Written After Attending the Heritage BC

Annual Conference entitled

Heritage: Imagining Futures,

May 4-6, 2017 / Victoria,BC

By: Wally du Temple, North Saanich.

To archeologists of academia

To conservationists of heritage

To curators of museums

To all of us together who are

Engaged in ‘Reconcialiation’

And some in the sacred

Repatriation of ancestors

Of First Nations. Come with me.

Let’s go together, let’s

Leave our research libraries

Leave the vaults of our museums

Enter the forests of natural forms

See the seas in our storms

Smell the needs in our flower’s seeds

Let’s not store, but let’s restore

The People’s stories

From the water people

From the mountain people

From the desert people

From the forest people

From all relations of matter.

‘All’ matters in the unity of diversity

Differentiated but held by a common

Mystery, a bond that holds all together.

We will value indigenous culture.

We will respect the Original Ways.

We will mourn their mornings

Of death by pox pestilential

Of loss by school residential.

Let’s fly like eagles in sky

Winds under our wings, and cry.

Let’s soar in the clouds of song

Cut through the fogs of gone,

Land in the land of belong,

Touch, drink, see and pace

As dancers in the spirit of place

Living the air, fire, earth and waters

Loving the living islands and living daughters.

Let’s honour Peoples’ past with bonds that last

Become a part of all that is.

It is not ours, nor mine, nor his

Erase the moulded words that mold

Hear the stories that unfold?

With silence hear the spoken lyre

That smokes as spirit as if from fire