Hutterite visitor, protesters discover common ground
REGINA This week at the Justice for Our Stolen Children camp, a Hutterite man leaned down and taught his son a lesson.
These people, he said, are “the first people that were here.”
Benjamin Hofer was visiting Regina from the Hodgeville colony, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive to the west. He brought his wife and two children, Nathan and Caleb. He thought his sons might like to see the 15 teepees he spotted in Wascana Centre. He didn’t know why they were standing across from the Saskatchewan Legislative Building. So Hofer approached a woman who was serving food at the camp, and seemed surprised to hear the answer.
“I’ve never been to a demonstration before,” he recounted afterwards. “She said ‘We’re fighting the government’ and then I asked her ‘Why are you fighting the government?’ and she said ‘The government is taking our children hostage.’ ”
The protesters at the camp have seized on the disproportionate number of Indigenous children in care in Saskatchewan as one of their main grievances. While Hofer said he has few qualms with the government, he saw parallels with the distant history of his own people.
“What happened to their children is something dramatic. Our history is dramatic, too,” he said. “Our people, we’ve been to every country in Europe. They didn’t allow us to have our own schools.”
Hofer has studied the Hutterites’ long trek away from Moravia, where they faced persecution because of their faith and pacifism. There was an era of exile, and a time when their children seemed at risk.
“When they came over the mountains, the government had prepared rooms and beds to confiscate their children,” he said of his ancestors. “Our chronicle records the history, that it was a horrible wilderness.”
But the closest bond Hofer sees with Saskatchewan’s Indigenous peoples isn’t in tragedy, but in the desire for a communal way of life. He spoke about that with a young man at the camp.
“We live in a colony, you know, and we take care of each other from cradle to grave,” he said later, in explaining the lifestyle of self-abnegation and mutual support the Hutterites have pursued for centuries. “That’s where all my happiness comes from.”
Prescott Demas, a spokesman for the campers, said he didn’t have a chance to speak to Hofer. But he believes the Hutterite man has it right. He said his description matches the way of life the camp is trying to preserve.
“That’s exactly how our communities are,” he said. “We watch out for each other and that’s precisely how this is, too.”
Hofer also suggested that the loss of ancestral lands has made it more difficult for Indigenous people to live communally, saying they have been robbed of the “privilege” Hutterites still enjoy. Demas again said Hofer is correct.
“Most definitely, because what the residential schools did was take away a lot of that,” he said. “The position that we were forced into, by being corralled and kept on reserves, we were a very nomadic people.”
Demas said the camp is eager to build bridges with people like Hofer — those who, while very different in their traditions, seek to live sustainably.
Hofer said he’d like to carry on the conversation with those he met at the camp. He said he wants to give his sons “a taste of a different culture.”
“I was going to ask them if they have a powwow,” he said, adding that there is no music back home.
“I would like to have my children watch that.”