TRUTH FIRST VOICES for more than a decade, Pat Makokis and Fay Fletcher have worked together to bridge two worlds. A young educator asks how she can emulate this “ally work” in her own life. Pat Makokis, ’79 BEd, is from Saddle Lake Cree Nation and has a doctorate in education. Fay Fletcher, ’84 BPE, ’94 MSc, ’04 PhD, is associate dean in the Faculty of Extension and was born and raised in Edmonton. Etienna MoostoosLafferty, ’09 BEd, is from Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation and works educating teachers about reconciliation. ETIENNA MOOSTOOSLAFFERTY: This is really a mentorship conversation for me. I’ve seen you two ladies talk and I felt the universe aligned that day and I was meant to be there, so thank you. Part of the work I’m interested in is ally work. Is ally work or allyship the right term? FAY FLETCHER: It’s come up often, that the terms “ally” and “settler-ally work” are problematic. We’re aware of that and we’re working through what the language and terminology should be. But we’ve found it’s a useful way to guide the relationship with each other. It’s relational work, and ally fits for now. PAT MAKOKIS: The other day, we were at a workshop and I thought I’d help people to understand where I’m coming from [when I speak of ally]. I have a two-spirited son [an Indigenous LGBTQ person], a member of the gay
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community. I’ll never be twospirited but I’m connected to my son biologically. I am connected to that community relationally for the rest of my life. I have a personal obligation to lift that [community] up. I see myself as having a deep responsibility to be an ally in that context. I must walk with them, do what I can. FF: Early in the work, the concern was, “You’re not Indigenous so who are you to do this work?” It’s something I struggled with for a long time. Then I met Pat. The way she’s described being an ally fits well. I’ll never live the Indigenous reality, but I do want to walk alongside and open those spaces for the relational work we need to do together. PM: In service to our children, when we reflect upon that, it calls all of us to a deep responsibility for humankind. If we want a better world, we need to think about our role in understanding the colonial history in this country, because when we understand the history, then how do we move into that space of what is an ally and how will I become an ally? EM: What are examples of how people can be an ally? FF: We as a faculty have done this work for years. It was a dream come true
when Pat came to the Faculty of Extension. It’s really impacted the work we do because of Pat’s desire to teach people the impact of the history. People get paralyzed. They fear that they might do something wrong, so they slip into doing nothing. Or they might face legitimate anger. One thing as an ally is just beginning that journey. That might mean starting to read, having conversations, sitting down with Indigenous peoples and respectfully engaging in conversations. My role as an ally at the university has been .... to use that space to bring Indigenous knowledge into the university and extend the richness of the university. EM: A lady in the North once told me this quote: “nothing about us without us.” What does that mean for creating that space? What does that look like in institutions? PM: I would say that’s inviting us to think about how will we work together in the different faculties to thread Indigenous knowledges as core. If that’s the case, humanity will be better for it. EM: In the book A Knock on the Door [2015], they describe reconciliation as creating mutually respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. What does this mean for Indigenous people? PM: Indigenous peoples have to walk through the pain. We’ve experienced and continue to experience blatant racism, and we carry pain and trauma. With that
comes the anger, and we have to be gentle with ourselves and figure it out. The first part of reconciliation is figuring out what is truth. People have to look at this history. I think people will be horrified when they realize that people could do this genocidal act. It’s a hard walk. EM: In my conversations with elders, reconciliation is about time. What I tell teachers is that while we’re ready to talk about reconciliation, there’s still people in pain. FF: We have to acknowledge that. PM: It’s a journey and it’s going to be lifelong. EM: It’s good work, but difficult. For me, it’s the uplifting piece that keeps all of us going in this work. Charlene Bearhead [project co-ordinator for the Alberta Joint Commitment to Action: Education for Reconciliation] said there is a window open and we need to do as much work as we can. Someone else said there’s a light. I’m wondering what we can be doing while the window’s open. PM: We have to jump. We have to go into those spaces and places; we have to have conversations with potential allies. In the alumni community, it would be the same. It would be inviting grads into these conversations. The window of opportunity is here and now and we must take it. The hardest part of that journey is going to be from our head to our heart, when we explore our training, our education, our belief systems and what these [university] walls have