While the initial idea behind the aesthetic was to create an interconnected root system, I changed it to become a dream catcher instead. The message of interconnectedness and living a balanced life remained my goal but the visual felt stronger than my poorly drawn root system. I quickly changed tracks and started off with an open eye as the background, representing keeping an open mind and always pursuing truth, with Riel’s silhouette inside.

Now rather than the traditional idea of a dreamcatcher I instead took my own interpretation of the concept. By fusing it with the medicine wheel and having it catch the four key steps towards truth and reconciliation. Even though the Church turned on Riel in later year’s (referenced by the broken cross fallen from the top) Riel continued to fight for Indigenous rights. Attached by cut-off braids are the four steps:

1. Medicine Wheel: The medicine wheel is to represent the personal balance you must have before fixing other issues. By bettering your own health(physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional) you can better come to terms with your own reality. Everybody should have 4 keys of wellness to help you: a pet you care for, a friend who knows the real you, a partner to share your deepest secrets with, and a role model to impart morals and ethics instilling a drive to achieve your goals. By first accomplishing this you remove self doubt and allow your true potential to take form.
2. Education: Learn what you do not know for yourself. Often times people are too distracted by what is on their phones rather than what presents itself to them. Not everything we see is factually accurate and it is our duty to ensure we fact check sources to prevent a spread of false information from deceiving us.
3. Unlearning: In order to learn you must also be able to know when something is best left behind. This ranges from terms for individuals to symbolism, language, or anything left obsolete. Just because something was deemed acceptable or believed in once does not mean it has a place in a progressive society; our job as educators is to educate youth and create a world that they can prosper in better than we ourselves did. This includes accepting when a teaching is wrong or was poorly handled and accepting blame where blame is due.
4. Relearning and Hope: The dove is the latent potential within everyone, once you have accomplished the first three steps you have done almost everything required. You have managed to find a balance in your life, learnt to detect falsehoods, left behind outdated lessons and methodologies, and now you are ready for hope. In order to make a better world you need more than just person you need a people, find your people and do what you feel is needed to improve the gift nature has given to us.

In order for true reconciliation to have been accomplished we must be able to look back as a people and admit that actions of the past should never have happened. Residential schools are a recent part of Canadian History and are an example of just how wrong humanity can be. Until every single Canadian can look back and no longer feel a hole within ourselves this history will remain unreconciled.

During class I heard a student ask: “What if someone say’s is that not enough? What if they say this is in the past and we have changed things, things are not like what they used to be.” My response was tell them that their child is being taken from them tomorrow. Tell this person that tomorrow men they have never seen will come in and take your children away from you beating you to get to them. Tell them that their hair will be cut and their culture erased, that those they were told will help them actually beat and do far worse things to them. What happened is akin to having all that happen and then not being capable of being there for them when they choose to end it all on their own terms. The devil carries a skeleton in a swaddling cloth and a braid towards the graves plot because that is what was done to the indigenous community. Faded are the rivers and fires they were used to instead all that remains is cold, unloving, and lifeless.