Welcome to our heArt Garden. In the wake of the heart wrenching news of the remains of the 215 children found at the site of what was the Kamloops Residential School, we reach out to you, our community, to stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island, as we grieve for these children and their families and ancestors. As we believe in healing with our heARTs, we reach out to each one of you with an invitation to create a memorial heart, as initiated by Cindy Bearhead, Director of Reconciliation at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and Cindy Blackstock, Director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. We can create with any art supplies we have on hand or go out into nature and create and photograph a heart installation on the land. Creation of hearts is one way to reflect on the enormity of this heart-wrenching news: to acknowledge the children whose lives were lost and to honor the crossing of the spirits of these young ones; to express our own sadness and outrage; and to be in solidarity with the grief of the families and communities directly impacted and with Indigenous peoples around Turtle Island. Simultaneously we can offer respect and acknowledgment for the powerful, meaningful, and deeply rooted cultural traditions and kinship systems that Indigenous children were pulled from, when separated from their families, communities, and Ancestral lands. We welcome you to send an image of your heart to info@wheatinstitute.com where we will be compiling them into one community heart, which will be shared on social media, in addition to adding them to our heArt Garden, right here. Any text provided will appear beside your image when you click on it. 

 

Thank you, kinanâksomitin, chi miigewch.