Forward march: International Women's Day focuses on past and future progress

Enlarge Image

Mary Bryan and her daughter, Chantell Quill, have both overcome past hardships and built a positive future for themselves. (WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Related Items

1. Articles

   • Women's equality rated C+ in Manitoba
   • Is feminism outdated?
   • Women's Day marked by events, rally and march

Twenty-five years ago, Mary Bryan was struggling to raise six children on social assistance, feeling lost and helpless to get ahead.

Three years ago she was a 53-year-old high-school graduate, radiant and surrounded by her grandchildren at a Red River College convocation.

Now, Bryan is a university-educated woman, working to pass on her traditions as a cultural worker with aboriginal services agency Ka Ni Kanichihk. The girls in her Empowering Our Little Sisters program, aged 7 to 17, are learning from her how to move their feet to the drumbeat -- and when they dance, their eyes dance, too.

"You can just see when they finish making their regalia and put it on, they're happy, they're proud," Bryan says, sipping green tea as she traces the path of her 55-year-long life. "It's the (traditional) teachings, too. They're learning to respect people. It's a great feeling."

Today is the 101st anniversary of International Women's Day. It is a day to honour how women's stories are woven into the fabric of the world. In Bryan's case, that thread is about an aboriginal woman who saw all the struggles of her generation -- the residential schools and all the pain they brought, the poverty, the yawning chasm between cultures -- and survived, then thrived.

But it is also a story about Bryan's daughter, Chantell Quill, and how hands stretched across generations can heal women, heal their families and even begin to heal an entire community. Because it was Quill who inspired her own mother to go back to school.

In the mid-2000s and trapped in poverty as she tried to raise her own two daughters, Quill decided it was time to break the cycle. So she finished her high school diploma, tapped into educational programs at Ka Ni Kanichihk -- programs that didn't exist when her mother came to Winnipeg -- and became a star student in RRC's business administration program, where she also helped lead aboriginal student advocacy.

Quill graduated from RRC in 2010 and soon became a leader on the national Aboriginal Human Resource Council. And her mother? Inspired by her daughter's experiences, Bryan found the strength to get her own diploma. And she's never looked back. "Education has changed me to be more vocal," Bryan says. "I have a voice now where I can speak up, whereas before I couldn't talk. It gave me a lot of self-confidence to encourage others to follow their paths."

Bryan is still soft-spoken, her voice rich with the lilt of her Cree mother tongue. She spoke it as a child on Sapotaweyak First Nation, though she did not understand at the time why her grandmother, a traditional midwife, fought so hard to keep the old ways alive. Bryan's own mother would only sing the traditional songs when she was drunk. For her, reeling from the cultural shame wrought by residential school, there was no pride in them. So after Bryan came to the city as a teenager, her grasp on the culture began to slip away.

She found it again at RRC, with the cultural-support services there. Now, Mary is a proud traditional dancer. She's busy organizing a second annual powwow at Sapotaweyak, where she'll dance a tribute to her grandmother. And when she watches the girls at Ka Ni Kanichihk, and their hunger to learn about songs and sharing circles and sweat lodges, she sees a blossoming confidence she once thought was lost to her. "I'm hoping they continue with what they learn and to turn out to be strong women," Bryan muses. "To be leaders."

On International Women's Day, these are the stories we pause to celebrate -- the lessons passed from mother to daughter and sometimes back again. "We made it, it feels like," says Quill, who recently left a banking career and is preparing to enroll at the University of Winnipeg. "A lot of my strength does have to do with my mother. I saw a woman through her and through my great-granny, that they were strong aboriginal women and nothing could break that. They delivered babies in the bush, living off the land. There's your strong women right there."

And when Quill looks at her daughter's future, she sees a brightness. "We're doing well, women are doing well," Quill says. "I'm not scared, because it's happening in front of everybody in the world right now, where aboriginal people are taking their culture back. It's positive all over. Now I just want our guys to start healing."

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

A SAMPLE OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY EVENTS

SISTERS IN SPIRIT

University of Manitoba, Fireplace Lounge at University Centre, 10 a.m.

Filmmaker Tina Keeper and writer Beverley Jacobs will be on hand for a celebration of indigenous women's art and stories, with an emphasis on shining light on the tragedy of Canada's missing and murdered women. There will be a silent auction to benefit support agency Ka-Ni-Kanichihk.

UNPAC EQUALITY REPORT CARD

Manitoba legislature, 11:30 a.m.

Representatives from Manitoba-based UNPAC will release their latest report card, documenting Manitoba's progress in bringing about equality for women and eliminating socio-economic discrimination. The gathering on the front steps of the legislature will feature speeches on the topic.

CONNECTING GIRLS, INSPIRING FUTURES MARCH

City hall, 5:30 p.m.

Hundreds of Manitobans will gather at city hall for a rally, before marching through downtown in support of women's progress throughout the world. The march will wrap up with refreshments and speeches at the Union Centre on Broadway.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 8, 2012 B1