There is a river that runs through this town
Its dam has held back the headwaters for generations.
These waters are deadly
Every year, bodies wash up along its shores
But many still question where these waters come from.
They flow in bedrooms and seep into the floors of bathrooms
Roll down the pipes in back alleys
And well up from the graveyards on decrepit residential school grounds
Raising the bodies of thousands of children from its muddy bottom
Out onto the clean white sand of the modern world.
These waters of grief flow from the eyes when the body can no longer hold them back.
This, in part, is Israel Powell’s river
Its babbling courses smoothing down the bedrock of good intentions that laid its twisting channels.
It’s part of a larger river system that flows throughout this great country,
Touching all corners, each bearing the name of other dead men and women who built its dams
Out of the blackboards and gym floors
And dormitories of residential schools.
When the TRC travelled throughout this land
The dam was released for a time
The flood waters raged down upon the people
Surging into many who had never seen the waters.
That is when I first felt them flood through me
Pouring from my eyes as a grown man told a great hall filled with strangers his truth
He had been taken from his home, sent to residential school
Where he was given a number for a name.
When he returned home his family had died; no one knew him.
He drifted on the waters of his grief
Washing ashore in that hall to tell his story for the first time
Gushing muddy water of neglect and abuse on all caught in the tide
No one stood behind him; he had no family.
This river drowned my classmates, though I stood dry beside them
They had been babies taken far from their homes in the north of Canada
To drown in desks and hallways, farther from home than Baghdad is from Paris.
Now I am a teacher; I have seen what it has done
To the children of those who were caught in its water in my classrooms,
The flood can flow into children still in the womb.
Part of healing is to tell the truth
To admit that the river is real, that the dam exists
And that this town is not named after Tis’kwat, the big river,
But it carries the name of a much greater river: a river of tears.
This river cannot be stopped with a dam
Or amended with a plaque to tell its history.
The dam must be broken.
The water must be allowed to flow to the sea,
And be swallowed by its healing mercy.
