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| teepee at the TRC, photo by Riva Benditt |
Residential schools were explicitly racist in agenda, seeking to assimilate and Christianize Indigenous children by forcibly removing them from their families and institutionalizing them. Some got to go home for a couple of months in the year. Others not. Children were deliberately placed apart from their siblings, and forbidden to speak their languages. Many died of disease. Some died attempting to escape, freezing to death trying to go home. Sexual and physical abuse of various kinds permeated these institutions where the power of those in charge was rarely overseen or checked. (This occurs in non-indigenous settings as well, as with the Mt. Cashel orphanage in the Maritimes).
The US had its Trail of Tears (the forced march of the southern tribes to Oklahoma, and other such genocidal removals), and in Canada we had instead schools of tears.
The mere telling of trauma suffered by individual children, or the parents or relatives of those who were in residential schools, is neither the object nor the stopping place. First, the truth must be told, and the wider public must hear. The government of Canada and the major churches have already made official apologies. But the degree of disruption of language, culture, community, emotional and physical health, and traditional knowledges has created a huge rupture in all Indigenous communities in Canada. As one speaker addressing the issue commented today, it's not about simple oh, they were wrong, and were blinded by their religion.....the policies of assimilation were part and parcel of the colonial enterprise, here in Canada as well as other places around the world. The assault on language and culture, and the attempt to transform Indigenous peoples into "civilized Christians" was about the extension of empire, access to land and resources, clearing the way for development of hinterlands and ecological conversion to agricultural landscapes or to promote forestry and mining where the land was not suited to agriculture. In short, for nation building. Today I heard my friend Alestine, who experienced 12 years of residential schooling in the NWT and has since gone on to a University degree and a Masters in Environmental Studies, lament not only the personal difficulties of being in residential school, but the loss of opportunity to learn her culture "hands-on" . Her passion for language preservation and the documentation and transmission of traditional knowledge is I think what she has done to make up for the loss of her birthright. She was fortunate to have elder relatives who could still teach her when she came home. She is making significant contributions to building a better future for her people.
The fallout of the residential school social experiment have been huge, not only in loss of language, threat to aboriginal spiritual beliefs and hand skills, but also in community health, as whole communities of traumatized children stumbled toward personal healing and empowerment and tried to figure out how to parent, when they themselves had not been allowed the love and nurture of parents, how to own and set goals when finally they could, how to deal with the legacy of pain, internalized worthlessness and repressed anger at their mistreatment. The collective trauma ricochets, and affects the generations who come after. Their cost is measured in violence against women and in general, people on the streets, numbing pain with alcohol and other substances, dysfunctional communities, and many in the prisons, far out of proportion to the population. The statistics are widely known. The ultimate responsibility, in the colonial nation-building process itself, is rarely acknowledged. Ways forward are challenging.
In other work that I do, I work with communities to preserve traditional knowledge of plants, of the land, traditional skills. Trying to build a bridge over the generation(s) of disruption. Trying to restore health through facilitating reconnection to the land. My friend Linda, Kaska language and culture teacher, and Elders we worked constantly emphasize the need to get people out on the land, to rebuild the skill set that nurtures self-sufficiency, spiritual balance and pride. No easy task. The world is changing quickly. iPads and smartphones and facebook are alluring.
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| 2012 project to document hide processing |
So the reconciliation and healing phase of truth and reconciliation is very wide ranging. Not only must social relations be mended, understanding sought from the rest of the people who now occupy the country we call Canada, but knowledge of language, of stories which bring traditional wisdom, and connection to the land and its foods and medicines must be re-established. Only through all of these can we retreat from the brink of ethnocide and ecocide and walk toward health.
I wanted to share some images of positive approaches to repairing the loss of connection to land; these examples are from the Plants for Life Camp held by the community of Deline, NWT on the Great Bear River at Stick Creek, summer 2006.
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| Elders and youth together picking blueberries on the land |
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| Close up of blueberries, healthy food from the land |
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| Pot of Medicine the Elders were cooking to show the youth how to make healing teas. |
Hai Hai. Meegwetch. Masi cho. Misiy co. Sugosinlá.
Thanks for listening.
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