*Unsettling the Settler*

*Actor stands in the center of the stage, hands by her side and looks directly at the audience. She is wearing a suit and her hair is pulled back tightly in a bun or low ponytail. She wears pearls.*

Sometimes I feel stuck.

*(She pantomimes her feet are glued to the floor and she is using all of her energy to try and get one of them to move off of the ground in order to take a step forward. Screaming,* *she finally collapses to the floor, but her feet are still planted in the same place. She begins to cry, but ends up laughing at the futility of the situation).*

I mean, what is the point?

Here I am, trying to move ... somewhere ... But, I'm not quite sure where I need to go, or what exactly I need to do ... and staying still kind of, well, sucks ... and you know, I'm a runner. I don't generally like to walk places. I love the feeling of getting somewhere fast, and it's practical. It keeps me warm, because I'm always kind of cold. Except, well, you know, in the middle of summer when everyone else has the air conditioning on, and is sipping ice tea, or something stronger, and the ice melts in your glass before you can finish your drink ... the kind of heat where most people don't want to move! *(She starts to fan herself).*

Well, then I'm ok.

Then, I'm finally warm and happy. It's like I can feel the sun permeating through all of the layers of my skin and muscle and bones, to somewhere deeper, some place inside where if I am warm enough I can find this place that will let me finally relax and feel like I'm ... me ... you know- not frozen. *(Carter loosens her hair and take off her suit jacket during this time).*

I'm also not such a bitch then.

Because, well obviously, I'm not frozen . . . or stuck.

*(She looks down and tries once more to move her feet, but can't).*

AAAArrghhhhhh.

*(She looks up at the audience and realizes she has been screaming again and begins to apologize).*

Oh, shit. I mean, sorry. This wasn't supposed to happen like this. No, really. Really. I'm not normally so . . . so . . . well, you know . . . Frustrated, er, angry, ah . . . I don't know, you know? Stuck!

Yes, stuck. This is really hard for me.

I, you know, get paid to know the right thing to say, the right thing to do. To teach other people about interpreting ideas and helping them to think about the ways that they live in relation to thoughts and the world and themselves.

You know? All of that "let's make the world a better place kind of stuff". You know what I'm talking about, right?

*(She interacts with the audience until they begin to nod in agreement and launches into one of her lectures on social responsibility—or something impressive).*

So phenomenology is when you go back to the thing itself-when you-ok, here- think about this pencil-imagine for a second that you had never seen a pencil before. You don't know what it is, what it does, what it's made of ... and you get to discover that for the first time.

So ... What do you do? Do you taste it, smell it? What does that moment of discovery feel like when you figure out its potential?

That subjective experience is emotional and intellectual and thrilling, right? Then what?

Do you want to share this with someone else? What if it wasn't a pencil you were curious about? What if it was something like, a body, or a language or a feeling ... like that first moment of falling in love? Amazing, right?

*She looks at the audience.* Great! Super. Well, exactly! That's me.

Ms. Happy-go-lucky, Ms. glass half full, Ms. "let's do this together". That's the kind of gal I am.

. . . really . . . Who am I kidding? *(She sits down on a chair someone brought out when she was talking about phenomenology).*

Oh! Oh. Hey!

HEY!

*(She "goes through the steps of "discovering" the chair as if for the first time, as she just described).*

Hey, thanks. Hhmpf. *(she sits on the chair)* So, what now? Do you want me to tell you a story? About . . . *(she nods her head)* ... right. The one I don't want to. I know. Me too. *(there is a long pause)* Well. I guess I'm tired. I have *tried* you know?

But now I am *tired* of being here in Québec as an Anglophone.

I don't even get to call myself English here, and I hate feeling like this. I really hate feeling like I never do anything right, that there is this unspoken sense that I don't belong. I feel like I am being treated poorly, and helpless, that there is this government taking away my rights and the opportunities of my children through legislation and those of others through like what's happening with Bill 21 and the changes to the English schoolboards. But I'm just too tired to try when there is this paternalistic agenda that just keeps moving along no matter what.

But, you know? Even more than this, I hate feeling *like this* because I know I am this white, cis gendered, able bodied woman with so much to be thankful for. I am lucky. And I'm Miss. Glass half-full, Miss. Let's make the world a better place.

And, I know! You look at me and say, what does she have to complain about?

She has a great place to live, her health, a job she loves, a husband and kids and all the things.

And, you're right. Why the fuck should I be up here complaining about feeling stuck when I am privileged? When all the indicators should suggest "it's all good"? She's fine. I'm fine.

*Sings:*

*Altogether now, Grey skies are going to clear up! Put on a happy face. Wipe off those tears and cheer up! Put on a happy face. Wipe off that face of tragedy, it's not your style, and put on a happy face* ... *(the last note is drawn out for a long time, as Carter tap dances her way to a grand finale).*

It's just that, you know? I'm not. There. I've said it. I don't feel ok . . . or privileged.

I've moved maybe 45 times or more, I can't even remember, in 41 years how many times, and I grew up primarily in NWO where my mom lived ... my mom still lives in subsidized housing ... and when I was younger she and my brother and I lived with her and she was on welfare—what else can a single mother with a high school diploma who delivers flyers to support her family do?

I just remember feeling so cold all of the time. Of being outside in the winter, alone in the snow, and my legs and fingers going numb and then warm and there was no one around to tell me not too because no one was there to take care of me. And I just wanted this home that I thought everyone else had. Not someone knocking on our crappy townhouse door delivering a Christmas hamper. My Christmas presents used to be labelled "Girl" 10–12 years old.

But now, I buy someone else's fucking Christmas turkey and deliver the hampers. Every year. Every year I wonder if it's because I am trying to erase that from happening to me or to do something kind for a family during the holidays.

Every year I wonder if I will finally be able to forget about having to use flour and water to make pasta for my brother and I for dinner for nights in a row, when we were left alone as children and the heat went out. I don't want that to be a part of my story. I don't want to be that little girl who was so scared to speak that the school nurse gave her a second round of immunizations because the adults in her life neglected her.

That's all, you know? Inside of me. And I have tried never to share that part of me *(Carter takes off her blouse and dress pants and puts on a comfortable flowing dress and lets her hair down. She stands barefoot).* I want to be me, but I am tired.

And so, when I start thinking about truth and reconciliation, or social justice and teacher agency, or seeing something for the first time . . . like me . . .

I'm broken. I miss this home I never even had. I miss knowing my extended family because we moved so much and then I went away to University which was following my heart but, also running away.

I feel stuck between these places that I don't know how to bring together, or accept.

I started my research to open up conversations about the things that need to change in Canada so that all people can find a way to be together.

But, the truth is, I can't help anyone because I am hurt. I need to forgive and I need to be forgiven.

The truth is, reconciliation is my story too and I am afraid that if I can't figure out how to heal me, and the trauma I experienced, I have no right doing this work. This research.

But I have struggled to forgive lots of people; and sometimes I think I have. But sometimes the person who I feel has done this significant "wrong" doesn't really understand the extent of pain they caused for what they did. And I wonder if that's what this means.

*How can the people who inflict the pain ever really be forgiven, if they don't really truly understand how it feels?*

How can reconciliation take place if you never really believe you did something wrong because your truth needs something else to exist? You'll never understand the pain your decisions caused.

But, I do.

I do.

And sometimes, I know the politicians who talk about the TRC just don't comprehend what they are asking in the calls to action. Like, this book about "Reconciliation: The false truth of Trudeau's sunny ways" that talks about this notion that colonial states make for poor friends. You Know? "Colonialism is not a 'behaviour' that can be superficially changed by a prime minister professing 'sunny ways,'" or for us tearful Prime Minister who cries while saying all of the right things, but is fundamentally re-inscribing the status quo through the existing foundational system in Canada.

All I know, is that it hurts to open up the scars and to dig out the poison that lies inside. That hurt and painful experience that has been laying there for so long. *(She begins to pick at her arm trying to dig out the "poison").* I know it's there. I know its sitting just beneath the surface. But its pooled there in a spot and If you don't touch it it can't spread everywhere again. See? SEE? The scar? Its healed, as much as it can.

Why do you want to open it up? Why are you asking me to be brave?

Does it make you feel better? Does it look like it makes me feel better? I bet its easier than actually doing the real work.

That's the truth. That's what you're asking. You're asking people to open up their trauma, to rip out those emotions and memories and then to leave us standing here, stuck to figure out our own next steps. *(She throws the chair she was sitting on and again falls to the ground).*

\*\*\*

I thought about it for a few months. I imagined moving away and teaching in a small town and living this simple life. But, I gave my heart to the work I'm doing, and I don't understand why,

So, I just can't. But, I'd love to be able to.

But, I can't because I have this feeling inside that things can be different. That something has to change and that it is happening and it's going to be better for more people and systems.

That we need the conversations where we stumble and try to understand something differently than before. That we, you know feel unsettled and stuck but then . . .

*(the child who brought out the chair returns and smiles holding out a hand. She looks down at her arm).*

My grandfather lost a leg in the second world war and lived with the phantom pain for the rest of his life. Those things-you know- those stories that make up a life, they give this narrative inheritance for going on.

Maybe we re-write this story together and the pain and the joy, and the being stuck and unstuck are all just parts of the larger narrative we learn to tell.

Maybe those stories I don't want to be mine, that I feel ashamed to tell, are trying to tell me something. And it's hard to listen to them, and to accept that they are mine. But, maybe my stories are trying to teach me that the journey of truth and reconciliation needs to start with me, and that's the only story I can tell.

What's yours?

## **4. Analysis: Unpacking the Monologue**

This monologue was written during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, while I was simultaneously working on the data analysis and writing *Smallest circles first.* As I dug deeper into researching "truth" and "reconciliation", the theme of "forgiveness" continually came up. In parallel to the experiences of my participants in this work, I was simultaneously living through my own reckoning with childhood traumas and triggers, and finding way(s) to forgive. In order for me to focus on my research, I turned to writing about my own experiences—which were also related to being of settler descent—which emerged in the piece: *Unsettling the settler.* Jan Hare [20] contends that in order for the settler to move beyond reconciliation as a conceptual understanding that leads to absolution, one's active participation is needed. Writing a monologue exploring my experiences with the challenge of being "unsettled" while learning more about the TRC and how pre- and in-service teachers could take up this work in their classrooms was an active experience for me, which—as I have described—helped me to move from feeling "stuck" to "unstuck":

*Maybe we re-write this story together and the pain and the joy, and the being stuck and unstuck are all just parts of the larger narrative we learn to tell.*

*Maybe those stories I don't want to be mine, that I feel ashamed to tell, are trying to tell me something. And it's hard to listen to them, and to accept that they are mine. But, maybe my stories are trying to teach me that the journey of truth and reconciliation needs to start with me, and that's the only story I can tell.*

The reflections and understandings that emerged in the monologue require a confrontation of one's own experiences that inhibit engagement because of personal pain and hurt, and an acceptance of the self in order to engage with others.

Derrida talks about going beyond the feelings when thinking about reconciliation and forgiveness. He says that we need to move beyond those emotions in order to change the systems of oppression that Foucault describes being re-inscribed into institutional forms of oppression after struggles around issues take place.

We must all confront the truth of our shared his/her/their stories in order to

*Open up the scars and to dig out the poison that lays inside. That hurt and painful experience that has been laying there for so long (She begins to pick at her arm trying to* *dig out the "poison"). I know it's there. I know its sitting just beneath the surface. But its pooled there in a spot and If you don't touch it it can't spread everywhere again. See? SEE? The scar? Its healed, as much as it can.*

The embodied and visceral description and experience, when putting this monologue on its feet (i.e., rehearsing it in an embodied way rather than just reading it aloud, in preparation for performance), of "digging out the poison" moved the ideas of reconciliation and forgiveness from conceptual understandings for me, to active engagements. Active engagement in reconciliatory praxis through a theoretical and arts-based lens offers a way in which to engage in the discussing topics with others and making connections between experiences. By exploring the actor's "not-me and not-not-me" [21] (p. 72) through *Unsettling the settler,* I was able to consider the four steps for engaging in ABER that participants I observed experienced when creating their devised theatre piece. Specifically:

