A spirit of respect and reconciliation is something for which we pray at every Chapel service. There can be no reconciliation without the acknowledgment of what has happened, the truth of events of the past, as it were. Reconciliation builds on truth to transcend the things of the past, not by forgetting and ignoring them, but by confronting them and yet looking beyond conflict and opposition.
The story is not a simple or a single story. It means looking back and inward to very different features of the interplay of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Canada Here is a contemporary artist, Heather Dale, performing Jesous ahatonhia, Canada’s first and oldest Christmas song:
The words were originally written in the Huron/Wendat language by the French Jesuit missionary and martyr, Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, probably in 1642. He was a linguist who took the time and care to learn the language of the Wendat people and to appreciate their thought and culture in interaction with Christian ideas and themes. By singing in the Wendat language, Heather Dale draws upon the work of Brébeuf, who, like many early and largely French missionaries, began the project of providing alphabets and thus a written form for the various first nations’ peoples. This work has continued even into more recent times with the Inuit peoples. Bishop John Sperry, for example, who learned Inuinnaqtun, translated the Bible, the Prayer Book, and various hymns into the Inuktitut dialect, one of the five dialects of the Inuit peoples of the Arctic.
This shows a very different kind of relationship between cultures and languages than what took place in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries with the Indian Act (1876-present) which reduces the native peoples to “wards of the state,” and, particularly, with the notorious Residential Schools programme. Such things reveal a much more aggressive and destructive form of imperial colonialism derived from Britain and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indian Act and the Residential Schools programme were intended to assimilate the native peoples into Canadian life but entirely and often brutally at the expense of the cultures and languages of the native peoples themselves. Assimilation was the buzz word of the times but in the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission it was “cultural genocide,” a policy undertaken “to kill the Indian in the child” (TRC Report, 2015).
The Residential Schools were “the most aggressive and destructive of all Indian Act policies”. It was a government programme managed by the churches – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, subsequently the United Church, and Presbyterian – and a government wanting to be freed from financial responsibility towards the native peoples. It was a sad and shameful time in our Canadian history that reveals a betrayal of care by those who were entrusted with the care of over 150,000 children, more than 6,000 of whom either died or disappeared. There were as well incidents of sexual and physical abuse. The numbers of the missing children are imprecise because neither the government nor the churches kept records; whether they died at the Schools and were buried in unmarked graves or not, it was as if they didn’t matter, as if they didn’t exist. A travesty that cannot be ignored or denied.
The Indian Act programme of assimilation was part of the so-called “progressive” thinking of the late 19th century in America and in Canada along with eugenics, racial theories about immigration, and discriminatory practices with respect to social services. A sordid and disturbing tale operating under the illusions of the ideology of progress.
The Schools were chronically underfunded. “The buildings were drafty and unsanitary and food for the children was insufficient and often rotten … the schools were also breeding grounds for diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza”. Most of the children died from tuberculosis. The problem, though known, highlighted for instance by Dr. Peter Bryce who called it in 1922, “a national crime”, was largely overlooked and denied. All to our shame.
Chief Robert Joseph, an outstanding native leader, provides a moving portrayal of the sufferings endured by many indigenous students who were forcibly taken from their families and communities and placed in Residential Schools far away from their homes.
We can only confess our own sins, not the sins of others, but that does not mean ignoring the mistakes and wrongs of the past and their legacy in the present. It means a commitment to the recognition of the indigenous peoples of Canada as full and integral members of Canada. Reconciliation is not an indigenous problem; it is a Canadian problem which can no longer be ignored but requires commitment to the difficult but essential process of reconciliation. In some ways, it is about dignity and respect towards the native peoples of Canada in their endeavour to reclaim their histories, cultures, languages, and, perhaps, most importantly, their agency.
Much has been done with respect to apologies and compensation but that is only a small part of the real work of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not about denying the past but about transcending the past without forgetting its limitations, its follies and sins; in short, evil. It is the refusal to be defined simply by what others have done to you; in short, getting beyond victim culture to reclaim resiliency and agency.
What the indigenous people seek is to be full members of the Canadian polity in and through the distinctive features of their cultures and histories. It means a willingness on the part of all to listen and to grant to the indigenous peoples of Canada, in all of their diversity of languages and cultures, time to reclaim what has been lost and taken from them. It means to allow the indigenous peoples of Canada a way to be an integral and dignified part of Canadian life.
This is very much a feature of what Judith Moses, an indigenous lay leader in the Anglican Church on the Council for Indigenous People, highlights about truth and reconciliation. ‘Hope in Embracing Mutual Interdependence with the Indigenous Church’ extends to the same hope for Canadian society. It means:
1. Looking to the bridges between indigenous and non-indengeous people without which there can be no covenant, no bond of unity.
2. Allowing the indigenous peoples time to recover what has been lost and taken from them and to recognise the profound forms of reflection that belong to the native traditions about living in balance and harmony with all of creation; a sense of interdependence with nature.
3. Recognizing that the solutions are not about simple institutional techniques and practices. Conflict, for instance, is a given.
4. Recognizing that the gift of forgiveness takes the place of obedience to rules and restrictions. The idea of the circle of consensus, of the commitment to living in harmony, counters the yes-no polarities of our current systems and processes which are inherently divisive.
5. Appreciating that indigenous reflection places a high priority on the practice of ‘wise-elder listening’ to both sides and offering wisdom to make peace.
6. Learning to take responsibility for one another. Such is a community-building vision in contrast to the jurisdictional turf-wars of contemporary politics which run the risk of re-colonizing the indigenous peoples, reducing them to victims deserving of pity but at the expense of dignity and respect.
There have been apologies upon apologies. Fine. But much more needs to be done in terms of recovering the larger story which belongs to the more complex narrative of the interplay of cultures and which recognises the indigenous critique of European cultures which became part of the European critique of itself: for example, Voltaire’s satirical novella, L’Ingénu (1767), which uses a Huron, half Wendat, half French, to criticize late seventeenth and early eighteenth century French religious and political culture. His fictional character may be partly taken from the historical Wendat sage, philosopher and statesman, Kandiaronk. To build on this is to recover something of the interaction and interdependence of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples that are part of the story.
Reconciliation neither ignores the past nor denies it in seeking to transcend the travesties of the past. It commits all Canadians to the task of dignity and respect towards the indigenous peoples who seek to be full members of the nation of Canada without prejudice to their languages and cultures.
Reconciliation is a journey for both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. It requires patience and time and the willingness to listen. But it also means action with respect to the things which simply need to be done such as ensuring clean water to the indigenous communities of our country. Not to do so is one of the travesties of our times.
The task of reconciliation remains before us and is, I think, quite movingly stated, again by Chief Robert Joseph, in words which touch upon the ideals and life of our School. His words are what we need to hear. They belong to the journey of healing for indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians alike. Perhaps then, and only then, we will be able to say with Caliban, Shakespeare’s critical figure of the indigenous peoples in his play, The Tempest, “I will be wise hereafter and seek for grace”.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English and ToK Teacher