"Be(e) the Lord's Helper-A Cree-Metis Reflection for Every Child Matters Day

This morning, on Every Child Matters Day, I stepped outside before the sun had fully risen. The air was cool, the kind that reminds you of fall and of memory. And there, on the edge of my yard, I saw a single bee working its way across a patch of milkweed.

Milkweed is stubborn, generous medicine. It grows where other plants give up. It feeds the monarch butterfly, even when the world around it changes. It stands in quiet defiance- just like our people have always done.

The bee moved slowly, almost reverently, dipping into each blossom. And I thought: This is what it looks like to be Indigenous in Canada- Cree, Metis, nehiyaw, Michif. To keep working, keep tending, keep healing, even when the world has not always been gentle with us.

To Be(e) the Lord's Helper is to do small acts of care that ripple outward.

The Monarch Butterfly & Orange Shirt Day

The milkweed reminded me of the monarch butterfly, whose wings carry the same colour as the shirts we wear today-bright orange, the colour of truth, survival, and the children who never came home.

The monarch is fragile, yet it travels thousands of kilometres. It remembers the path its ancestors took. It returns to the same places, generation after generation.

Our children- the ones taken to Residential Schools- were like monarchs whose wings were interrupted. Their migration, their language, their songs, their families, their ceremonies- all disrupted by a system that tried to break the sacred chain of memory.

But like the monarch, our people continue to return to ourselves. We reclaim language. We reclaim kinship. We reclaim ceremony. We reclaim the stories that were almost lost.

Every Child Matters is not just a slogan-it is a migration back to who we truly are.

Our Lady of Guadalupe & the Monarch

In our communities, many Indigenous Catholics see Our Lady of Guadalupe as a mother who understands Indigenous suffering. Her cloak is filled with flowers, stars, and symbols of the land. In many teachings, she is connected to the monarch butterfly- the messenger of hope, endurance, and return.

The monarch's orange wings become a prayer: for the children who survived, for the children who didn't, for the families who still carry the ache, and for the healing that continues.

On this day, I imagine Our Lady of Guadalupe holding all those children close, her cloak becoming a sky of orange butterflies rising toward the Creator.

The Bee, the Butterfly, and the Children

The bee on the milkweed teaches us something important:

• Bees pollinate so others can live.

• Milkweed feeds so monarchs can fly.

• Monarchs carry memory across generations.

• And we, as Indigenous people, carry truth (Tapwewin) so healing can continue.

This is what it means to Be(e) the Lord's Helper: to tend to the small things that keep life sacred- langauge, ceremony, kinship, land, prayer, truth.

Today, we wear orange because every child mattered then, and every child matters now. We honour the ones who survived. We remember the ones who didn't. We commit to being helpers in the long work of truth and reconciliation.

And like the bee, we keep going- gently, persistently, faithfully.

On this day, I pray that:

• the bee reminds us of our responsibility,

• the milkweed reminds us of our resilience,

• the monarch reminds us of our return.

• and Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us that we are held in love.

  

  Every Child Matters. Every wing matters. Every act of healing matters.