Three sisters.(DISCUSSIONS)

We begin our conversation about decolonization on our way to the lower longhouse of the Cayuga Nation, the first stop on Jacqueline's tour of Six Nations of the Grand River and surrounding area. Our journey ends at the site of an old residential school in Brantford.

Lila: To speak about decolonization it is necessary to first recognize one's own relationship to colonization. Mine is a complicated one. I grew up thinking of myself as a Canadian. It wasn't until the late 1990s (I was well into my 40s by then) that I learned from a cousin, quite by accident, that my grandmother was an Aboriginal woman. My mother continued to deny this fact until just before she passed into the Spirit world in 2004. It dawned on me, rather slowly, that if my grandmother was Aboriginal then so too was my mother. It took my daughter to point out that if my mother was Aboriginal than so was I and so was she.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it is that bloodline that keeps going and you can't change that. Whether she passed it down or not, you still are who you are through that bloodline. That is why they say that the bloodline is so significant for women. You carry that. The bloodline through the Clan system follows your mother.

Lila: It seems impossible that I, assimilated as I am, have any hope of recovering my ancestral memory. And yet to turn my back on my grandmother's identity and my mother's is to perpetuate the genocide that caused the erasure in the first place. What choice have I but to, while acknowledging and taking responsibility for my settler ancestry, privilege the enduring Mi'kmaw blood that runs through my veins? And so, in honour of my grandmother, I take my first steps towards decolonization by finding her people. If I learn her language and traditions, I can teach my soon-to-be-born grandchild who she was and who he is. It seems fitting somehow to begin the process of righting the wrongs of my settler ancestors by embracing my Aboriginal ones.

Jacqueline: The Ancestors are calling out for us to hear them. I feel overcome with emotion. I am on an adventure of finding myself. I know who I am. I know where I come from but there is a root that is missing. I was born and raised in my Clan but there is something more. I am looking for that beginning to this end. For the last two years we have been on a reverse cycle. Everything that is in front of us is behind us.

Laura: We don't have our Clan anymore because my grandfather married a Metis woman. He was Mohawk from Kanewakne. My grandmother didn't pass her Clan down. We have Status but no Clan.

Jacqueline: Everyone has a Clan because we are all born into it. It is our inherent right. You have a Nation and a Clan the day you are born, through your mother.