A Steady Brightness of Being

Introduction

It’s October of 2024, and I’m in Victoria, British Columbia. I’m sitting by the water and thinking of my grandfather, Elmer Sinclair, a survivor of Fort Alexander Residential School. This morning, I went to where he and my grandmother rest. It’s something I have been longing to do, and something I have avoided for some time. I have learned so much in the almost decade since he passed, and I wanted to express what I wish I had had the chance to say when he was alive, hoping his spirit might receive it. As I left the cemetery, I got a text from my cousin Niigaan Sinclair, sharing that Murray Sinclair’s health had taken a dangerous turn and I should be preparing myself.

Now, I’m sitting by the water thinking about what I didn’t say to my grandfather, and what I haven’t said to Murray. I don’t know that I will have the chance to express it all, but I know that there is still so much I want to say. So, I want to do what many people do when there are things left unsaid, or when we don’t know how to say those things, or when the people we need aren’t within reach: I want to write a letter.

A few years ago my sister and co-editor, Sara Sinclair, published a book called How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America. In her work to publicize the book, she did a TEDx Talk and opened her speech by comparing how intergenerational trauma has been handled on both sides of our family. On our maternal side, our grandmother, who we called Bubby, was a Holocaust survivor who did years of work on her own trauma and shared her story with us openly. For comparison, Sara then looked at our paternal grandfather, who, as a residential school survivor, carried lifelong shame not just about his trauma but about his identity. He kept it all in, leaving only a silence in the shape of questions. It is stories that give shape to a life. But because he never talked about it, my father didn’t inherit stories; he inherited shame.

As we grew up, it became explicitly clear that Bubby seemed to heal through telling her story and that so many stories untold by Indian residential school survivors meant so much history unhealed and unknown, including within our family.

The impact of this led to both of us growing interested in connecting the past to the present; in our professional lives, we both work to amplify stories like our grandfather’s. We know from our own family’s experience that when traumatic events occur in cultures and are left undiscussed, it’s not just the stories about the traumas that don’t get passed down. The transfer of other cultural knowledge is disrupted, too. Our grandfather, for decades, didn’t share stories about his own family or his young life, because he was taught to be ashamed of being an “Indian.”

Part of the learning, begun by our father and continued by us, is to more deeply understand that many Indigenous people alive today have grown up at some distance from their ancestors’ stories. This is a direct and intentional consequence of colonization, of which the Indian residential schools were an important weapon. For many, being Indigenous is a journey toward reclamation and continuance of language, knowledge, and nationhood.

We want to play a part in preserving and amplifying our stories and celebrating our relations. We want to understand all this history, to know both its burden and beauty. This book is an offering along this journey. Structured as a medicine bundle, with each letter representing
a traditional medicine— tobacco, cedar, sweetgrass, or sage— this anthology is an entry point to connections. We hope these words might also move you toward conversations about Indigenous history, strength, and life, conversations many of us struggle to begin. The contributors in
this book have written letters that cross great distances, whether geographic or metaphysical. Some have written to ancestors, relatives they’ve lost, or relatives they never met. Some have written to generations yet unborn and some to the land. They all say something the letter writer longs to express, that wouldn’t work in any other form. The letters are an invitation to join the authors in this intimate space. I hope you’ll meet us there.

Dear Murray, Mazina Giizhik-iban (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky),

I’m writing to you from Victoria. I’m sitting in a mostly empty hotel restaurant looking out at the water. It’s my first time here in this city, and I wish I knew where my grandparents had lived. I wish I knew so much more than I do about their lives. I wish it had felt okay to ask questions.

I’m here in part to promote your book in Vancouver next week. You are struggling in the hospital, and I’ve just been told by Niigaan that things have taken a bad turn. I don’t know what
that means, but I’m sitting here waiting, hoping you aren’t in pain, in some ways hoping you let go. You have fought enough; you have fought so tirelessly for all of us.

This morning, I went to see where my grandparents rest. They are in a beautiful garden surrounded by fountains and enormous, gorgeous Douglas fir trees. There is peace there. I sat in the rain and thought about my grandfather Elmer and your father, Henry—the brothers, what they endured at Fort Alexander, how they both left the school poisoned by shame and self- loathing and deep, deep trauma. I never knew Henry, but Elmer always seemed so big and powerful. My dad always retreated to a place I didn’t know how to reach when Elmer came to visit, and I resented that. I remember being told why my dad feared his father, but I wasn’t told what had happened, why Elmer was wounded in the first place, or how that wound had turned into rage. I had no compassionate understanding of our family history.

I wanted to go see Elmer today to say that I am sorry. I am sorry for not asking him questions about his life before the school. I am sorry for not helping him to remember what the school stole from him. I am sorry for not trusting him, for holding him at a distance when he needed open arms and love so desperately. I am sorry for resenting him, for not holding space for him to listen to his stories, to his testimony.

The last time I saw Elmer was when my grandmother died. They were married for seventy-four years; she died weeks before their seventy-fifth anniversary. He wept and wept, sitting alone. I walked to him, took his hand in mine, and sat with him while he cried.

That night, the family all went out for some food, and one of my father’s brothers got drunk, angry, and threatening. He was fixated on my father and looked like a wild cat ready to pounce. Another moment when our family should have been there for Elmer, destroyed by alcoholism, rage, and shame. We all let him down again that day. It was only a few months later that Elmer died alone in a hospital room. We didn’t fly back.

The first time you came to Toronto for media around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I listened to your conversation with Connie Walker, and something in me awakened. I then
read and read and read, and suddenly parts of my life began to make sense in ways they never had before; parts of my father’s life made sense, and parts of Elmer’s life made sense. You looked so wounded, so different from when I had seen you last. Over those years, you gave this country your health, your spirit. Did this country deserve you?

I know you would want me to say yes and that we must continue to do the work and walk the path, but today, when I think of you in that hospital room in Winnipeg, I am angry. You are only seventy-three. You have struggled for so many years to manage a body with so much weight of responsibility that it became too hard to carry. And I know that your losing Katherine might mean losing you; you may not want to live without her, just like Elmer after his wife died.

But before you go, I want you to know that over the last few years, as we worked on your book, I felt like I finally got to listen to our family’s stories and history with openness, pride, and a true understanding of why and how things turned out the way they did. I have become a better person for having spent this time with you. I am so grateful. Your wisdom, generosity, and raw empathy have shaped our country immeasurably. And I’m so sorry that your service has come at the cost of your health, of your life. I’m so sorry for all you had to endure yourself, for the trauma you had to carry for so many others. Please know that we are a better country because of you. And we are all grateful to you for giving our community a voice and the energy to fight for survival. We are still here.

Before you go, I want to tell you that I love you. I’m proud to be a Sinclair. When I saw you a few weeks ago, I showed you a video of my daughter, and you said, “Wow, that’s a Sinclair face.” My children can celebrate their Indigeneity; they are safe, they can learn about their history and culture, because of you.

Before you go, I promise to honour your legacy, to continue the work, knowing it will take generations. But I will do what I can.

Before you go, let me say thank you, and let me promise to be tireless, to be brave, to work for change with grace, to be kind, to be good, to rise above the clouds and think of you every time I look to the sky.

Stephanie