Heartbreaking Testimony

Elder and knowledge-keeper Evelyn Camille attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School for 10 years. Here is an excerpt of her stirring testimony:

An Examination Of Conscience

When I was a young lad on the receiving end of a Catholic education, we had two regularly-recurring rituals. Once a month we would be led over to the parish church to go to Confession. While sitting in the pews awaiting our turn, we would pore over a booklet called The Examination of Conscience.  

Designed to help Catholics make a 'good Confession', the booklet went over various types and classifications of sins (some of which were a bit beyond youngsters, e.g., Have you ever been a member of a secret society? Have you had impure thoughts about your neigbour's wife?).

After thinking long and hard about our misdeeds, we went into the confessional, where we told our tales of iniquity and were granted absolution by the priest, contingent upon our doing the penance he meted out. (Some priests were more severe than others, requiring part of the rosary instead of the more lenient five Hail Marys. It was always the luck of the draw for us.)

I dredge up these memories because penance has been lately on my mind, as I am sure it has been on the minds of many Canadians these days following the grim discovery, with more surely to come, of unmarked graves at former residential schools, powerful symbols of the racism perpetrated in all of our names.

Some might ask why collectively we should atone for past misdeeds that we had nothing to do with. In my mind, the answer is simple: the fallout of the abuse, neglect and deaths experienced by Indigenous peoples continues to reverberate today, a legacy of ruined lives that is reflected in the poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and fractured psyches experienced by far too many today. Generational pain is not self-limiting.

Where do we go from here? While there is obviously no simple answer, part of the solution has to be  increased opportunities for Indigenous people to pursue higher education.  And in that pursuit, all of us can play a part.

For the past few years I have been contributing to an organization called Inspire. Here is their mission statement:

Indigenous Education is Canada’s Future

Indspire is an Indigenous national charity that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for the long-term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada.

Charity Intelligence Canada recognized Indspire with their four-star rating and named us a Top 10 Canadian Impact Charity for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and Maclean’s also selected Indspire as a 2019 and 2020 Top Rated Charity.

 

Vision, Mission, North Star and Core Values

Vision: Enriching Canada through Indigenous education and by inspiring achievement.

Mission: In partnership with Indigenous, private and public sector stakeholders, Indspire educates, connects and invests in Indigenous people so they will achieve their highest potential.

North Star: Within a generation, every Indigenous student will graduate.

Statement of Values: As an organization and as individuals, we value integrity, respect, equity, openness, reciprocity, and inclusiveness in our endeavours and relationships. We are committed to nurturing, sharing, and honouring diversity in First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures and traditions. And we hold ourselves accountable to our stakeholders by honouring our commitments with high quality results, ongoing evaluation and transparent reporting.

Wringing our hands and expressing sorrow and outrage about the past are normal reactions to recent revelations, But the cliched 'thoughts and prayers' must be accompanied by concrete actions if any of us is ever to achieve any measure of penance for the past and hope for the future.

Looking Deep Within

These days, for various reasons, it is growing increasingly difficult for us, as Canadians, to feel smug about ourselves. There are the bleak indictments in the form of unmarked graves, attacks on Muslims, and people living in fear of such attacks.

What is to be done? In my previous post, entitled How Does Canada Atone? I posted some letters to the editor, one of which struck The Mound as especially useful. He wrote,

Of the options presented by these writers I prefer bringing this to our young people through our schools. We have a lot of miserable people in this country who will resent whatever is done, much as BLM triggered pushback in the US. So, let's not leave it to parents or social media or TV. Let's take this directly to our young people because it is, no matter how dismissive some can be, an important part of our history.

I replied,

I completely agree, Mound. Unlike the U.S., where some crazed right-wingers equate teaching about slavery to teaching kids "to hate America," I think educational initiatives will not only be welcomed, but also provide a necessary antidote to national ignorance, whether willful or otherwise.

By chance, Edward Keenan, The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, wrote a very insightful piece that bears directly on this issue. The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, lays racism at the feet of the Democrats, and refuses to acknowledge that his country is racist.

“Today, the Democratic party has doubled down on this shameful history by replacing the racism of the past with the racism of critical race theory. They continue to think of race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” McCarthy said, expressing his support for removing statues of Confederate leaders from the Capitol.

“America is not a racist country,” he said. “It was wrong when it was the segregated lunch counters of Jim Crow, and it was wrong when it was the segregated classrooms of critical race theory.”

Keenan found much to fault with McCarthy's 'logic'.

[T]he academic concept of critical race theory he invoked does not teach that race is a means of judging a person’s character, and does not segregate classrooms — it is a lens for understanding racism as a set of systemic legal structures that persist in U.S. society.

However, as usual, American the right-wing media, mainly Fox, are perverting it so as to stir up even more animus than already exists in that beleaguered country. 

The backlash over critical race theory may be real, fed by over 1,300 Fox News mentions in 3.5 months and leading to outraged protests at school board meetings across the country. But the concept of critical race theory being depicted in these attacks bears little relationship to the academic theory. Quickly put: critical race theory is primarily a graduate-school-level concept that has been around for about four decades and was obscure until conservative activists ramped up anger about it. Actual critical race theory basically says that racism is ingrained in U.S. society and institutions. It is not taught in elementary or high schools, or even often in undergraduate university classes.

And it sounds like the fact of systemic racism will not be taught in U.S. schools anytime soon. There has been 

a wave of bills in Republican states governing what can and cannot be taught in history classes to schoolchildren and even to university students.

Teaching the history of racism in the United States as something that infected the structures of government, not just in slavery but in many other ways that persisted through much of the 20th century, and that persist today, is, they say, unfair to white children who might be taught to be ashamed. What’s more, they say it is, in the words of the Trump administration when he was in the White House, “anti-American”; unpatriotic.

In that denial comes a crucial difference in the Canadian response to revelations of racism here, as we ask

whether patriotism and celebrations of national pride can coexist with a recognition of deeply shameful episodes in a country’s history. The discovery of mass unmarked graves filled with the bodies of Indigenous children on the sites of residential schools has made vivid to many Canadians the evil that those schools represented throughout most of Canada’s history as a country — from their founding in the 1800s right up until the 1990s when the last of the institutions was closed.

Following along from Washington, I’ve seen both in news media and on social media, how reflecting on this has led to waves of people calling to cancel Canada Day celebrations this year. You don’t shoot off fireworks to celebrate your country while people are mourning the deaths of their children who were killed by your country’s government, is the gist of the sentiment I’ve seen.

The recent revelations have prompted a response of humility in the majority of Canadians. The next, absolutely necessary step is to make sure that our school curricula reflect not just the pride of Canadian accomplishments, but also the shame of widespread injustice and evil. 

I believe we do have the national character to reach that step.

 

 

How Does Canada Atone?

I have a practical suggestion to partly address the title's question, but I'll leave it for a future post. Today, some letter-writers from the print edition of the Toronto Star offer their views:

All the groups that have been victimized by threats, abuse, violence and death as a result of ignorant hate are sick and tired of hearing the false apologies. They are false because we know the politicians are pressured by the constituents to say something. They need the votes. Other groups may speak up because they feel compelled by general social actions.

But what matters is the real action taken. And there is usually no action. Some protests, some memorials, possible reparations.

The recent horrific findings of Indigenous burials is unspeakable. How these families were treated is abhorrent. The action we need is education. We need to get the education into the schools, teach all our youth from the very start. We need to develop our history lessons to include so much of this real history. English class should include reading lists that focus on books about so many of these tragedies. Every student should have to select two or three books in a term from different cultural tragedies, to read, reflect on and review.

Young people need to understand how others have been targeted and how easy it could be for anyone to be a target.

Corinne Broder, Collingwood, Ont.

We have a national monument, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to honour those who fell in battle but whose bodies were not identified or recovered.

There should be a national monument to the unknown children from the residential schools who died while attending these schools — children who were abused while living and whose bodies were so callously discarded in death.

It won’t change the past, but it will be an eternal reminder of the sacrifice imposed on their families and the children.

Greg Narbey, Toronto

Like many, I am saddened to read about Indigenous children who died in Canada’s residential school system. Fixing this failure in our history will take action, time and resolve from all Canadians.

I propose our federal legislators designate a Reconciliation Day on our calendar, like Remembrance Day observed on Nov. 11, to remember and honour those Indigenous children who perished in residential schools.

On Reconciliation Day, our nation pauses from its day-to-day functions.

Canadians come together as one inclusive people in public gatherings, to learn and show respect for Indigenous people and their time-honoured culture.

Constantine Argiropoulos, Toronto

The tragedy of the residential school system and the racism endemic in our history and culture has created enormous harm, grief, and loss to Indigenous families.

This perfidy stains our national identity and our souls.

I’d like to see a National Day, or a National Week, of mourning, to pay tribute to these children and their families. Why are flags not at half-mast?

I want to see these enormous losses, this enormous injustice, recognized, finally, in the hope that it would have some meaning for Indigenous families.

I would like to see this national acknowledgment followed quickly by meaningful government action on the promises of many years.

Marcia Cannell, Richmond Hill

Confronting Our Past: Gabor Mate Speaks

Like many blogs, mine is largely informed by the thoughts of others. To be sure, I try to make it my practice to shape and filter things through my own perspective and commentary, but on this Canada Day I reproduce in its entirety a piece by Gabor Mate in which he talks about confronting our deeply troubled past.

For Canadians to be truly strong and free, we must come to terms with our grim past

I was 13 in 1957 when, along with nearly 38,000 fellow Hungarians, refugees from a brutal Stalinist dictatorship, my family and I were welcomed with open arms by Canada. The North really seemed true and strong and free. What I didn’t know and what no one was speaking of was that in the same year, even as we were adjusting to life in British Columbia, not far from where I lived a 4-year-old First Nation child had a pin stuck in her tongue on her first day at residential school.

Her crime had been to speak her Native language in the classroom. For an hour this little girl could not put her tongue back in her mouth for fear of cutting her lips. Soon after, years of sexual abuse began. By age 9 the child was an alcoholic and later became dependent on opiates to soothe her pain. We met at a healing ceremony not long ago. Now a grandmother and years sober, she grieves to see her grandchildren suffer the throes of addiction. For her there was no true North, strong and free. Nor is there yet.

There is also no free North for the 30 per cent of Canada’s jail population that is of First Nations origin, six times their proportion in the general population. The nature of trauma being multi-generational, parents transmit their wounds and dysfunctions onto their children. Barring some healing, violence, illness and addictions follow. Very little in Canadian culture has encouraged the necessary collective healing, and there is much to inhibit it.

The depth of our capacity for denial is well-nigh unfathomable. The recently “discovered” makeshift graves near residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are too-perfect metaphors for the truths so many of us have buried deep out of sight, mind, and heart. I use quote marks because such atrocities have long been well-known lore in Indigenous communities and etched in the historical record.

In a recent survey two thirds of Canadians owned that they knew little or nothing about the residential schools. This bespeaks not individual ill will, deliberate unawareness, or necessarily, bigotry, but systemic and structural denial on a vast scale. Any colonial system must continue to obscure he history of the Indigenous people whose people it murdered, whose culture it nearly extirpated and whose lands and resources it continues to crave. Hence the litany of broken promises to our First Nations by politicians of all hues. We have apologized to our Japanese citizens for depriving them of their property during World War II, a case of legalized larceny; but though we have apologized, too, for the residential school system, we have not yet begun to acknowledge the despoliation of Native resources because we have not yet stopped practicing it.

Emotionally, it is difficult for human beings, individually and even more so in groups, to have their cherished identities questioned. Facing the brutal realities of our history challenges mainstream Canadian self-concepts of kindness, fairness, and humanity. It can feel threatening to open oneself to disillusionment. Waking up to how things are may be extremely painful.

Painful, and mandatory. No society can understand itself nor collectively heal itself without looking at its shadow side. The shedding of illusions, though scary, is a move toward personal and collective healing. There are encouraging signs that the recent dreadful revelations will wake us up to what we, as a country, have wrought. It’s not a matter of guilt but of responsibility to ourselves, to one another, and to the generations to follow. If we are to have meaningful Canada Days in the future we have to come to terms with our past, and with its ongoing resonances in the present in the form of institutional racism in all aspects of society, from the educational system to policing, from health care through the legal apparatus to the realms of economy and politics.

The freshly identified graves of little innocents can jog us into the genuine strength and freedom that honesty bestows and healing demands. We face the challenge and the opportunity of building a North strong enough to face what’s true, and freer for it. We will be amazed, too, when we open ourselves to being informed by the transformative power of the wisdom traditions, healing practices, Earth consciousness and cultural resilience that helped First Nations peoples survive and surmount the unspeakable.

The bestselling author of four books translated into nearly thirty languages, Gabor Maté is a retired Vancouver physician and a member of the Order of Canada. His next work, The Myth Of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, will be published in 2022.