For the past several months, I’ve been co-hosting a Montréal dinner and conversation series to explore the emerging global movement around regeneration. When my two co-hosts and I realized that the next gathering would fall on September 30 – Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation – it felt appropriate to honor the significance of the day. It was also a moment to explore the connection between Indigenous wisdom, reconciliation and regeneration, as far as our group of non-Native people understand these things. This week, as many parts of my US homeland celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I’m continuing to reflect on the meaningful things worth sharing from our dinner conversation.
In fact, the gathering was not without risk and uncertainty. There is always the delicate dance of honoring without appropriating and without making it about ourselves. For me, there was an added layer of tension. I have been included in several social media call-outs among the most visible advocates of the regenerative movement. “Shouldn’t we put decolonization at the center of this movement?” some have asked. And more pointedly: “Why aren’t you doing that?”
In response, I’ve been candidly uncertain about what is mine to do and where my voice belongs within that part of the work. My sense has been that my contributions serve decolonization without calling it that, inviting people into a life-aligned worldview and into the practice of wise, compassionate stewardship as profound participation within a living world. I would leave it to those who have experienced colonization most directly, most unjustly, to speak of the doorway of decolonization.
But that hasn’t felt like a satisfying answer. I’ve wondered if I’m actually just avoiding discomfort, or if I’m secretly reluctant to de-center myself, after working so long and hard to be among those most visible advocates. I’ve wondered if my visibility comes with responsibility to advocate for others, particularly those who carry the Indigenous wisdom this movement likes to hold up as evidence and inspiration. There is surely truth in all of these scenarios.
And yet it was clear: on this Day of Truth and Reconciliation, we could not ignore the call to acknowledge historical and present-day injustices. And we should not pass up the opportunity – not to make it about ourselves, but to make of ourselves better allies, even if indirectly, of Indigenous peers and ultimately of life itself.
Among those who directly serve reconciliation and decolonization, there is the concept of creating an “ethical space” for engagement, first described by Cree legal scholar Willie Ermine, in which multiple cultures, knowledge systems and worldviews may coexist in mutual respect. Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall further introduced the concept of “Two-Eyed Seeing,” viewing the world ”from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and … from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together.”
Reflecting on our local dinner, I can say that we left with broader perspectives and expanded hearts, better prepared to engage in an ethical space as the opportunity arises. Surely, that is something.
For those who are drawn to convening conversations like these, I’ll describe the experience and some of its emergent insights. This is one shape the work of this movement, and perhaps the work of decolonization, can take.
We started by gathering in a standing circle, with co-host Nathalia Del Moral Fleury calling the 18 of us together. She later invited us to connect with another person in the group and introduce ourselves through our relationship with the land.
Our second co-host, Sarah Grigsby Msc. PCC, offered a calming, grounding visualization, inviting us to imagine roots spreading from our feet into the Earth and a leafy canopy stretching between us overhead, creating safe haven and connection.
It was then to me to lead us in the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a ritual held at the beginning of important gatherings among Native people of these lands. Also called “The Words That Come Before All Else,” it is “a way to get everyone in a good mind to work together for the best for all,” connecting with our broadest context and responsibility. From multiple sources, non-Indigenous people have been granted permission to conduct this ritual, in which one person speaks greetings and gratitude to different aspects of the natural world, starting with the people convened. For example, one version offered by the Six Nations Indian Museum starts like this:
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
From there, greetings and thanks are offered to Mother Earth, and then to other aspects of the living world, working up to Grandmother Moon, elder brother the Sun, and ultimately the Creator. After each greeting, over and over, the gathered group says all together: “Now our minds are one.”
“Imagine if all meetings started that way,” someone later remarked with a sense of wonder and a tinge of sorrow. Another confessed that speaking the words all together made him uncomfortable, reminding him of Catholic Mass. “But I like to be uncomfortable,” he added with some humor. “My contact with First Nations culture and communities has helped me heal the wound with the sacred,” offered another man. “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.” “And we need to make a place for tolerance of discomfort,” said another in the now-seated circle, “without needing to solve it.”
Someone else shared her craving for a way to describe the ritual more meaningfully: “It’s so much more than an Address. It’s like a prayer.” Another suggested “ode.” “An Ode to Nature.” I revealed that I had been moved to tears the first time I experienced it, realizing that I had lived most of a lifetime unaware that there is a more beautiful, meaningful way of being in the world. Someone pointed out that this seems to be a common sentiment: so many of us feel a sense of grief and loss for something we’ve never known.
Nathalia then led us in a simple exercise to recall something we did in the past week that was pleasant, carrying a sense of rightness and integrity, and then something less pleasant and aligned, noticing the contrasting feelings. We can become numb to our own felt sensations and the information they provide. One woman shared that the pleasant experience she recalled was working in her garden, rejoicing in the dirt and the day, and her unpleasant experience was going grocery shopping. “Both are supposed to be about nourishing me with food!” she exclaimed. And we wondered: how did we find ourselves with that second experience, such a core part of our lives, but that feels so misaligned with life and thriving? And what more is possible, if a spirit of gratitude, groundedness and reverence could only be infused at every stage of the process?
From there, we moved into three 20-minute rounds of conversation in small groups, changing tables between rounds to cross-pollinate the observations and insights that emerged. Our starting question was a weighty one:
How do I experience a colonized world in my life?
Without diminishing or distracting from the unimaginable trauma suffered by Indigenous peoples, it felt important to recognize the countless ways that colonization has shaped and warped our experiences, too. As Indigenous elder Lilla Watson points out: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
After two rounds with this question, our final round asked:
Where do I experience reconciliation in my life?
Here, we discovered reconciliation as core to the human experience and to the regenerative movement more specifically. We are engaged in reconciliation with ourselves, with our bodies, with a family member, with food, with time.
We then gathered in a seated circle and passed a talking stick (one that had visibly been nibbled on by beavers), each responding to the question:
What do we now understand about regeneration?
According to the first person to share, one way we experience a colonized world is the imposition of frames around our identities and our contributions: you are a scientist or an artist. You cannot be both, or more. But a decolonized view recognizes that each person has something unique to contribute that can’t be contained within a tidy chart or hierarchy. Nature expresses itself through us, with us, as us. Core to our ability to contribute fully to regeneration, it seems, is reconciliation with life, and therefore with the fullness and mystery of our gifts.
We noted that “reconciliation” and “regeneration” are cast as static, impersonal concepts, but they are better understood as embodied, relational processes. This is reflected in the language itself: English and French are dominated by nouns, while Indigenous languages tend to be heavy on verbs. Our sense was that the reconciling, regenerating – healing – that is needed comes through valuing attachment… through depth of connection… through working through things together… and most of all, through listening.
There is a humility implied in this understanding. I can’t heal you (or even myself, for that matter); I can only support the process of healing and renewing wholeness. By the same logic, I can’t reconcile or regenerate; I can only seek to support and participate in these relational processes.
Going further, one person pointed out that reconciliation is not an abstract, intellectual exercise. “It’s not something the government does” with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its public apologies. “Here, we’re connecting with heart, emotion, integrity.” To go deeper into this point, someone proposed the alternative term “rapprochement,” a moving closer together into more harmonious relationship. It implies respect and “a heart that is open to understand the reality of another.” “We could do that here,” someone suggested.
“How can we remember the living dynamic that we’re part of?”
The next time you’re in a forest, one man proposed, try to experience it not as a thing, a noun, but as a verb, a living process. In fact, the following day on my morning run through the woods with my dogs, I did just that, offering silent greetings to the “foresting” and gratitude for how it forested.
The questions about my place in this work remain. Maybe that is part of the living process, too. As Buckminster Fuller said, “I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.”
The work continues.