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Regret,
repent and reconciliation
Canadians are far ahead of
the government in wanting to heal the wounds
of our residential-school history
LORNA DUECK
From April 06, 2007 Globe and Mail
Ironic
isn't it, that the federal government's bungling of an apology to the
First Nations people should take place just prior to Parliament's
Easter break. There stood Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice with a
couple of billion dollars in a negotiated settlement for
survivors
of residential schools, yet all he could say was that no apology would
be forthcoming. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet clearly
need the inner reflection the Lenten calendar provides to rethink how
to deal with our native people.
Canadians are so far ahead of the government on wanting to heal the
wounds of this issue that a national day to gather citizens on
Parliament Hill in remorse is probably called for. Invite the country
to a national apology and the grounds would fill with thousands who
would want to lament the historic policies intended to “take
the
Indian out of the child.” Billions of dollars isn't cutting
it;
it's all lacking heart and we know it.
In seeking to make an authentic apology, picture the Prime Minister
inviting First Nations, the complicit church and the Queen, since she
represents the policy move that took Indians from sacred treaty
partners to wards of the state. Imagine the symbolism.
Instead, we have the rattling of silver coins from the Indian Affairs
Minister — $1.9-billion for the “Common Experience
Payment,” more funds for the Independent Assessment Program
when
physical or sexual abuse was involved, $60-million for a five-year
truth and reconciliation process that would involve the whole country
in talking and learning about the wrongdoing, $125-million to renew
funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to continue programs such
as www.wherearethechildren.ca,
$20-million for commemoration activities such as monuments and books,
and about $100-million in legal fees to pay off lawyers working 22
different class-action suits.
But we can't verbalize a national apology? The 1996 Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples with its 440 recommendations paved the way for this
settlement and, two years later, issued an official statement of
reconciliation for those who suffered sexual or physical abuse. But it
was not an apology.
Consider how this must sound to a woman such as Janie Jamieson, who
handles press relations for her Mohawk people at the ongoing treaty
land dispute at Caledonia in Southwestern Ontario. She sees the legacy
with Indian residential schools this way: Her mother was raised in them
and never knew what it was to be loved by family and so ran away to the
city early looking for love. She had too many children too young, too
fast, and when Janie was 2, her mom committed suicide in despair. Could
Ms. Jamieson's determination in the standoff at Caledonia reflect her
anger at what's been lost?
Former grand chief Matthew Coon Come, 50, has a little less edge on the
pain, but the first white person he saw was the Mountie coming to take
him away from his parents and place him in residential schools. After
university, he went on to lead a canoe expedition that shut down a
$7-billion hydroelectric project on Cree land in Quebec.
School attendee Pen Pratt from B.C. was less productive with his pain
when he took a court payoff. “It's not like the money will
make
me happy or make me feel better, but I might as well get something for
what those bastards did to me.”
How do you apologize to a nation of warriors who, as Gary Merasty, an
aboriginal MP from Saskatchewan, stated in the House last week, know
Canada had the “primary goal to destroy aboriginal people,
languages, and culture”?
When churches began to make their apologies for how they ran the
residential schools, native elders received the words, but didn't fully
accept them, said Rev. James Scott, counsel with the United Church of
Canada. In 1986, when the church first offered its apology, they said
they wanted to see the it “walk the talk,” he said.
“We've been on a journey of growing awareness on the extent
of
damage to individuals and communities in addition to the specific
physical and sexual abuse. As we've become more aware, that deepens our
sense of accountability . . . and we understand our apologies as only
the first step in beginning to walk a different way with
aboriginals.”
That explains why the federal policy is in need of what the churches
have learned on this file — Catholic, United, Anglican
churches,
all have sold churches, closed programs, and laid off staff to help pay
for their residential schools sins. In August, Very Rev. Peter Short,
then moderator of the United Church, the largest Protestant church in
Canada, wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Prentice on the need for an
apology to be included in this $2-billion settlement, but to date, Mr.
Short says there hasn't even been an acknowledgment of that letter.
This Easter week, the letters from Church leaders have been bumped up
to the Prime Minister's desk, with the Primate of the Anglican Church
of Canada posting his complaint worldwide, saying that
“people
whose lives have been shattered through no fault of their own are
immensely helped by having their sufferings acknowledged and validated
and by hearing the words of apology.” The story is rich with
parallels to lessons of the cross — guilt, shame, remorse and
the
bearing of forgiveness to enable new birth in our fallen selves and
nation.
Lorna
Dueck
hosts Listen Up TV, a weekly newsmagazine on spiritual perspectives in
current events, seen on Global TV, Salt and Light TV, CTS and Christian
Channel
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