"All is not forgotten when someone is forgiven."

Anishinaabe artist Leonard Sumner is known for straddling a line between fortitude and fragility in his work, through music and spoken word.

I Know You're Sorry, which he performs in the video above, is no exception.

Sumner commands us to consider residential school survivors and suicide rates among Indigenous youth, and reflects on the limits of apologies, including former prime minister Stephen Harper's 2008 "Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools."

This video was produced by Unreserved's Erica Daniels.

I Know You're Sorry — Leonard Sumner

All is not forgotten

When someone is forgiven

Words I say to soften up

The hardness that I'm livin'

I hate to say indifference

Is becoming my religion

But I haven't learned to pray

In ways to satisfy tradition

When I think about identity

I think about my language

And how my folks were taught

It would be to my advantage

To learn a foreign tongue

They could not foresee the damage

Damn shame when it happens

you don't — see it til it passes

So where's all the support

For Anishinaabemowin classes?

Assimilation tactics

left no room for us to practice.

And I really wish I could adjust.

I really wish I could have just

Listened with my heart and not my ego

I was fragile

Conditioned by the world to think my culture wasn't passed down

But I learned the generosity

It's in my genealogy

So fuck all the bureaucracy

And keep all your apologies

I know you're sorry but...

You're more lost than me

Your land's across the Ocean

and I'm right where I should be.

I reckon this damn nation

Will force reconciliation

Down the throats of our survivors

And the people it's displacing

I know you're sorry.

And now you call on me

To fix the broken hearts

Created by your policies

These are the things that I think I know

I am but a leaf on a tree that grows

With roots in the ground,

Like a seed that's sown

In the dirt of the earth

Is where I was born

And it's where I will return

When this journey ends

And I've earned what I have learned

So tell me to get over it

I'm so fuckin' over it

Steal everything in sight

And teach me 'bout -private ownership

Bleach everything you like

And preach me 'bout pride of ownership

Leech my inherent rights

And tell me that I never owned this shit

As generations pass

You'll act as if you never noticed it

While there's kids committing suicide

As a way out of the hopelessness

I know you're sorry.

You say you're not to blame.

Fill your heart to brim with guilt

But not an ounce of shame.

Break branches off our family trees

And tell us times have changed

But the focus of this genocide

At root remains intact,

So instead of killing Indian kids

Why don't we kill this Indian Act.