Rev. Dr. Cheryl Bear wears her button blanket with Bear Clan crest, and Rev. Wendy Adams at the Splats’in First Nation Band Hall, Enderby BC.
Cheryl Bear makes return visit to Spallumcheen.
The Presbytery of Kamloops is seeing continuing success with our recent Healing and Reconciliation project. Award winning musical artist Cheryl Bear was invited to return to the Nation on August 5. This time she appeared at the Splat’sin Band Hall of the Shushwap Nation in Enderby British Columbia. Cheryl Bear may be an amazing songwriter and vocalist, but she is also so much more. Her 2 CDs of original songs have won the highest awards for Native American music in North America, including Debut Artist of the Year in 2008 and the 2008 Covenant Award Aboriginal Album of the Year.
The Splats’in Band Hall is an intimate comfortable place to be on a hot summer night. We gathered to hear Cheryl’s powerful songs of healing and truth. Cheryl is also an evangelist. This past May she received a Doctor of Ministry designation from Kings College and Seminary in California. Smart and talented, Cheryl offers a way forward in Native American healing and reconciliation. Her music boldly charts the pain and hardship caused by residential schools and abusive government policies which have left our First Nation’s people suffering from many social crises.
Last week, Cheryl encouraged all of us to speak openly about hurts and pain in our past. She gave an example from her own childhood to illustrate the knowledge gap that comes from silence. In her village of Nadleh Whut’en, in the Carrier Nation there was a man who suffered from alcoholism. As the town drunk Cheryl and the other children teased and made fun of him, when they weren’t ashamed of him. This went on until the day her grandfather told her about an event that happened long ago.
One cold winter night 4 young boys ran away from the residential school where they were living, and attempted to walk home to their village. They trudged along the wintry path until they could see the village lights in the distance. And then they made a fatal error. They decided to leave the path and take a short cut across the lake. One of the four boys refused, and turned back to the school. But the school administrators decided not to report the missing boys until the next day. Word got back to the village the following morning, and the adults fanned out to look for the boys. They were discovered, by their own father, frozen to death in the middle of the lake. The surviving child grew to become the man Cheryl knew as the town drunk.
When we take an honest look behind an addiction, we will often find a buried story of suffering and pain. Cheryl and her family are crossing North American, with a vision to bring her music and healing message to every one of the 1000 native bands on the continent. They have visited 300 so far, living in their RV, and collecting donations and selling CDs to finance this ministry. To learn more about Cheryl or purchase one of her CDs, go to cherylbear.com. To learn more about Canadian efforts towards Truth and Reconciliation go to trc-cvr.ca.
Rev. Wendy Adams,
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
