September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada — a day to honour the Victims and Survivors of residential schools, and to reflect on the painful impact and legacy of colonization across Turtle Island.

To mark the day, creators Cathie Jamieson and Karen Krossing have shared their thoughts on the importance of Truth and Reconciliation, both in their lives and in their new book, My Street Remembers.

What does reconciliation mean to you? 

Cathie Jamieson: To reconnect with pure honesty and truth to a relationship with another. To understand that through collective action we shape the way we connect with one another culturally, historically and intellectually. To understand that we archive our lived experiences and use the metric of behavioural fairness and justice. When there is a disconnect and an imbalance that is when we raise the question of collective effort in a shared relationship with another. Honest discussion and correction are needed to uphold the value of human integrity for a fair and just society. The integrated practice of existing and actively living with a good mind and a good heart.

Karen Krossing: As Michelle Good discusses in Truth Telling: Seven Conversations About Indigenous Life in Canada, “Colonialism is the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” My personal journey of reconciliation begins with acknowledging the role of my ancestors in holding this land in what is now North America so that more powerful forces could extract resources and harm the Indigenous Peoples who had lived here since time immemorial. That’s hard to accept and process. My ancestors were settlers, and I’ve inherited present-day advantages as a result.

For me, reconciliation means that I listen to Indigenous creators, elders, and knowledge keepers. I deepen my knowledge of past and present Indigenous worldviews, languages and truths. I participate in the difficult conversation about reconciliation by speaking from my identity as a White settler of this land. I believe that we all have a role to play in healing and creating a positive future. We need a street of voices speaking out.

How do you see your book as an act of reconciliation?

KK: I grew up hearing stories of my ancestors as settlers, farmers and teachers. As I got older and learned about the displacement and mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples on the land where I live, I felt discomfort in my body. I followed that discomfort to write this book.

As Murray Sinclair wrote in Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation, “Children need to know their personal story. We all need to know the stories of our parents and our grandparents, our direct and indirect ancestors, and our real and mythological villains and heroes. As part of the story, we also need to know about the story of the community of people to which we are attached — our collective story — all the way back to our place in the creation of the world.”

This manuscript began as an exploration of place over a vast period of time. I saw it as honouring the collective life of all who had walked here, grown and loved here, suffered and lost here. I wanted it to be a cross-species and cross-cultural story of place told through the history of one street. Creating this book became a journey of reconciliation for me. It also became a collective journey.

My approach to this book was collaborative from the beginning. At the urging of a writing friend, I approached the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, on whose Treaty Lands and Traditional Territory I live, with a request to read an early draft. Elected Councillor Erma Ferrell generously welcomed me and connected me with Darin Wybenga, Traditional Knowledge and Land Use Coordinator. They have co-created this book through their openness to share and discuss. When Cathie Jamieson joined the project as illustrator, we met several times, along with Groundwood Publisher Karen Li, to open my manuscript to feedback from Cathie. This feedback on my words was instrumental, and our book grew from forty to forty-eight pages to expand its vision in powerful, new ways. Our collaborative approach not only strengthened the final book, but it also provided a model for how community connection can spark healing, growth and reconciliation.

CJ: My Street Remembers shares the joint experience of personal activation towards reconciliation. The book holds space for reflections of place, the way the land and the street have seen several historical moments of change over time in North America. This collaboration with the author, illustrator, publisher, editors and knowledge keepers had the honest dialogue when revisiting the narratives of place. This book reviews the highlights of settlement but also the forms of intergenerational traumas that are historically noted, systemically perpetuated and generationally experienced in Canada. This book allows for the reader to revisit the progressive journey of one street within Canada to share historical memories back into place. This book is asking the reader to raise the awareness in questions like, “What does your street remember?” To live a balanced life, we are asking ourselves to be present and to make every relationship of exchange more meaningful and fully informed with truth of our intentions, we have to reconcile our distances and differences.

All our spaces we live in today hold many forms of historical traumas from past social practices, so the act of reconciliation is to always open the discussion with truth. To acknowledge and accept the intergenerational traumas that guided the past, to acknowledge and accept the shared responsibilities of present-day actions towards reconciliation, and to acknowledge and accept that the traumatic cycles of past generations will not exist for the generations of the future.