Kelly Bernardin-Dvorak is a therapist who lives a life of working to ever deepen her understanding of her world and to have that matter–to have it impact the world in a way that changes it.
She sees clients like most therapists do. But she lives a lifestyle of deliberate community that engages with folks in Winnipeg’s North End.
Most folks, when finishing off their Master’s degree write a long, boring paper that expounds on some theory’s relevance…mostlly in an irrelevant way.
Kelly, as she often does, broke the mold.
She gathered women together from a variety of backgrounds for a series of sharing circles to have a “Decolonization Dialogue” where aboriginal women and non-aboriginal women from a variety of backgrounds gathered together to understand each other and learn from one another.
Then they created art pieces to reflect their insights. This evening was the art show.
One word: Wow!
(second from top: the lovely Kelly)
It was one cool show…crowded full of an eclectic group of many people of different ages and stages and cultural backgrounds, visiting and admiring the the beautiful art.
Some of my favourites (pictured above):
-The Bison, a symbol and representation of Respect, was part of each circle. This piece was interactive with small squares of canvas available to write or colour on and affix to the bison by attenders. It already had something from each circle attender
-“Breaking”..Mason jars hanging from a plow…recognizing how we preserve negative things we fight against. The plow acknowledges how colonization has broken much land removing trees, shrubs and grasses..and that “much more than land has been broken and much more than land is in need of repair.”
-and my absolute favorite is the bottom of the above collage, a series of photos of bannock with the description, “It is hard to think of myself as an artist. But one thing I know how to create is Bannock! I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, I remember making and eating bannock outdoors, over the fire, with my dad. I never used a recipe. I use my eyes and my hand to decide what comes next and if we need a little more flour or baking powder. Somehow it always turns out good. So, it’s one of my gifts to share: bannock” This artist’s “art” was present at each sharing circle as she shared fresh bannock with the group…isn’t it cool how each person contributed in such different ways?
I remember baking bannock over a fire during a school project. It was awful. Half of it (the half nearest the fire) was burnt to charcoal. The other half (away from the fire) was raw. It feels like so many of my efforts to understand the aboriginal culture and situation has paralleled my bannock baking experience…I have put good effort in, but it just hasn’t worked out to be terribly productive. I still feel like the complex issues elude me, and I have trouble wrapping my head around it.
I do know what has been successful…and it parallels what the women spoke about this evening, what they drew, painted, and sewed about… that understanding comes out of relationship.
One of the profound privileges of my life as a therapist is that I get the “inside view” of people’s lives, and as I’ve had opportunity to work with aboriginal clients, they have taught me about the pain of their lives, the beauty of their traditions, the struggle to know their traditions, the confusion about how to live as warm families when there are few or no reference points in their family history to draw on. Listening to their stories and challenges and successes have taught me much.
During the sharing circle, Kelly had the participants pass around a “talking brick”…from the Yellow Warehouse that used to stand beside the Flatlander’s Art Studio. It was demolished seemingly rather suddenly…but for those that lived near, it was anything but sudden with years of dialogue and decision making, then months of ensuring the decision was the right one, and then delays, and then weeks of preparation before it “suddenly” was torn down. It is Kelly’s hope that decolonization would mimic the Yellow Warehouse…it may be difficult to notice, but over time infinitessimily, shifts will occur and then “all of a sudden” big shift will happen.
I’m convinced that decolonization demolition happens with the removal of one small brick at a time, over and over, here and there, with this and that happening. It happens one relationship at a time. One conversation at a time. One person at a time realizing we might use different language to express our ideas, but we actually, down deep, aren’t so different after all…and with closely connecting one relationship at a time we will discover that.
It is the responsibility on the part of each of us to open ourselves up to relationships, that while new will feel strange, but will ultimately be life giving and working to help us live in harmony as a united nation of Canada. We are all treaty people…and we all need to figure out how to be honorable to the good intentions of the leaders that signed them.
It won’t be easy…but then worthwhile tasks rarely are.
The Flatlanders Art Studio is open for public viewing January 26 and Feburary 2 from 1-4 for further viewing of this exhibit. Check it out?
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