Status Updates From Nishga

"I wonder what it means that I have gotten to know my father’s art better than I’ve gotten to know my father."

"In the foaming waters, there is the colour of blood gushed from some other place. / Some other throat. / Some other, softer place. / Some waters carry the dead. / Somewhere up in the air there is the scent of roses."

"A year later, I remember waking up in the parking lot of that hotel in my rental car just a few hundred metres away from where the Coqualeetza school had been. For a moment, I didn’t realize where I was, and then I wondered how many times my grandparents had woken up here and felt that same thing."

"According to one of the kiosks, some of the children had carved their names and numbers into the wood underneath the porch of the big house. I wondered if my grandparents had carved their names into that wood. I wondered if they had carved their numbers."

"When we *witness* a story, we are not only present physically but emotionally and spiritually to hold this story in our hearts. When someone tells us their story, that story becomes a part of us. When you witness someone's story... you are carrying a part of that person with you now [...] what does it look like [...]"

"I remember searching through hundreds of photos with no way of knowing which anonymous child was my grandmother, which anonymous child was my grandfather."

"They didn't know him after, though."

"'Throughout this work, Native identity is explored as a negotiated and highly contested set of realities.' - Bonita Lawrence"

"She didn’t say it, but she wanted to know how I could have been so irresponsible. How I could have been Nisga’a my whole life but never bothered to learn the language. As if I had access. As if I could just flip a switch and know. As if I hadn’t wanted to. As if I hadn’t felt that hole inside of me. As if filling it was that easy."