Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong

Summary

It's taken most of Larry Grant's long life for his extraordinary heritage to be appreciated. He was born in a hop field outside Vancouver in 1936, the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and an immigrant from a village in Guangdong, China. In 1940, when the Indian agent discovered that their mother had married a non-status man, Larry and his two siblings were stripped of their status. With one stroke of the pen, they were disenfranchised—no longer recognized as Indigenous.

Reconciling is a series of conversations between Larry and writer Scott Steedman as they visit pivotal geographical places together. Larry tells the story of his life, including his thoughts on reconciliation and the path forward for First Nations and Canada. His life echoes the barely known story of Vancouver and spans key events of the last two centuries, including Chinese immigration and the Head Tax, the ravages of residential school and now Indigenous revival and the accompanying change in worldview.

When Larry talks about reconciliation, he uses the verb reconciling, an ongoing, unfinished process we're all going through. "I have been reconciling my whole life, with my inner self," he explains. "To not belong was forced upon me by the colonial society that surrounded me. But reconciling with myself is part of all that."