About Margaret

I have been lucky to learn from Mi’kmaw, Cree, Anishinaabe, Upper Skagit and Blackfoot teachers and to sometimes be welcomed into ceremony. These experiences inform all that I know and do. I’ve learned that acknowledging ancestors is important and that my Irish ancestors are the bossiest.

I once heard Mi’kmaw Elder and hereditary Chief Stephen Augustine call for all us in Canada to look to land as both mother and government and wondered, What kind of listening would this entail? Through PhD research at the University of British Columbia, I sought to explore what such a relationship might feel like in my body, what the seeking could teach me about reconciliation, and how writing this journey in poetry and story would transform me.

I learned that relationships, truth, and listening grow from an open heart that has confronted its traumas and that the land can anchor and hold us. Kinship is about fostering relationships and claiming our reciprocal responsibilities; how do we offer our unique gifts to care for all that which sustains us?

There are many questions I don’t have answers to. But I am certain, as a settler person inhabiting Indigenous territories, that connecting with our more-than-human kin can give us strength to do hard work and that deep listening can guide us.