 My name is Leanna Marshall. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the program with working with our sisters, your role? Sure. So my role is I sit on the National Collective of Walking Other Sisters so I help support the communities prepare for for having a bundle and so there's a lot of logistical things that I help so you know making sure that they have the financial resources making sure that they have the you know the you know the people that need to be a part of it and making sure that there's there's so much protocol that's involved in it and so ensuring that that protocol is being followed and with Walking Other Sisters there's four like principles that we like to teach people so it's it's in order for the the community to kind of for it like that for that whole process to flow you know we're we're teaching them to practice those principles to kind of help with what they're doing. Right? When Walking Other Sisters came here to Thunder Bay it was myself and Kara Luda who were the co-leads like the co-organizers and so my role here at Thunder Bay was just to organize the community and yeah that I still am processing that whole experience. That's a lot. Yeah I still don't like to go to meetings. So yeah my role was just to kind of make sure everything was on track and that things were being done in the way that they needed to be done so yeah. What what's the group our age or target audience for the Walking With Our Sisters? Everybody. So I guess like with Walking Other Sisters I've never thought of it in a program sense because it's it's not a program but I can see how it would be relevant for this interview in terms of the education and awareness and community. So with Walking Other Sisters it's serving like primarily it's serving the family it's like for creating a space for the families to come and for the community to help support them as they grieve and honor their loved ones and so first and foremost it's about them and then I suppose after that because the community is creating that space for them for the families it becomes about the community and so the community is everybody so it's it's not just indigenous people it's not you know it's it's everybody it's an indigenous led commemoration it's led by women it's led by the grandmothers like the grandmothers in the communities lead the whole thing and so I think that's what makes Walking With Our Sisters particularly unique that there's no formal there's no formal structure and hierarchy which I think is really really refreshing and so we're relying on the knowledge and experience and wisdom of the grandmothers but then also the ceremonial people within the communities which are sometimes women and sometimes men so we're we get to we get to learn from just these amazing people who know so much about about our ways like our ceremonial ways so yeah yeah so it's it's everybody yeah and I'm using the word program but yeah project uh it's art installation um and I think you just kind of spoke to this but I'll ask again but so what is the aim of the project so the aim is to the aim is to create that space for the families there's been so many many people affected by indigenous women getting harder than who are missing and so Walking With Our Sisters came it came from a dream so a lot of like it came like Christie Belfort had a dream that what that became Walking With Our Sisters um it didn't come from her head it came from somewhere else and and so in that vision it really was about creating that space for our people by our people not to do it in a political way not to make it an issue not to have an agenda the the only objective is to create a loving space for the families who choose to come to be a part of it and what's beautiful about it is that how the community does that is it's so multifaceted so you have like the actual vamps that got made by people across Canada and the states and Europe and like even Australia so there you have you see you have like this visual you can this visual representation of love right in the space but then you have all the people's actions that contribute to it as well um all the boring kind of behind the scenes stuff of like getting sponsorship money you know getting the fabric like all of these kind of logistical things that um if you're part of ceremony or actually really that's part of it it's not the actual like you know it's not it's not like I think I'm making this assumption that like when there's ceremony it's like you're waiting for the actual ceremony to happen but for me what I've learned in this whole process is that it's everything that comes before and all how we act and behave in those actions of doing like that day to day kind of logistical stuff that also was a part of it and that energy that we carry in those actions contribute to uh to when we do the actual ceremony for the family this is kind of weird it's so it's um describing some of the different activities that the program participates are involved in oh yeah well this is the beautiful thing about this is that like with walking with their sisters like because it's so like it's completely grassroots um and it has traveled like all across Canada I don't even know how many times the communities get to choose what how how that looks like so of course like when walking with their sisters like the actual like how it's laid out is always going to be the same but what makes it also unique is that the community can do all sorts of events to lead up to walking with their sisters they can do education workshops awareness building sharing circles and honestly like people have gotten so creative with um what they've done they've they've people have made quilts they've done bead ins they've done bead and reeds they've had specific circles for um people who identify as as two-spirited like you name it people have done it and so it's it's it's really quite amazing and even in Thunder Bay like before and after like even now like we like we still do bead ins and we bead like this the idea came from my sister Jean who um like one of the guiding principles of walking with her sisters is when we do anything like anything to do with walking with her sisters whether we're talking about it um participating in it whatever that looks like it's coming from a place of love it's coming from a place of kindness because we don't know who's been affected and so we don't we want to make sure that people get treated in a good way and so my sister thought if we taught people how to bead hearts so just like a melting cloth that was the that was one of the most popular workshops that we do is people bead like these little hearts and um and it's really simple but it teaches people number one like a skill I mean you know my sister's always very practical is that people need to learn how to do stuff so once you learn how to bead like you can't unlearn that and so so there's that function but then there's also like you're building a community and you're also creating a space to talk about issues related to it to like um the violence against indigenous women in particular so it's and so we we still do that after walking with her sisters it's been I think four years um since walking with her sisters came through our community and you can still hear people talking about their experience with it and those in so much of our community got connected because of that event in our in our city which is really beautiful again I feel weird asking some of these but it's like so how do you measure the success of the project we don't we just don't we don't measure because it's not about it's not about it's not about success it's uh yeah I think in this context when you think about that word you can really impact the colonial um expectations and the heaviness of what that word is and so when you think about Anishinaabe way of being the indigenous way of being um it's not about that at all like it's not even in the picture um so yeah we don't we don't we don't measure we used to take numbers like we used to tally the number of people that would come through but I don't even know why we stopped that practice I don't know when we stopped like counting the people that went through because it was just like why are we doing this like walking with their sisters isn't funded by any granting source or funding source there's no government involvement and so it's like yeah it doesn't even none of that even matters so yeah we don't measure the success I guess again I'll I'll ask you what your perspective on indigenous education is like maybe in terms of walking with their sisters I think walking with their sisters is like what it's taught me and my like my personal observations being a part of it is that it's um for me what makes it so powerful is that like you hear these teachings about about our culture and being humble and kind and respectful and ceremony but when you live in a city and you work in institutions and organizations and stuff like like we forget from sometimes day to day like what that actually means and I feel like with walking with their sisters it's actually for those people who don't participate in ceremony regularly walking with their sisters is ceremony and they've provided um I don't want to call it a model but I don't know what else to call it but they've essentially have shown people uh some fundamental values that carry our culture and they've shown people how to connect how to honor to be in ceremony collectively in a really kind way and I feel like the way that they've done that is that there's constant consultation with the older people and with the ceremonial people there's constant communication with one another and every person has a role every single person has something to contribute whether it's teeny tiny or tons none of that even matters none of that even gets judged or evaluated it's just accepted that whatever you can contribute you contribute um and so when I see it move across like I've I think I've been to 10 or more communities with walking with their sisters and so you can really see consistently in every community that it's doing it's doing exactly what it needs to do it's bringing people together in a really loving way it's it's creating a physical space for people to come and to to grieve but it's also showing people that in that grief in our collective grief in our individual grief there's life and and people are able to come to a different understanding about what that means for them and it's you know and that's their own story in terms of how walking other sisters has like how how that's impacted people but it's that model of the grandmothers it's those values those four values can change the world and it's changing the world the values of love treating people in a loving kind way treating people in a gentle manner humility no hierarchy there's no hierarchy it's when you're in a circle everyone is considered to come with to have their gifts and there's no one that has any authority or power and I think there's that like when you kind of deconstruct it and decolonize it in your own head you can really understand like the power in that and how much that has impacted indigenous people and how we are and in institutions right like we're so conditioned to think in this hierarchical way but when you look at it and in a ceremonial way when you look at people as just people there's something really beautiful about that it's beautiful that I can look at you as a woman and as a person not as your history or the job that you represent or how much money you have in your bank account because none of that doesn't really doesn't that doesn't mean anything to me but what it's meaningful is my connection you as a person and if we're all and so when you when you do that with walking other sisters in that space you feel that you feel that you feel that connection with people and then the third principle is ceremony so everything is done in ceremony everything so there's constantly prayers happening tobacco being laid down offerings that are happening giveaways all this behind the scenes stuff from a spiritual perspective is happening to make sure that the people entering into that space are going to be okay but also that the spirits and the women who have passed that they're also okay and that they're going to be traveling in a good way and that ceremonial piece is key to all of it that's the foundation of everything see that automatically is going to connect you to our lands all that automatically going to connect you to the water to the sky to everything everything to the medicines everything and then the last principle is is volunteerism imagine that working to do something just for the love of it because you care not because you're thinking what is the paycheck going to be but working because you want to be able to support families and people who may not have the strength to do that and to ensure that that because as soon as you put money into the equation it changes the energy it changes the dynamic of everything and so right at the get go was like no no one's getting no one's getting paid we don't want this to be about money because this is actually about it's not going to do with money has everything to do with the women who passed and who are who are missing and so when you take the money out of the equation people come to the surface that becomes a total point so those four principles man if we could all practice this every day we'd have a very different world and so that's how i see like walking with their sisters like that's in terms of education in terms of how to educate people through an indigenous lens walking with her sisters has many many teachings to offer in terms of what you're saying and i guess in terms of working with their sisters what do you see indigenous education looking like over the next 10 years i think in relation to walking with their sisters i see more people coming into spaces and coming together and so the grassroots the grassroots movements that are happening right now across not just north america and canada but like i think globally that's taking precedent because there's power in the people and i think more people are waking up to that waking up really and so i think in 10 years from now like what walking with her sisters has provided is a way this is possible this is how you can do it and this is how you can do it in a good way and do it well um so i think in 10 years like there'll be more gatherings and commemorations and but i feel like it's even more than that like i feel like i don't know yet but i feel like there's going to be different things different ways of being together that doesn't include institutions necessarily that we're going to be gathering together in ways that are more intentional that are more about what's what's coming and how to be in a good way like as as people you know yeah i'm not sure like when i think of walking with her sisters i know when when that closing ceremony is conducted i honestly feel like a whole nother layer of something is going to reveal itself and something else is going to happen um and i'm not sure what that's going to be and not i'm not talking about to me personally like i'm talking like you know nationally and globally there's going to be something else that that's going to be bringing people together