Oct 3rd - Exit Slip

 I was faced with a strong awareness of Truth and Reconciliation in my sit-spot today. On Monday, I visited the Musqueam garden on campus. It is a practice that on Truth and Reconciliation day, the visitors to the garden symbolically place bamboo chutes with orange ribbon throughout the garden. Each chute represents children lost to the horrors of the Canadian Residential School system. Everyone who places a chute is grounding a child – the chute will stay there for one year. After this time, the chutes are burned. I cannot speak generally to the care expected of each person who places a chute, however I know that it is encouraged to visit the chute you place – in this way, you are bringing awareness to these children, caring for them, caring for future generations. After speaking with a caretaker of the garden, I received permission to bring a chute to the Orchard Garden. I was uncertain to how this would be received generally, and so have placed it near my sit spot. It is not hidden, however I do see that I placed it so as keep these children in my mind.

And so, when I went to my sit-spot today, an orange ribbon greeted me, frozen in the chilly air. It reminded me of the children frozen, those who never had opportunities to grow and live enriching lives. I feel a responsibility to disrupt the system that propagated these horrors. The realities of this system are still so entrenched in our ways of living. I wrote this (Fibonacci) poem:

Truth

Reconciliation

Dead Children

Canada, the Corporation

Safe Haven, Surrounded by Machines

Empires that Stupefy, Silence, and Sterilize our Authenticity

 Frankly I don’t think I’m very poetic. Lyrically I’m not very clever… I don’t generally communicate through metaphor. This doesn’t bother me – music is my creative outlet and I’ve learned to share much more authentically with this medium. Perhaps I will play music in the garden someday.

I did enjoy our conversation today in the garden. I liked the exercise of expressing the contrived binaries Western culture places on us. Personally, I find it useful to think of these binaries as ‘drawing lines’ – for instance, in western culture, it seems natural to draw a very bold line between the masculine and feminine. While I don’t agree with many of the lines drawn by western culture, I do feel that drawing lines is a necessary practice for us to make sense of the world. With this in mind, I recall Teij’s question: What do we mean by alternate ways of knowing? Personally, I think alternate ways of knowing correlate with how you draw your lines. Instead of a line between Masculine / Feminine, why not draw lines that delineate the dominant energies we channel? Our society has Warriors, Magicians, Healers, Leaders, Teachers… to name only a few. I do not know how to draw lines, but I do feel strongly that the binaries we acknowledged on the chalkboard were all reflective of one way of knowing. Different ways of knowing will draw different lines. At a minimum, it is our responsibility as teachers to show students that there are lines and that they do NOT need to be there. At best, I hope one day we can offer students advice when drawing their own lines.