10/01/2025
On National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I reflect on non-redemptive mourning, which is a concept of grief that asks that we not only hold space for loss, but we keep the pain of loss present to inform our actions, prevent denial and highlight the truth. The lives, languages, and cultures taken through residential schools, the 60’s scoop, and modern day family policing are not to be forgotten & closed over, they must carried in collective memory.
This mourning also holds today’s realities: racism and colonialism continue to harm Indigenous peoples, seen in the ongoing crisis of MMIWG2S, healthy inequity, land theft, justice system disparities, loss of culture & family, overrepresentation of Indigenous children in child welfare and beyond.
Holding this grief is a way of honouring truth, resisting denial, and carrying forward responsibility for change and reconciliation. It has been 10 years since the TRC released its report & 94 calls to action, yet only 14 have been completed. We must resist sanitizing our grief, history, and truth. We need systemic change and ongoing action, and we all play a role. we can’t only rely on the systems that actively harm us to change before we do, and it is in our daily practice and being that we put this forward.
You can reflect on the status of the CTA’s at indigenouswatchdog.org/calls-to-action/
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-Tacia, Serenity Now Registered Provisional Therapist smallstepspsychology
