Truth -Telling:
Painful and Essential Work
by Rev. Yme Woensdregt
In 1879, the Government of Canada recommended
that Residential Schools be established as a cost effective way of assimilating
First Nations children. Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A MacDonald, wrote,
“When the school is on the reserve,
the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to
read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is
simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon
myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as
much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would
be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire
the habits and modes of thought of white men.”
Thus began a shameful episode in our history. The first school opened
four years later in Saskatchewan, with others following quickly.
Jump ahead 130 years. In 2007, Parliament passed the Indian
Residential School Settlement Agreement, providing compensation for former
students of the schools and their families, and establishing the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with a mandate to “inform all Canadians of what
happened in Indian Residential Schools” and to “guide and inspire Aboriginal
peoples and Canadians in a process of reconciliation and renewed relationships
that are based on mutual understanding and respect.”
On June 2, 2015 the TRC presented
its final report after six years of work. They listened to the hard and painful
stories of survivors of the Indian Residential Schools, which spoke of
physical, sexual, emotional, cultural and psychological abuse.
Children at age five were taken
from their homes, moved to a school far away and forbidden to speak their
language or practice their culture. Whenever they spoke their language,
students had their mouths washed out with soap. They were told that they were
inferior, that they were no good, that they were an affront to the Creator. The
purpose of the schools was, in the words of one survivor’s story, “to beat the
Indian out of us and make us good little white people.”
One woman tells the story of arriving
at the school and having her long beautiful braids, which represented her
spirituality and her essence, cut off and thrown into the garbage. Another says
that his relationship with his mother was forever damaged because she couldn’t tell
him why she allowed him to be taken to the school.
There are stories about students
who became alcoholics and other who committed suicide because they could no
longer deal with the abuse they suffered at the schools.
Some of these stories can be found
www.22days.ca. They break my heart. We see
the residue of the agony of these survivors in their faces; we hear the pain in
their voices.
They are telling the truth: the
truth about our society, our prejudices, our shameful behavior towards those
who are different than us.
The opening sentences of the Final
Report of the TRC set the stage for the damning report. “For over a century, the
central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal
governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a
process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct
legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The
establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of
this policy, which can best be described as ‘cultural genocide."
Many people believe that “I didn’t do anything; it’s not my
fault! It was way before my time!” I have heard that sentiment too many times.
Trouble is, it’s not the truth. Our society did this. The
TRC Report reminds us that this is not an aboriginal problem; it’s a Canadian
problem. Those of us who are not aboriginal have all benefitted from the
shameful treatment of First Nations people.
If we are to move forward, we must take responsibility for
our past. The TRC Report gives us all a chance to do the right thing—to reach
out to one another, apologize for our shameful past, and move into a new future
marked by reconciliation and hope.
This moment in our history is a gift. We are being invited
to invest ourselves in a new future marked by reconciliation and compassion, by
an acceptance of the fact that our differences are not something to be wiped
out, but to be celebrated and embraced.
