Reckoning is a triptych addressing the fallout from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission within the community. The work was shot entirely in Mohkinstsis.

This project was created in collaboration with Paul Chaput, a Métis Elder and academic who helped to create the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) and who served as an adjudicator himself.

Witness is a movement exploration of the official government adjudicators of the TRC – each having to review and retraumatize toward a victim payout based on a cumulative offence-based point system. Witness chronicles the unravelling of a non-Indigenous adjudicator by directly monetizing the devastation perpetrated by a system that is not what it pretends to be. This person is a newer Canadian who did not learn about the truth until now. In her temporary office, an adjudicator crumbles under associative post-traumatic stress disorder. Pam Tzeng, a Mohkinstsis based dancer, performs this scene, scored to the IAP guideline text and the haunting composition of violist Melody McKiver.

The second section is Daughter. For this realistic two-hander, we have Quelemia Sparrow (Musqueam) and Telly James (Siksika/Kainai.) A woman whose mother attended an IRS also has a father who worked at one. Her father is accused by a former IRS student of the worst violation, and the heartbreak of this accusation stops his heart cold. Grieving and irrational, the woman seeks out the survivor to enact vengeance . After seducing him online, she invites the survivor over to her apartment. Dinner at her place followed swiftly by consensual sex, and she lashes herself to the dining room table, beats herself about and shrieks until a neighbour enters, thereby framing her “date” of rape. It is an exploration of the terrible actions that can take place when a person does not receive the help they need.

The final scene, Survivor, was written to be performed by the actor Jonathan Fisher, Anishnabe of Wikwemikong. This is the story of a former student who attended his IAP hearing, gave testimony, and collected his payout. He plans and pays for his funeral services, and aims to end his own life on the steps of Parliament Hill. He  designed the Band Council website, and maintained their Facebook page. With this knowledge and access, he records his “suicide note.” This task completed, he must make one last call to his older sister, in hopes she will release her feelings of guilt for not being able to protect him when they were at school. When his nephew answers the phone, the man’s desire for life is restored just enough to fan an ember. He is invited over for supper. On hanging up, the man deletes the video and prepares for the first visit he’ll have with his sister since they came home from Residential School. A moment of love and hope.