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Bad Roads And Blind Alleys
About 10 years ago I was at a conference where I sat in a room with 200 other people. An Elder was invited to speak….As she turned to all of us, she removed her false teeth and set them on the podium. With an enormous amount of courage she told us about her childhood as a little girl and about her perfect teeth. She was so proud of her teeth because everyone complimented her on them as far back as she could recall.
There wasn’t a sound as she spoke. But as she continued, I remember the faint echoes of people sobbing….The story was about a young, fun loving, smart little girl who was now having her teeth removed for speaking her language at residential school.
I am not sure if I heard many more details of her story. But despite it all, I remember the pride, the resilience and the forgiveness in her voice. She was telling the story so people like me could somehow believe and understand just a little bit of what she and so many indigenous boys and girls experienced…
— From Curtis Reilly
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We simply must have access to that symbolic realm, because we are not animals only, and we are not gods, only. Somehow there has to be a bridge between the animal and the divine within, and that is the symbol. Children understand this. They love fairy tales, for example. But in our culture, these are taken away…
