In mobilising an ecology of ‘ethical relationality’, this chapter examines, first, what it means to assert an insistent, public grief as an Otipemsiw/Red River Métis woman and scholar in the face of ongoing colonial violence in Canada. Second, I explore the role of the more-than-human, specifically fish, in bearing witness to colonialism. I examine how grief extends beyond human experiences of colonial suffering, and I demonstrate how fish-as-non-human persons are present actors and agents in the experiences, and mourning, of Indigenous peoples in a country deeply impacted by the British and French colonial legacies. The chapter details three important moments in my work as an Indigenous woman in the academy: a) my work with nehiyaw iskwew scholar Erica Violet Lee and Inuk lawyer Joseph Paul Murdoch-Flowers on a public reading project we entitled #ReadTheTRCReport; b) research on human-fish relations, Indigenous legal orders and colonial sites of engagement in northern Canada; and, c) my invocation of the decolonial trickster fish the ‘Ness namew’ who carries stories of colonial grief and suffering in Canada’s ruined waterways back to the United Kingdom. These three examples demonstrate how an insistent, public mourning of the impacts of colonial violence – between human and more-than-human nations and peoples that occupy and inhabit what is today known as Canada – serves as a mode of what I term ‘refraction’ in the so-called postcolonial moment in North America.