Rooted in Relationship

After our longhouse event, someone asked me a question I've been sitting with ever since.

They had heard Len compliment me on "not being stingy with your teachings." And they wanted to know: how did I feel confident the blanketing would be received well? Was I nervous that people outside the bighouse might have thoughts that could knock me off centre?

It's a beautiful question. And to answer it, I have to start at the beginning.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I kept thinking about our team. About how much George, Katy, Becca, and Denisse pour into this work, quietly, consistently, without fanfare. I wanted to find a way to honour them that felt meaningful. Blanketing is a Coast Salish tradition of honouring someone, of wrapping them in recognition and gratitude, and it felt right. But as a non-Indigenous person, I knew it wasn't my place to make that decision. So I called Len.

I asked him two things: whether blanketing would be appropriate, and whether he would help me navigate it. He said he loved the idea. In the days that followed, he asked me to gather a few items alongside the blankets I'd already ordered. His statlus Malissa, along with our mutual friend, Lise Gilles, worked quietly behind the scenes, and I trusted the process.

What I didn't know was that when the moment came, Len would call me to the floor to do the blanketing myself.

I won't pretend I wasn't caught off guard. But when someone you trust calls you forward, you go. You don't pause to second-guess. You trust the people who have walked with you, who know you, who have watched you grow in this work. Malissa leaned in as I stood there and said something I will carry with me for a long time:

"It is okay to be learning and doing at the same time. This is how you build competence."

She gave me permission to be exactly where I was. Not fully arrived, not performing expertise, just present and willing and held.

When I brought the question back to Len afterward, he reflected on something I hadn't fully considered: what that moment might have meant for the people being blanketed. Especially for someone like George, who has gifted so many teachings. Len spoke about the particular pride a mentor feels when someone they've walked alongside steps into that space, when your student carries the work forward in the way you've shown them. He called it one of the highest forms of accomplishment and purpose.

And he named something else: that what I did, not just telling my team how much they mean to me but showing them, in the best way I had been shown how to, was a beautiful moment of carrying on the good work. 

But here is what I keep coming back to. When the attendee asked their question, I realized it had never once occurred to me to be self-conscious, or to fear that I was doing something I shouldn't be doing. That awareness only arrived when someone outside the relationship named it as a potential risk.

Len reflected on this too. He was clear: there was no risk in this context. It was fitting and appropriate. But he understood why it might read differently to a non-Indigenous observer, and he felt it was an important part of the learning and takeaways to share.

I think he's right. So much of the fear that non-Indigenous people carry around this work is real, and it matters. But fear without relationship can keep us frozen. What I experienced that day wasn't fearlessness. It was something better. It was safety. The safety that comes from being held in relationship, from having asked permission, from trusting the mentors who have so generously welcomed me into this learning over many years.

When I brought the question back to Len, he said:

"You have to go inwards. You felt it in your heart. You've been given so many blessings along your journey and you gave it back. That's relational, cultural, reciprocal. You're doing what your mentors have asked of you: to pass it on."

That is the teaching. It isn't about confidence in the performance of something. It's about trust, in your relationships, in the guidance you've been given, in what has been placed in your heart through years of genuine connection. And it's about reciprocity: receiving with gratitude, and giving back when you are called to.

When they call, listen.

🧡 Kim