Turtle Island - Cassia Tremblay
Updated: Jun 24, 2020
I was shown a creation story
it started on the back of a turtle and it moves just as slow
Centuries and generations of people
given no room to grow
See this story isn’t about crow, coyote, or bear
it’s about human beings treated staggeringly unfair
As Contact became Canada
not all were welcomed and the lives they had been living were deemed discretionary,
up to interpretation and impressionable
Or perhaps susceptible, definitely dispensable
As time went on people saw their homelands “legally” shrink
by the same unfettered visitor who introduced the drink
And he brought illness, and judgement, and power somehow
in the form of steel guns and foreign monies he thought the First Peoples should all bow down
He rose up with a flag red and white in the end
Seemed to forget his knee was in the back of the Original Nations he had forced to bend
The nations were flowers but now their blooms had been turned down from the sun
They gained the white man’s problems but none of his guns
They were stripped of language, and family, and art, and given over to nuns
In a brick building stretched across trusted lands
the least trustworthy of acts imposed on children
as if it were some vile truth of greater plans
I sat around a reconciling campfire with a sister who recounted the loss of her brother
She only lived across the street but once he stepped into that brick building, he became another
Her family was torn apart at the seams,
her ribbon dress tattered at the knees
from crying in the streets as her brother
marched by in a waistcoat
He couldn’t even turn his head, or he would be beat
He was just trying to stay afloat
After a loathsome infinity the brick building did close
but the damage had been done
A once vibrant community victim to a smoking gun
The ripples spread out from the back of the turtle here
Forward through generations who reconcile most easily with abandonment and fear
The ripples rock the bodies of the people we meet
through lack of food access, tradition and care
it resonates through the community a sickly and off-rhythm drumbeat
But they are still making the drums
moose hides stretched over birch wood
just as the ancestors would
A community heart that is beating and thriving despite it all
Yes, addiction and mental illness lays just below the ground
but doesn’t it everywhere in Canada where our foundations are so unsound?
So my role in healthcare
What will it be?
How can I work with these nations
without making them revolve around me?
The first step seems easy
it’s simple to care
To listen unwaveringly, no pretense in the air
And if I listen strong enough, I will hear the ripples of the turtle and the drumbeat of a song
The whole world can be a reconciling campfire
Even if all the damage can’t be undone
Through the First Nations Community Education Program, I experienced daily life in Lower Post from the position of a learner. This poem was written following the conclusion of the week-long program. It reflects my shift in perspective and appreciation for the community that shared so much of itself with my classmates and I.
Artist bio : As a final year UBC medical student, Cassia believes stories are essential to understanding and supporting the health of individuals and communities.