Dear <<First Name>>
Without a doubt, this is one of the hardest newsletters I have ever written. Sigh. As a retail space, we at Cornerstone Canadian Art & Craft, love to celebrate the fact that all the wonderful artists & craftspeople, and all the beautiful pieces in the store, have been lovingly made by Canadian hands. The first couple of years I owned the store, we were so excited to celebrate Canada Day. When I first bought the store, I collaborated with store manager, Lisa, to see how we could improve on what great ideas we already had here. We decided that representation was missing in a bunch of areas but we were small and had to start somewhere. We strive to have representation from all of the provinces and territories. This can be challenging sometimes as artists in the store come & go, as we all grow and change. But the biggest area that we saw lacking was representation of artwork from our Indigenous people. While we had carvings from our Inuit community in Cape Dorset, we had little else. I wanted to have artists from our First Nations - from local bands and those across the country, so that we had a truer representation of "Canadian" artists. Slowly but surely our small Indigenous space has grown a little every year. But life is a journey made up from learning moments and as we began the journey of learning about our Indigenous history, this day, Canada Day, became less celebratory for us and felt just plain "icky". What we saw and realized was that with the official "start" of the nation of Canada, was the official "ending" of our native people's way of life and culture. I am 60 years old and I have never been taught the actual history of my country. Don't get me wrong - I still believe that Canada is the best country on the planet, however we have a lot of work to do. For a people who are world renown for saying "Sorry", we need to be doing a heck of a lot more than just apologize for the atrocities that have occurred (and continue to occur) within the Indigenous communities and residential schools that have recently come into focus. They have come to light for the "rest of us" now, but Indigenous people have been telling their stories of what happened at residential schools for years. Their stories have fallen on deaf ears until now. 215 souls a couple of weeks ago and another 751 plus this week. And we know there are more. If the shock to us is horrible, can you possibly imagine what it was like to live it? To have your children taken from you or to be torn from your family?I know I cannot even begin to. As I read story after story of the abuse my stomach feels sick and my heart is heavy. In fact right now I can think of little else. So I am "I'm sorry" that this is not one of my usual up-beat newsletters that you have come to expect from me. And you may be asking, "Why are you using a retail newsletter to talk about this?" My answer is that we cannot un-learn the things that we are hearing now. We need safe and open spaces to have adult conversations about what Canada has done and moving forward, how "we" will, from listening to our Indigenous people, help them to heal and for all of us to come together, for the very first time in our history. As a nation we need to take responsibility for our actions, from past to present, an obligation that each of us can play a small role in. The arts have always been a way for people from all walks of life to find common ground. Music, literature, theatre, cuisine, art & craft. The last two are the building blocks of Cornerstone and it is what we have to offer. Throughout the month of July we will be sharing the work of our Indigenous and Inuit artists with you. We invite you to come into our space and support these great artists. Share culture, learn about each of them and be a part of putting this nation back together again. Small steps on a path create a journey. What better place to start?
From our hearts to yours,
Penny & the staff at Cornerstone
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