and Teachers while they slept.
The release of terror inflicted when a child should have been able to sleep peacefully.
This was a release of the unrest and uncertainty.
This was a release of all the unanswered whys, the questions the first generation survivors could finally begin to understand.
This wasn’t just a release of Calls to Action, this was a release of grief, loss, pain, rage, anger, hurt, most of all a deep state of shame.
A release of forced disconnection to family, home and ceremonies caused by violent colonial policies created to carry out cultural genocide.
This was a release of their true feelings and voice; for the first time Indian Residential School Survivors finally got to have their voice and their truth heard.
A release of deeply buried emotions, rising to the surface and emerging in many forms, physical tremors, emotional outbursts, or mental exhaustion; each a discharging of long held pain.
Releasing an anger that was not just about an outburst, it's a defence mechanism.
Releasing the shields they had to build as children.
The release of being paralyzed by a fear for decades, cornered by things too big for a child to comprehend, left to fight alone.
This was the release for many Indian Residential School Survivors for the first time, and for some the only time they were able to speak their truth about the horrors of real life monsters they endured in the schools they were stolen to.
Releasing the realities of babies buried in the backs of these schools was not just an unveiling of truth, but a collective breaking of silence that shattered what denial had long tried to bury.
Releasing that we, as the first generation, will never know the full truth of our parents’ stories is its own kind of grief, a mourning not just for what was lost, but for the connection we were never given the chance to fully form, the understanding we were never able to reach, and the sympathy we longed to offer but never truly could.
A release of indoctrination forced upon them, thoughts not their own, planted to erase who they were, where they were from and truly to break their spirits.
Releasing the pain that required so much courage to even begin the healing journey is a quiet act of resistance, a true testament to strength born from survival, and the first step toward reclaiming what was never meant to be taken so violently.
Releasing of long held whys carried by inter-generational IRS Survivors, questions once entombed in silence.
Releasing memories once buried now meant to be heard, to be held and to be witnessed.
Releasing the reality that first-generation IRS Survivors were born into broken hearts is for me to finally name it, the inheritance of silence, sorrow and strength, carried long before we had the words to understand it.
Are you still with me? I hope you are drinking some of your maskihkîwâpoy (tea) or nîpiy (water).
There was no deadline.
As is often the way in western systems, because this is about ongoing and forever change, an enduring responsibility that must be carried by government, all institutions and every Canadian. Anyone who is privileged to live on this land shares in the collective duty to actively answer and uphold the Calls to Action. Just as the late revered leader Justice Murray Sinclair stated this is not a “us” problem “it is a Canadian one and it involves all of us.”
There will come a moment
that will not be planned,
that will not be loud.
When a body finally exhales all that it holds,
all that it has buried for years,
decades, even centuries.
When the soul leans in and whispers “now”.
It begins with a shaking, which is sacred,
as the body begins to remember what the mind once forced it to forget.
As the body aches it starts to stretch back to ancient times,
to the moment the colonizers first foot print began to devour and consume our Relatives upon these lands.
And the breath you hear rising loudly from their chest is a birthright that once was strangled by betrayal and shame,
Now reclaiming itself.
Then there will be a trembling and… it will rise
but mahti (please) it is not to be feared because
this is the TRUTH breaking through that dam built centuries ago.
It is a monster of a thing that diminished and dehumanized, that was never meant to break
because its sole purpose was meant to hold back what was never meant to be exposed.
What was hidden will… now be seen.
Don’t worry because when that raging water breaks that damn
It's nothing to be feared.
It's all the little children’s tears bursting through all that they suppressed just to survive
as they lived amongst strangers and real life monsters.
It’s all of their childhood tears that they repressed in fear of being beaten for simply missing their moms and dads love and hugs.
Just know that their tears will fall for some time and for as long as it takes,
until each tear finds its way back to the quiet existence of peace where rivers slowly flow behind some old willow trees.
Where no one tramples and destroys, diminishes and dehumanizes, devours and consumes, strikes and silences, erases and obliterates, deceives and betrays, shames and punishes.
All of this vulgarity that was stuck within tiny First Nations children's bodies for centuries moves from raging wild rapid waters into a serene winding scenic river.
I pray my dad gets to now simply be authentically himself and is laughing and joking alongside his siblings cheerfully, speaking nêhiyawêwin (Cree) with his family heartily, lighting maskihkiy (medicine) copiously, and that he is inherently cared for by okâwîmâwaskiy.
Dad, let go now
As I need to somehow let you go too.
Release what your mind, your heart and bones
were forced to carry in silence.
I will try to do the same.
The heaviness buried deep
Too deep for a child to carry alone.
I know that now.
I pray your spirit has shaken loose all of the pain.
Let it rise like smoke to kîsik (sky).
I pray your little self found joy where you are now.
Maybe not in this world,
but in the next.
Maybe not in justice but in peace.
Maybe for me too.
Now I whisper to you
nôhtâwiy (dad)
Now you can rest.
okâwîmâwaskiy (Mother Earth) holds you in warmth
where violence can no longer reach you.
No more raised hands of evil.
No more silence where there should have been songs.
You are now wrapped in the spirit of kikâwiy (your mom) and kôhtâwiy (your dad)
greeting the little boy in you.
The little Cree boy who never stopped looking for protection
From monsters who wore human faces.
You were only seven, Dad!
I know that now.
You were too young to know fear so deeply.
Too young to hide from shadows that should have never been cast.
But hear me now.
There are no monsters where you are.
Only light. Only quiet. Only ancestral songs. Only sâkihitowin (love).
You are safe. You are free.
But me,
I'm still here,
And I will not be quiet.
