dream spaces// portals for reparations

looking at the assimilation story and how we might stop running away

Collage artwork created by Maria Epp 2025

I come to you as an artist, a mother, a daughter and grand-daughter. I come to you with a spindle and some nettle, wondering what shall I do with it? I come to you as a writer and researcher who spends hours everyday reading, listening and conversing with others. I speak from a place of raising two young people who are full of life and passion and hope for their future, yet filled with questions.

I look back, as far back as I can. I look forward…it’s difficult to see. I call on the spirits and ghosts swirling around me this winter and ask for guidance. I pray for healing as I see it coming. I see the storms settle in my own body and wonder if the assimilation story will be coming to an end now.

We don’t talk about the assimilation story. We talk about colonization and the wounds festering all around us. We see the ongoing destruction every day and we close our apps ‘cause it hurts too much. But what about the colonization within?

Come to the dream space with me

Here I am, watching my Great Grandparents with their families. They pull their horses and carts through mud and dirt. Fleeing for their lives from the Russian armies. They travel for months to arrive on “barren” and “desolate” lands in South America. No language, no home and a few beans. They struggle to feed their babies under straw huts and sore backs until they can stand up straight and see their children get married and have babies of their own. They have survived.

We know they struggled to provide a future they could smile from the after-life about. Little did they know, that what they were fleeing was also inside of them and would go with them into these new lands. That the oppression they fled would spill out into how they saw their children, their neighbouring tribes, and themselves. They would start to adopt dominator ways and despise their own wisdom.

My people assimilated and became white. At first it was to survive. Discarding their mother-tongue to learn the white man’s languages. Then their children started going to the English schools and wanting to do things their friends did. The old ways were looked down on. Soon the songs and traditions that held them together were no longer useful or meaning-filled. God, “the father” was no longer relevant. Grandmother’s wept as they saw their stories turn to dust under the wheels of so-called-progress. Grandfather’s gnashed their teeth as they saw what they had built becoming a stronghold of domination that would cause someone else to flee.

Is it possible to stop the running and face our oppressors within?

The dream space is not escapism. It is coming face to face with our histories of domination, control, thievery, and othering. It is owning up to the ways our people hurt others and pushed them away. It’s apologizing for lording our power over others. It is making space for reparation and dreaming up paths of healing.

So I pick up the Nettle and the spindle and I hold them. They are mysterious and confusing. A talisman towards reconciliation. Reconciliation with the land, with my ancestors and with all who have been harmed by these power structures. I know it may seem silly and upside down. But there are many tools like this to wake us up. Old languages are still growing in the weeds. Buried paths and waterways are waiting to be restored. Plants and animals are ready to become kin. New bonds and ways of loving are lying like dormant seeds waiting to burst open.

The future is now and as we watch our lives unfold in the next generation we see that there are always ways back to ourselves. We hold them up like a flag or smoke signal. Come here! Back to interdependence, the commons, fertility and sacredness. Let’s go to the living in a good way house.

Questions for reflection:

1. What tools are in your belt that feel like talisman’s or portals of reparation?

   I’m thinking of a few. A musical instrument, a fishing rod, fire-making, loom, paintbrush, boat, clay vessel, carving tool, spoon, thresher, well, and needle.

2. Which objects, activities and cultural structures remind you of pre-colonizing, pre-dominator culture times in history?

3. How are you committed to leaning into reparations? Can one of these portals be an access point to not only your pleasure and connection but also collective liberation?