Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) gets underway later this month.
I can barely bring myself to write about it, but feel I must. We all must face this horrible past that has such a profound impact on our present and will continue to affect us into the future if we don't put honest words to it.
The TRC has been set-up to create an accurate historical account of the residential school experience and to allow a period of healing to begin.
But I can't help but wonder if anything has really changed since the last residential school closed in the mid-90s.
This afternoon, I drove down Gottigen Street to Cornwallis -- the street named after our hero, General Cornwallis, the man who offered a bounty on Mi'maq scalps and the man who issued smallpox infested blankets to the few who remained. I wondered why we haven't changed the name of that street. I wondered why we haven't removed his statue. It couldn't be because we don't really care, could it?
It gave me pause to contemplate, in complete wonderment, the tenacity and enduring strength of First Nations Peoples to have survived so much evil -- purposeful starvation, degradation, overwhelming loss, murder, hate and so much more.
Nearly every time I attempt to discuss such issues with others of my race, I am met by such staggering ignorance that I often retreat -- too overcome by the task of informing the uninformed. Because the history leading up to today is vast and complex.
I hear statements like: "I don't mind helping those who have been hurt by the residential school system, but the others? They need to quit complaining and shape up." Those who haven't been hurt? Who can't have been damaged by that system?
An estimated 80,000 children went through the IRS system. Some estimates claim that as many as 50 per cent of these children died or were murdered. Ninety per cent of legal claims cite physical and/or sexual abuse.
I can't begin to comprehend such horror.
And others can't bother to begin to contemplate it.
I have pondered at length about what to write about the Commission. Words fill my head in volumes, but here I sit knowing that nothing can articulate the suffering that has been caused and that continues.
Instead of many words, what I will offer is my respect to the many individuals and tribes who have survived to tell their tales. You and your ancestors have prevailed. The truth will be heard. You will live on.
Colleen
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1 comment:
Exactly, Colleen... how can this commission effect any change when so much prejudice and denial still exists. I suppose if the coverage is good, then a few people might come to a better understanding, and some ignorance will evaporate. But at the end of the day, our First Nations are still living in deplorable poverty and injustice. Until we change that, we won't be able to change much.
Instead of giving us a 5 per cent GST, don't you wish Harper had kept the GST as it was, and used the extra funds to really make a difference in First Nations poverty?
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