Grandmother Vivian Recollet on healing, reciprocity, and bringing the circle back to PARC
Grandmother Vivian Recollet was 30 years old when she walked into her first Indigenous Talking Circle. She says that at the time, she did not know who she was.
“I was walking by, and something almost pulled me in,” she says. The group had a teaching planned for that night. Someone looked at her and told her she seemed to need something. What she needed more than anything was to truly understand herself.
So they changed the plan. Instead of the teaching, they held a ceremony for her. “They didn’t change the plan for anyone before that,” Vivian remembers. “That generosity, somebody doing that for me, had never happened before.”
That night began a journey through sweat lodges, aunties’ circles and ceremonies across Turtle Island and beyond. Today, Vivian holds that same space for others.
Each month, she leads the Indigenous Talking Circle at PARC. It is the first circle PARC has hosted in about 30 years.
What was taken
Grandmother Vivian’s earliest memories are of Wiikwemkoong First Nation in northern Ontario, where children spoke their language and moved freely between homes. “Aunties, uncles, everybody took care of us,” she says. “There’d be a pot of soup on the stove all the time, so you could stop in and eat, then do your dishes and go back out to play.”
Then came Indian day school, run mostly by nuns, where she was beaten for not speaking English. Vivian was later taken into the foster system as part of the Sixties Scoop and separated from her family.
Her parents had survived residential school. As an adult, she learned what had been done to them as children and came to see how it shaped the way she was raised. “These are all trauma responses,” she says. “Impacts of colonialism.”
Her path back began in Parkdale. At The Nest, a space run by an Indigenous healer, she was introduced to the sacred medicines and ceremonies that had been kept from her.
What the circle holds
Vivian describes the circle as a place to talk and a place to share.
“Some people are afraid to talk about things, but they might hear somebody else who had a similar experience, and then they think, ‘I’m not alone in this,'” she says. “That shared pain, moving forward together. That’s the circle.”
She is a nurse by training and has spent much of her career in Indigenous health promotion. Her advice for making a circle work is consistency. For settlers, that means taking responsibility for keeping the work going.
Reciprocity with the land
The teachings Vivian carries extend beyond people. In the creation story she shares, the turtle offered its back to hold Sky Woman, and the muskrat gave everything to bring up the soil that became land. “That’s the small amount we owe the animals in return,” she says.
She lives that obligation locally. Vivian helps tend the Indigenous garden at Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, serves as lead grandmother for the traditional and prescribed burns in High Park, and is a turtle protector. “If you can take care of a garden, you can take care of yourself,” she says.
The water teaching she shares may say it best. Water gives life to everything it touches, without judging who deserves it. Vivian offers that as a lesson in how to treat each other.
What was passed on
Vivian did not come to know her culture until she was 30. She promised herself her son would never have to wait that long. Vivian’s son grew up with his culture and his teachings within reach, and it shaped the whole course of his life.
He was in ceremony from the time he could walk. He learned the language and the sacred medicines. He spent his childhood in the bush with Elders, hauling water, starting fires for the women, setting up lodges and caring for the babies.
Many of the people who raised him were not related by blood. Through ceremony, they became family. He reflected on what that childhood had given him. “That’s what a community is about,” he told her. “That’s about love and family.”
The teachings keep moving. When Vivian gets ready to go out, she wears red lipstick, the way her mother did. It was the one thing her mother did to feel beautiful. When Vivian shared this with her granddaughter, the girl said “If you wear it, then I can wear it too. For you and for her.”
What a circle once gave Vivian, she gave to her son. Now her granddaughter carries it forward.
What this asks of PARC
PARC is not an Indigenous-led organization. Stating a commitment to reconciliation is easy. Showing up for it takes longer. PARC’s role is to make room for it, and to keep making room.
A circle once changed its plan for Vivian. She has brought that generosity to PARC. We answer it with consistency, by keeping the circle resourced, protected and open for as long as the community wants it.
Join the Indigenous Talking Circle
The Indigenous Talking Circle meets on the second Tuesday of each month at PARC, starting around 1:15 p.m. It is open to all Indigenous members of PARC and the community.
To learn about Canada’s obligations to Indigenous Peoples, read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
