RECONCILIATION is a special blend of Latin American coffee roasted on the darker side, with a velvety-smooth flavour, featuring aromas of burnt honey, pipe tobacco and cocoa powder. All Birch Bark beans are certified organic, and grown & harvested by SPP Small Producers, and while Birch Bark normally offers both Whole Bean and Ground, due to production constraints, Reconciliation Blend will be offered only in Ground at this time.
Genumark is handling the corporate gifting of this blend. Bags can be co-branded for an additional cost. If you would like more information or ready to get your own bags of Reconciliation Blend, then LET’S GET BREWING.
All of Birch Bark’s profits from Reconciliation Blend will go to the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, an organization supporting reconciliation through awareness, education and connection. The Downie-Wenjack Fund was created out of two families coming together to make change, to uphold Chanie and Gord’s legacies, and to create a pathway on the journey toward reconciliation. The DWF provides access to education on the true history of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and the true history and legacy of Residential Schools.
The Orange Shirt and the phrase Every Child Matters come from the legacy of the Canadian Residential School System, in which generations of Indigenous children were taken from their families, and forced to attend government-run schools in an attempt to erase the many cultures, beliefs, languages, histories and family connections of the Indigenous peoples of Canada.
The orange shirt represents the clothing – and the connection to her family and way of life – that was taken from six year old Phyllis (Jack) Webstad when she arrived at St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, just outside Williams Lake, B.C., in 1973.
In her words: “The color orange has always reminded me of… how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared, and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”
For more about Webstad’s story.
Chanie Wenjack was an Anishinaabe boy from Ogoki Post, on the Marten Falls Reserve. At age nine, Wenjack and three of his sisters were sent to Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School.
On October 16, 1966, at age twelve, Wenjack ran away from this school in an attempt to walk to his home, more than 600 km away. Wenjack died of hunger and exposure in the early morning hours of October 23rd, 1966.
The discovery of his death sparked national attention, and the first inquest into the treatment of Indigenous children in Canadian residential schools.
But the last residential school in Canada didn’t close for another thirty years.
To learn more about Wenjack’s story, and the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fun.
