I feel like I’m doing a terrible job hosting this account because my heart is so burned out I can’t seem to pull together original thoughts.

The last few months of indirect COVID impacts on our village has had a profound effect on my family and community.

We’ve had a string of non-COVID deaths that have challenged us to find ways to practice community care and uphold our mortuary customs without violating pandemic emergency measures.

Some of our elders have talked explicitly about the deep trauma resurfacing for them from the generations in LIVING MEMORY when our culture was taken underground for its survival, when our ways were illegal, when our people were punished for practicing our ways.

The world at large, if they talk about it at all, talk about all that like it’s ancient history. It’s not. I’m 34 and I’m in the first generation in my family where no one was forcibly removed to residential school or day school.

There’s also deep genetic memory resurfacing. Every Haíɫzaqv person alive today descends from the ~1% of our people who survived the epidemics of smallpox and influenza.

Pre-contact we lived in over 50 villages across a huge territory stretching from the mainland through coastal islands to open ocean. After waves of disease, the lowest census count was 197 Haíɫzaqv people who clustered at the site that became Bella Bella.

Banding together in the face of disease that threatened every aspect of our lives and identity? That’s imprinted on our whole community from the time our survivors came together here.

We have 200+ elders in Bella Bella, and ~30 fluent speakers of our language left who are all 70+. After everything our language has withstood since contact, our strongest link to a vital and thriving language — our fluent speakers — is a demographic at high COVID risk.

Many Indigenous communities face a similar risk. Especially “remote” ones. The truth is, my community never felt remote until now. Until we had to calculate the distance for a medical evacuation flight.

Until we had to think about what happens if supply chains break down and we can’t get fuel and groceries and mail. Until we had to think about how few of our hospital staff are permanent residents of our community.

At best, we have 8-10 hospital beds available if an outbreak occurs. We have 1 ventilator. We’re a community of ~1400 people with high levels of underlying conditions that make people more vulnerable.

The recognition of our remoteness is a reminder to double down on our self-reliance and resilience before doing so is a crisis measure.

There’s been a hell of a lot of lateral violence rooted in deep fear. But there’s also been jaw-droppingly beautiful community love + care.

I’m biased, but one of my favourite COVID response measures is the Granny Garden movement. Those who follow my personal twitter have probably read my endless tweets about it and I’ll share about it here tomorrow.

It’s a beautiful day and I got out on the land for awhile and it was good for my heart. Even on the sunny days full of love and joy it feels like there’s a weight on all of us. I know many others feel it too.

So consider this an invitation to share what makes you feel strong, and a promise that I have room in my heart for it today if you want to share. I wish you all the deep peace and strength I feel right now with my homelands all around me.