Reconciliation at the Winnipeg Centre of Hope: Corinne Peterkin

As we prepare to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, we sit down with Corinne Peterkin, who is the Indigenous liaison at The Salvation Army’s Centre of Hope in Winnipeg. Corinne shares some of her own personal story as a Sixties Scoop survivor, and she walks us through the many ways the Centre of Hope is living the journey of reconciliation today. As she notes, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples is not a one-day thing, and she offers some really helpful, practical suggestions for how Salvationists and other ministry units can practise reconciliation as well. 

Further Reading and Resources

Who We Are by Murray Sinclair (audiobook recommended)

For Joshua by Richard Wagamese (audiobook recommended)

You Were Made for This World edited by Stephanie Sinclair and Sara Sinclair

National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. What does reconciliation look like? As we prepare to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, we sit down with Corinne Peterkin, who is the Indigenous liaison at The Salvation Army’s Centre of Hope in Winnipeg. Corinne shares some of her own personal story as a Sixties Scoop survivor, and she walks us through the many ways the Centre of Hope is living the journey of reconciliation today. As she notes, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples is not a one-day thing, and she offers some really helpful, practical suggestions for how Salvationists and other ministry units can practise reconciliation as well. Be sure to check out the show notes after you finish the episode to find more resources on this subject.

Hi Corinne, and welcome to the Salvationist podcast. 

Corinne Peterkin  

Well, thank you for having me. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, it's great to have you on today and talk about the work that's being done at the Centre of Hope in Winnipeg. And I understand this job, of course, is personal work for you because you are a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, and I'm wondering if you can share some of your story and talk about your own journey to reclaim your Indigenous identity.

Corinne Peterkin

Sure. So as you said, I am a Sixties Scoop survivor. I came into care basically a week after I was born. I went through several foster homes, six, and then I had one failed adoption, and then I came to my family when I was four and a half. And, yeah, so I grew up in the 70s, and I guess a little bit of the 80s, and so where I grew up, I was basically the only brown person, and I knew, I always knew I was adopted because, of course, I was four and a half. So, I have memories of that. I have some memories of prior to coming to my family. And in fact, I have memories of meeting my parents for the first time, which happened at the Winnipeg Zoo. They used to have a—I don't know what they called it—like, a pavilion in the centre of the zoo. It sort of had a cone shape at the top. And I went in, my social worker picked me up, and said that she wanted to introduce me to some people. And of course, I had been through this before, so it didn't really faze me. I happily got in the car and went to the zoo, and these people joined us, and, you know, we shared an Orange Crush and talked a little bit. And during it, I said, “You know, I could come and live with you.” And I guess that was maybe endearing to them, because they decided to adopt me. And I consider myself very lucky, because they were kind people, and I didn't suffer a lot of abuse, or I didn't suffer abuse with them, like a lot of the Sixties Scoop survivors have. But one thing that I had in common with other Sixties Scoop survivors is that I felt very isolated. I didn't see myself reflected in anybody that I went to school with, that I played with, that I lived around, anything like that. And although I love my family dearly, and I consider them my family, my first family, I don't feel connection to their past, because it's not really my past, and my mother always knew and was encouraging. “When you're ready, find your birth family, we'll totally—I'll help you if you want it.” I came to it very slowly. I didn't actually start searching for my family until my mother had passed, and I waited a year after because I wanted to be clear that I wasn't looking for a replacement. I just wanted to know where I came from. And so, I went to the post-adoption registry, and signed up, and within four months, I received a registered mail saying that, yes, indeed, somebody else was looking for me. And within a couple of weeks, I met my biological mother and a sister at one of the Child and Family Services offices. And then slowly I started to meet the rest of my family. And it's quite extensive. I have 14 siblings. 

Kristin Ostensen

Oh, wow.

Corinne Peterkin

Yeah. So it's quite large, and lots of aunts and uncles. I later met my father, and I have a relationship with all of them, some more so than others. Because, of course, you have better connections with some people more than other people. So yeah, it was very good. And then I started to read Indigenous literature, I watched or I listened a lot to Morningside. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Peter Gzowski, he would bring in a lot of people and interview them, and one of the interviews was with Richard Wagamese, and he had written this book, Keeper‘n Me, which basically documents his journey, because he was a Sixties Scoop survivor, and his family, his parents, were residential school survivors, and he wrote about his journey, about trying to find his Indigenous identity. And I really found that it resonated with me. And so, I started to read a lot of Indigenous literature. And then at a certain point, I thought, you know, if I went to university and took an Indigenous literature course, I'd probably be getting more out of these books than just reading them. So, I signed up for con-ed with the University of Manitoba, and wouldn't you know, I could not take an Indigenous literature course without taking their introduction to Aboriginal people. That's what they referred to back then as Indigenous people—Aboriginal. So, I took the prerequisites, and then I started taking literature courses and Indigenous spirituality. And I just kept on going as long as my employer allowed me to take time off in the middle of the day to go to class and then come back to work. And then I stopped for a while, and then my employer, Red River College, had a partnership with the University of Winnipeg to create a cohort for people to take Indigenous Studies. And I thought, I'm going to do that, so I signed up for that, and that's when I met Anna, Mark Stewart's partner, and started taking classes. And it took about five years, but I did graduate with a BA with a major in Indigenous Studies. So that's how I came to really start to connect with my culture. And then going to ceremony, I remember my first sweat. It was just like, it was amazing. And I thought, you know what, I want to do more of this. And the more I learned of my culture, the more I knew that it was different than what I was led to believe, that there's a lot of beauty in it. There's, for sure, a lot of trauma, but there's a lot of beauty, and that is when I went to university for the second time—because I tried it after high school, but the second time, when I went to take Indigenous literature, that's when I learned the term Sixties Scoop, and I recognized myself in it. I said, yeah, that's me. That's my beginning, yeah. And so it was, like, really gut-wrenching—it really hit hard for me. And it was like learning some of the history of how, when the settlers arrived and colonization took place, how much was lost, and how painful that was. And, yeah, I just knew that I wanted to learn more. And thankfully, I didn't stop at the bad stuff, the trauma. I continued on and learned a lot of the beauty of it. And, you know, I'm hooked. What can I say?

Kristin Ostensen

Well, that's wonderful, and thank you so much for sharing that with us. You know, I know our Territorial Indigenous Consultant, Captain Crystal Porter, talks a lot about Indigenous brilliance, and that was really coming through to me as you were talking. And of course, that personal history and that educational piece really informs your work at the Centre of Hope, which is fantastic. And of course, the Centre of Hope recently launched a three-year strategic plan, and a major part of that was building relationships, stronger relationships, with Indigenous communities. So, I'm wondering if you could talk about, from your position, what does that look like? What are some of the keys to building those relationships?

Corinne Peterkin

I think being there and not being there to guide, but to be there and say, “What can we do?” You know, like, “These are some of the things that we can offer.” So, we go out to a lot of events. Winnipeg, of course, is almost front and centre with the murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls and gender-diverse people. So, there's a lot of memorials, a lot of honouring ceremonies for the women and girls and the two-spirit people, as well as murdered and missing Indigenous men and boys. So, we show up, and now they call us, and they say, “Can you come?” And we say, “Of course, we can come. What do you need?” And it's creating conversations with them, so that we're not just there to show up with coffee or hot dogs or soup or whatnot. It's showing up and maybe being part of the conversation when these events are being planned, which is great, and it is happening. So, you know, it’s not a race. It's a journey. So, we're on that journey. And I feel that, you know, it's small steps, and those small steps are very important.

Kristin Ostensen 

Yeah, absolutely. And can you talk a bit more about some of the partnerships the Centre of Hope has formed through these initiatives? 

Corinne Peterkin

Sure. So, as you had mentioned, I'm a Sixties Scoop survivor. So one of the one of the earliest partnerships that we formed was with the Sixties Scoop survivor group, which is Anish Healing Corporation. They deal a lot with Sixties Scoop survivors, residential school survivors and their family. So they offer a lot of programming. So, I started to attend the group, and in one of the group meetings, as it came closer to Christmas, the group wanted to do something for our houseless relatives, and so what they had come up with is, let's give out candies and socks and hand warmers. And I said, “Well, you know, I work with The Salvation Army, and I know that we want to help out with this, so we can probably offer to bring some food.” And I came back, and I talked to Mark Stewart, and I said, “OK, I kind of promised us to do this. And he goes, “Great. What do you need?” And I said, “Well, we're probably looking at about 500 people. We want to go and hand out this stuff. So, I was thinking maybe hot dogs.” And he goes, “Well, why don't we do Bannock dogs?” And I said, “OK”, and it was the first time our kitchen had made Bannock, but our head cook, Dan, was, “Sure, just give me a recipe and instructions.” And so, we reached out to community helpers. They provided a recipe. They talked to Dan to give him some guidance on making Bannock. So, we made the Bannock. Anish came in, as well as the Sixties Scoop survivors and some other volunteers as well, came in. We came in at about, I think, nine or 10 o'clock, and we made Bannock dogs. We were donated hot dogs by Salisbury House. Of course, the Salvation Army provided the Bannock and the kitchen space to make it. So, we made, I think, in the end, 540 Bannock dogs. And with the leftover Bannock (because we used up all the hot dogs), we made fry bread with sugar and cinnamon on it and butter. And then we took our community van and pulled it out in front of the Salvation Army, and people just came, like from all organizations. We handed out flyers. I sent emails to the different agencies in the area and said, “This is what we're doing. Just let your people know that we're going to be there.” And they came, and within 45 minutes, all the Bannock dogs were gone, and it was a huge success. People loved it. I think there's talk about us doing it again this Christmas. And yeah, so that was our step into Anish, and also, I brought some of our participants, because we know that we have a high percentage of Indigenous people, and a lot of them are affected either by residential schools or the Sixties Scoop. And so, I was able to bring one of our participants to a blanketing ceremony, which is a welcoming back of somebody who has been scooped, and saying, you know, you are part of this family, and welcome back. You are loved. So that was really good. And the Salvation Army has also, or the Centre of Hope has also contributed to any of their gatherings. They've been very gracious. “OK, tell us what you need…we will do this”. Another partnership which I just came back from is with Two-Spirit Manitoba who hosted the first-ever Two-Spirit Sundance. They are on their third year, so the Salvation Army donated a pallet of water to the Sundance, which takes place over four days, which actually kind of bleeds over a couple days before the dancers go into the arbour, and then a couple days after, so we contributed to that again. There were some participants at the Centre that wanted to go, so I was able to ride them out. We provided them with a tent and a sleeping bag, and the food was provided at the Sundance, and they participated in supporting the dancers going into a sweat and just learning more about culture. So that was really good. We continue to support what Two-Spirit Manitoba does. Any of their events or activities. We also made a connection with Native Clan, which we already sort of had a connection with. But I'm able to get some of our participants over to some workshops, so they provide workshops for drum making, rattle making, beaded earrings, dream catchers. And with all those activities, they also give teachings. So, it's a good resource since we can't provide everything. Having those partnerships so that our participants can reach out and connect with culture is really important. Yeah. I've also taken participants to sweat at The Three Wyndi’s, which is out in Broken Head Reserve. It's great because it's very flexible, so they are very accommodating to people of all walks of life, which is important for our participants, because they can't always follow all the protocols, but they can participate in the ceremony. So those are just a few of the partnerships that we're building.

Kristin Ostensen

That's wonderful, very diverse, different types of partnerships, and there's a lot happening. It's wonderful to hear about. And in addition to the partnerships, kind of outside the Centre of Hope, can you talk about some of the reconciliation initiatives within the Centre of Hope?

Corinne Peterkin 

Sure. So again, this is like baby steps. To quote the honourable Murray Sinclair, he says, “We have described you a mountain. We have shown you the path to the top. It's up to you to do the climbing.” So, it's not a race. It's not one item and you're done. It's like a journey. So, we are taking small steps. Part of it is making relationships with outside organizations. Within the Centre, we opened up a place for women. We have two floors at the Centre of Hope for transitional housing for women, and we opened up a room for them, and we had an elder bless it and name it. It's named: It's Way Black Mama Way, which is “women together”. And so, it's a room where they can come together. We've provided activities that they can do solo. So, there's paint up there, drawing utensils, games, and also, we opened it up with the painting session so that people could maybe say welcome in their own language, because we don't just have Indigenous people here, we also have refugees here. So, we wanted to make it inclusive for everybody with the concentration of Indigenous women. So, part of that is, I wanted to make sure that whatever renovations or whatever we did in the room, we were giving business to Indigenous people-run organizations. So, we reached out to an Indigenous artist, and she created a mural for us. And I told her, “OK, you can have free reign, but what I would like is for it to be representative of the medicine wheel without actually drawing the medicine wheel, and empowering for women.” So, she provided a great mural. It's about four by eight feet in dimension, and it's a picture that is representative of what I said, and also has women on it, and it's just really beautiful. The women love it. We have put some secret medicines like cedar and sage on the drawing around the mural. We reupholstered some furniture that was not being used. And just by fluke, the agency that I had reupholster it is Mets-run and owned, so that was really good. And the plan is to have meaningful activities, like sharing circles, and painting. And I'm looking at trying to put a time to do rattle-making in there. So right now, the women are going in there, conversing with each other. Apparently, they're doing a lot of painting and just talking with each other, which is great, because prior to the room being open, they were just sitting on the floors outside their room, talking. So, this is a nice place for them. Yeah. Besides that, we also introduced an Elders' blanket into our chapel. And so again, we had a ceremony around that. It was jointly planned between myself and the spiritual parenting. And so, it was a hybrid of Christian songs and readings. We had a hoop dancer come in. And as you may or may not know, hoop dancing tells a story. It's very healing, and it's, it's very sacred. So, we had a hoop dancer, we had an Elder come in that did a drum song, and bless the blanket. And after we had a small feast. We created a feast plate. We gave some context of what this feast plate is to the people who attended the ceremony, and then we just kind of talked, and everybody just had nice community sharing. It was great.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, it's very beautiful, yeah.

Corinne Peterkin

Yeah. And one of the other things that we implemented, when I arrived, we have an area called the reconciliation area. And in there is a large window, and on that window, there is a picture of the Celebration of Culture Powwow. And there's chairs out there. And when I arrived, there were four raised gardens, but they were empty. They were just the metal containers. And I thought, you know, that's perfect. We should put the four sacred medicines in there. So, we did that.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. And again, it's so neat to see how multifaceted the reconciliation initiatives are. And I'm wondering, what do you think other army ministry units could learn from some of these initiatives? Are there broader applications that we could implement across the territory?

Corinne Peterkin

Well, I think education is really important. To quote Maurice and Claire again, education is what brought us into this mess (and he was talking about residential schools), and education is going to bring us out of this. I mean, we're doing better because we know about residential schools. We're learning and we're getting reminders, unfortunately, when they found the unmarked graves, first in Kamloops and then popping up in other parts of the country. So, educating people about colonization in residential schools, because it is a very huge part of our history. But knowing it doesn't just stop there, that it also includes things like the Sixties Scoop, the Indian Act, and knowing about treaties. So, one of the things that I did is, we are on Treaty One Territory, and we just celebrated 154 years since the signing of Treaty One. And so it's at Lower Fort Garry, also known as the Stone Fort. And originally it was known as the Stone Fort Treaty, and later named Treaty One. And so, I took a staff member out, and treaty relations did a ceremony, and they did some education about what the treaty involved, how it came about. So I think it's really important to do education knowing what the treaty is so when we do our land acknowledgements, we know what we're acknowledging, what the intent of the treaties were, and educating our staff and our community about that, because it sounds strange, but even some Indigenous people, they are not aware of what the treaties said about the Indian Act. So, education, I think, is really important, and reaching out to organizations. Going back to your question, because I know I kind of tangent off, but going to organizations and saying, “You know what, we're here. What can we do to help you?” And I mean, The Salvation Army is full of people that have a lot of empathy, and using that and reaching out to organizations and saying, “What can we do?” Not necessarily taking the leadership role, but saying, “We are here. There's no strings attached. We want to help.” I think it's really, really important, and it goes a far way. I think it opened a lot of doors for us and a lot of lines of communication. So now, when they organize, they know that we have an ally, we have a partner that wants to help us in this. And it's really important, because we can't do it in silos. We need to be together. And I think that's really important to be together, bring in Indigenous culture into your centres. I think it is really important because we know that Indigenous people are overrepresented in our shelters. They need those services. So, yeah, I think being able to come into a centre and see something that is familiar goes a long way. Making smudge available. Making water available. Water is very healing, so when we're taking people in, offer them water, see if they do want to smudge, knowing other organizations around you that can offer services that you can't offer, like sweat lodges or a traditional healer, being able to talk and listen and to have another Indigenous person there to greet you, I think, is really important. Those are the things that I think we're finding successful here, and I think would work in other centres with the Salvation Army.

Kristin Ostensen 

Yeah, thank you for that. Those are some really good practical ideas for other ministry units. And on a personal level, I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about how your Indigenous spirituality and your Christian beliefs complement each other.

Corinne Peterkin

Yeah, so I was born and raised Catholic. I was raised in a Catholic family. I would say that Christianity was very important to my family. I have an uncle who was a priest. I have an aunt who was a nun. I have another uncle who was very close—he came up to his final vows to become a priest. And I have another aunt that was very devout. She was a doctor, but she lived a very humble life and followed the path almost like a nun. She gave a lot of her money away and served the community. So, we went to church every week. You know, I fulfilled all the sacraments that I could fulfill. I mean, I haven't had the last rites yet, but I was baptized twice, and, you know, had my first communion, confession, confirmation, all that stuff. And when I started to investigate my culture, I found a lot of the teachings teach the same thing. We believe in a creator that created the world, that gave us many gifts, and I find that they complement each other. We have seven teachings in the Indigenous: truth, honesty, courage, respect, so I find that really aligns with the Christian teachings of the 10 Commandments and the greatest commandment of all, love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. When I go to church (and I do attend the chapel here), we have chapel on Tuesday, Wednesday, and when I have time, I go down and I sit in, and I find that when I go there, I was meant to be there because something in the message gets to me. “Oh, that's the message that I needed to hear today.” When I go to Indigenous ceremony, it feeds my body and my mind and my soul, very much like you know it, it feeds my soul when I go to church. And I think the other important thing for me to remember in my work is that, yes, we have Indigenous spirituality, but Indigenous people, a lot of them, are Christians, and we can't abandon that. We have to honour both—that is who we are.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Now this month, of course, we're looking to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day, and I'm wondering if, as we're wrapping up, you would have some parting thoughts to share with listeners in terms of how Salvationists or ministry units might mark that day and live out that commitment to reconciliation.

Corinne Peterkin

Well, I would say definitely, go out. There are always lots of opportunities and options to join the celebration of Orange Shirt Day, and we have to remember why it took place, what it's commemorating, but also remember that there's a lot of celebration because we're still here. We survived, we thrived. So join an organization that is holding a celebration and keep that in your heart, and remember that it's not just one day. Reconciliation isn't just one deed. It's not one and you're done. It's a journey. So, keep those thoughts that you had on that day and carry them with you in your work and your personal journey. That's what I would say.

Kristin Ostensen 

Wonderful. Yes. Thank you so much. Very good thoughts, very helpful advice. And I just want to thank you so much for your time today. It's been very educational. It's wonderful and encouraging to hear the steps that the Centre of Hope is making. And I just want to thank you once again for your time.

Corinne Peterkin

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm very honoured that you asked me.

Kristin Ostensen 

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. For more episodes, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.