Let Love in: Healing the House and Home

“My name is Xwaluputhut. I am proud to be from Stzmin’us First Nation and Penelakut Island. My objective as a young Indigenous man is to be a voice and to make a difference in the community. I plan to move mountains: learning the history of what happened within Indigenous communities and building the necessary skills to work with and help others.”

For Patrick Aleck, 32, there is a thin veil between human and house, and the healing that must be done for both. Patrick feels he has no choice in this. Community is his calling. For Patrick to dive deep into community, he must have an open and healthy space within himself, and an open and healthy space to retreat to.

His healing involved body, mind, and spirit. Born with cerebral palsy, he was told he would never walk. Born into intergenerational trauma, he faced spiritual challenges stemming from grandparent survivors of Penelakut Island residential school, family addictions, and life on a reservation.

Patrick doesn’t place blame for the work he has had to do over the past decade, and continues to do, as he turns inward. He acknowledges his own humanness and recognizes it in those around him.

“Through my healing I’m able to forgive myself and my parents,” he says. “They did the best they could with what they had and it doesn’t serve me to blame. But I had to reach out a lot to get that self-awareness. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s worth it, and I’m still learning to love myself.”

For Patrick, healing the person is woven into healing the house he will call his own on Penelakut Island, a community that is tearing down the last vestiges of the residential school that once operated here. This old house, originally built by his grandparents, is filled not only with hope, introspection, and healing, but also with loss, and trauma, he says. It’s been exposed to the elements for the last 10 years following the death of his aunt. The spirits warn off anyone who dares enter it, he says. The ocean air has slowly degraded its floors, walls, and roof, filling it with darkness and mould. But perhaps to heal, one must move deeply into those dark places. “The human parts,” Patrick says. “Of me. Of everyone.

”With affordable housing nearly impossible to come by, this empty family home has given Patrick a new lease on a life he never thought he’d have—a life that is rooted in what he calls his Equality Song. “It’s a traditional song I made to show that people can work together as one,” Patrick says. “We stand in circle to be with one another together. We start and finish without the drum beat because I want people to hear their own voice, so they know their voice matters.

”It was through this song that Patrick’s fiancée, Hope Hutsell, felt inspired to reach out to him in gratitude. Less than a year later, Patrick found himself proposing to her at the start of an adventure by canoe to Lummi, Washington. “I prayed to the creator for her,” Patrick says, “and it came through.

Now they must do the hard work of healing their space, he says. Through his culture’s traditional blessings and teachings, they will bring new life to the house and honour Patrick’s grandparents. He acknowledges the shame he feels from being unable to do the physical work himself. But he understands the humbling limitations of one person’s body, and the gift of receiving from community.

“I do wish I could do all that manly stuff that we’re supposed to do, but I can’t, so I have to be creative and look to my peers to help me,” he says. “Those are the human sides of me that I have a hard time letting go of sometimes. Even with my partner, I have to let that go with her, because I’m not on my own anymore. Relationships take work. There’s difficult times because she’s like a mirror.

The house sits off on the edge of the island, away from everything, including the small community drama that goes hand in hand with island living. This is where Patrick will have a space to re-energize from his work. “It’s a vulnerable place, to be a person of community,” Patrick says, referring to his well-known role as a traditional drummer, singer, motivational speaker, and youth worker. His focus is on youth who haven’t had the opportunity to grow up within their culture: “One of the teachings is to be proud of who you are and where you come from,” he says.

Now with a family he feels he must provide for, Patrick is leaning into the calling that his elders always told him he had. He’s growing his business, embracing entrepreneurship, and accepting the ebb and flow of family life. He is coming to understand his value in the web of community, of culture, of language, of regalia, and of tradition. He reflects often about what it means to call a place and a body, home. “My father, he said to me, ‘once you make this choice to make a difference, you can’t go back and say I don’t want to do this anymore.’ So when I’m going through hard times and when I want to throw in the towel, Creator throws it back at me and says, ‘Good try.’

Despite the many challenges, Patrick says his body, spirit, Penelakut Island, and this old house are all symbolic of the resilient will of a community moving beyond reconciliation, and into Indigenous resurgence. “Sharing is who I am, and my journey,” he says. “It helps me value myself. I didn’t put myself in that place before, but I deserve it. It’s not a race. We’re healing. I’m still learning to let it in. All the things I’m doing in community: let love in.”

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This story first appeared in The Home Volume.

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