Winds and Trains
Listening for Truth and Leading with Two Eyes
On September 30, Canada pauses to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation — a day that calls us not just to remember but to reckon. It is a day that invites us to sit with uncomfortable truths, to listen deeply to stories that predate and outlast the arrival of colonialism, and to consider our responsibilities as we move forward. For me, it is also a day to locate myself honestly in this ongoing story — to reflect on the ways I am implicated, the ways I am learning, and the ways I am still unlearning.
This reflection, Winds and Trains, emerges from my engagement with the work of Anishinaabe scholar A. Y. Leon, whose chapter “Elders’ Teachings on Leadership: Leadership as a Gift,” in Living Indigenous Leadership (Kenny & Fraser, Eds.), offers profound insights into what leadership means when grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems. Leon’s writing has become a provocation for me — a challenge and invitation to reconsider the foundations of leadership as I understand and practice it. Her words do more than describe leadership differently; they reorient it entirely. They ask those of us shaped by colonial structures to see leadership not as power earned but as a gift entrusted, not as authority over but as responsibility with.
I write today as a settler and an educator whose work spans colonial systems and Indigenous learning contexts. My journey is one of listening, stumbling, and beginning again. It is a path of learning to see with two eyes — one shaped by the dominant Western ways of knowing that built the systems I work within, and the other, still straining to focus, shaped by Indigenous ways of being that root knowledge in land, story, and relationship.
It is on this path that the image of winds and trains has anchored itself deeply in my thinking. Leon writes, “We hear trains in the background, and the wind and dry mountainous desert surround us” (2012, p. 52). It is a deceptively simple sentence, but it holds multitudes. The train — an unmistakable symbol of colonial expansion and the relentless forward push of Western ideology — hums in the distance, a constant reminder of the systems we inhabit. Yet, around it, the wind moves freely across the land, carrying stories far older than the tracks. Together, they form a landscape of tension and possibility — one I find myself walking within every day.
The more I sit with Leon’s words, the more I realize that the soundscape she describes is more than a setting — it is a teaching. It is a reflection on the experience of being in two worlds at once — one constructed from steel and certainty, the other shaped by movement, breath, and story.
The train is easy to recognize. It is the hum of progress, the weight of institutions, the familiar rhythm of schedules, policies, and procedures. It is the world I know best — the one that formed me and continues to shape the systems I navigate every day. It is the world of measurable outcomes, strategic plans, and linear thinking. The train represents momentum and direction, but it also carries with it the history of displacement and erasure. The tracks it runs on were laid without consent, cutting through lands, languages, and lifeways that were meant to remain whole. And yet, that sound remains constant, even when we try not to hear it.
But the wind — the wind moves differently. It does not rush forward with a singular purpose; it circles and swirls, it whispers and roars, reminding us that knowledge is not a straight line but a living force. The wind carries memory. It holds stories that stretch far beyond the colonial timeline, stories that root leadership not in authority or title but in relationship and responsibility. It is the breath of Elders’ teachings that reminds us that leadership is a gift given by the people, and that those who carry that gift are bound first and foremost to the well-being of the collective.
There are days when I hear only the train — its noise so loud that it drowns out the subtler sounds around it. In those moments, I find myself reverting to the ways I was taught to think and lead: plan, act, measure, improve. And yet, when I am quiet enough, the wind always finds me. It arrives in a pause during a conversation, in a story shared around a circle, in the silence that stretches between words. It reminds me that learning and leading are not always about forward motion. Sometimes they are about standing still long enough to notice where we are and who we are accountable to.
Leadership, as Leon describes it, is about balance — between individual and collective, between knowledge and humility. The wind and the train teach me about that balance. One pushes, the other grounds. One insists on progress, the other insists on presence. My work — and perhaps the work of all leaders who walk these intersecting worlds — is to learn to listen for both. Not to silence the train or to stop the wind, but to understand what each is telling me, and how I might lead with that layered knowledge in my heart.
As I continue to listen to both the winds and the trains, Leon’s reminder that leadership is a gift given by the people sits with me. It is a deceptively simple statement, yet it unsettles much of what I was taught about leadership in Western systems. In the institutions where I have spent most of my career, leadership is often understood as something earned — a position achieved through qualifications, performance, and merit. It is individualistic, positional, and often transactional. But in the teachings Leon shares, leadership is not seized or claimed. It is offered. It is entrusted. And with that gift comes responsibility — not to oneself, but to the people, the land, and the generations to come.
This shift from entitlement to entrustedness changes everything. It demands humility, because a gift is not a possession. It demands reciprocity, because a gift calls for care and stewardship. It demands accountability because a gift is held in trust, not in ownership. Leon describes leaders as those who listen to the people and serve the people, and who understand that their authority is not self-generated but relational. Authority flows from the collective — from kinship, from story, from land. It is sustained not by control but by consent and connection.
These teachings challenge me to reconsider how I show up as a leader. Too often, the train world rewards decisiveness, visibility, and output. It celebrates the leader as visionary, strategist, and driver of change. And while these qualities have their place, they can overshadow the quieter forms of leadership that are deeply relational — the kind that listens before speaking, that holds silence as sacred, that measures success not in metrics but in the health of relationships. The leadership Leon describes is less about directing others and more about being in good relation with them. It is leadership that moves at the speed of trust.
It also challenges how I think about knowledge and expertise. In Western systems, leaders are expected to know — to offer solutions, chart paths, and make decisions from a position of certainty. But in the teachings Leon records, leaders are expected first to listen — to Elders, to Land, to Story. Leadership is not a product of expertise alone; it is born from the humility to recognize that wisdom lives beyond oneself. Leaders understand their place in the circle, knowing when to speak, when to step forward, and when to step back. This is not weakness. It is strength rooted in interdependence.
I find myself returning to these teachings again and again, especially when I am tempted to rush toward solutions or to believe that my role is to fix. The gift of leadership, as Leon describes it, is not an invitation to control outcomes but to hold space for growth. It is about tending to relationships, fostering belonging, and creating conditions where the wisdom of the collective can emerge. It is about understanding that leadership is not something I have — it is something I am given, and something I must continually earn through how I walk with others.
I will always have my settler eye as my dominant eye. That is the truth I carry into every space I enter. It is the eye that was trained to see through textbooks and timetables, through rubrics and reports. It is the eye that looks for structure, measures progress, and privileges written knowledge over spoken story. It is the eye that understands leadership as strategy, accountability as compliance, and learning as something to be delivered. It is the eye that grew strong in a system built on Western epistemologies — and because of that, it will always see certain things more clearly than others.
But I have another eye — one that is still learning to focus. It is the eye that seeks story before solution, relationship before result. It is the eye that notices how land holds memory and how silence can be a teacher. It is the eye that listens for knowledge in the spaces between words and recognizes that wisdom does not always arrive dressed as evidence. This eye is still unsteady. It strains to see what my dominant eye has learned to overlook. But it is growing stronger every time I choose to slow down, to listen longer, to sit in the discomfort of not knowing.
This work of strengthening my other eye is deeply personal and profoundly political. It requires me to name the privileges and assumptions I carry into every room — the invisible freight of the train that built the systems I move within. It requires me to resist the urge to centre my own perspective, even when that feels familiar or safe. It requires me to recognize that reconciliation is not about adding Indigenous ways of knowing to existing structures but about allowing those structures themselves to be questioned, unsettled, and reimagined.
I commit to continuing this work — not just on September 30, but every day that follows. I commit to seeking the truth in places I was once taught not to look. I commit to listening for the stories that live beyond the train’s tracks, the ones carried on the wind by Elders, communities, and lands that have endured far longer than the systems I inhabit. I commit to letting those stories unsettle me, to allowing them to change how I think, how I lead, and how I walk alongside others.
I commit to strengthening my second eye — the one that does not yet see clearly, the one that still misses what is right before it. I commit to noticing when I fall back into the comfort of my dominant eye and to gently, yet persistently, shifting my gaze. I commit to building relationships that are not extractive but reciprocal, grounded not in what I can take but in what I can offer and learn in return.
I commit to holding space for the wind even when the train is loud — to creating moments in my work where land-based knowing, story, ceremony, and silence are not add-ons but foundations. I commit to questioning the systems I move within, to pushing against practices that perpetuate harm, and to helping build spaces where Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit ways of knowing are not invited in as guests but recognized as hosts.
I commit to walking this path with humility, knowing I will make mistakes. I will listen when I am corrected. I will begin again when I fall short. I will keep going because this work is too important to abandon when it becomes uncomfortable. And I will remember that truth is not a destination we arrive at — it is a practice we return to, over and over again.
Before this piece concludes, I would like to extend an invitation to you, the reader. Reflection is not a passive act; it is an act of responsibility. On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I invite you to pause and sit with these questions. Take them into quiet spaces. Bring them into conversations. Let them work on you:
What “trains” are present in my own leadership — the systems, assumptions, and ways of knowing that shape how I see and act?
Where might I need to make space for the “wind” — for knowledge, story, and truth that moves differently from what I was taught to value?
What gifts of leadership have I been entrusted with, and how am I using them in service of collective wellbeing rather than individual achievement?
How am I strengthening my second eye — the one that sees beyond my dominant worldview — and where might I still be resisting that work?
What commitments will I make, today and beyond, to seek truth, to listen deeply, and to let what I learn transform how I lead?
These are not questions with easy answers, nor are they meant to be answered only once. They are questions I return to again and again, because reconciliation is not a checklist; it is a lifelong practice. It is the work of listening — for the train in the distance and the wind moving across the land — and learning to hear the layered truths they both carry.
Let’s talk again soon. Take good care of yourself.
Adelee
Author’s Note
Winds and Trains was written as part of my ongoing journey of learning and unlearning as a settler, educator, and leader. On September 30 and every day after, I commit to seeking the truth, strengthening my capacity to see with two eyes, and walking alongside Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit communities in ways that honour their knowledge, sovereignty, and stories.
Reference
Leon, A. Y. (2012). Elders’ teachings on leadership: Leadership as a gift. In C. Kenny & T. Fraser (Eds.), Living Indigenous leadership (pp. 48–63). UBC Press. https://doi.org/10.59962/9780774823487-005