Edmonton Journal

Shining a light on wilful blindness

Residentia­l school healing requires honesty

- DAVID LANGTRY David Lang tr y is acting chie f commission­er of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

From March 27 to 30, I will be an honorary witness at the Truth and Reconcilia­tion Commission’s final national gathering of survivors of Indian residentia­l schools here in Edmonton. It promises to be emotionall­y painful, but also a healing experience.

The TRC was set up as part of a class-action settlement, the largest in Canadian history, of a lawsuit brought on behalf of tens of thousands of survivors of the schools. They are called “survivors” because the horrific physical and sexual abuse so many endured didn’t kill them. The commission’s mandate is to uncover these uncomforta­ble truths and help us move toward reconcilia­tion with aboriginal peoples in Canada.

Over the past five years, the TRC has heard from thousands of survivors. They have spoken tearfully, angrily and wrenchingl­y about being forcibly taken from their families to be crowded into spartan boarding schools plagued by hunger, abuse, disease and death.

Alberta had more residentia­l schools than any other province, so this week’s gathering could be one of the largest. This province alone has 12,000 survivors out of an estimated 80,000 alive today.

Inflicting this trauma on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada was not accidental. In the 1870s, the schools became part of an official Canadian policy of forced assimilati­on designed to “kill the Indian in the child,” drive what was left of aboriginal population­s onto remote reserves, and permit “whites” to settle the West.

The legacy of this policy is visible on the streets of nearly every Canadian city to those who know the story. But most Canadians never learned about it, and indifferen­ce is the result.

I grew up in Winnipeg in the 1950s. My upbringing was unusual: Racist stereotype­s, so common then, had no place in our home. My father saw everyone as equal. He treated everyone with respect.

Aboriginal people have always had a positive influence on my life. My father would take me to Shoal Lake every weekend, where we camped in the heart of a First Nations community and fished from their shores. As a young man, I took a job that involved living and working in First Nations communitie­s throughout Manitoba.

But while I made friends and learned from the wisdom of elders, I learned nothing about residentia­l schools. Only years later, when I became assistant deputy minister for Child and Family Services in Manitoba, did the deep, enduring effects of the schools on survivors and their families hit me for the first time.

It helps to remember the schools were establishe­d under Canada’s first prime minister and were not abolished until the 1990s. More than 150,000 children passed through them. Research shows psychologi­cal trauma is passed from generation to generation. A recent study by University of Ottawa and Carleton University researcher­s confirms this: The trauma experience­d by parents who attended residentia­l schools hurts their children. When multiple generation­s attended them, the negative effects are cumulative.

This helps explain why aboriginal people in Canada lag behind the rest of us on indicators of well-being such as education, employment and health.

Yet many of us cannot see the connection between the challenges facing aboriginal people today and the impacts of ruthless government policy.

Perhaps our indifferen­ce stems from what we were taught in school, or more accurately, what we were not taught.

Wilful blindness to the horrors of the schools was government policy. Dr. Peter Bryce, hired by the government in 1907 to report on health conditions at residentia­l schools in Western Canada, found that in Alberta the mortality rate was a staggering 50 per cent.

Ottawa’s response was to fire Bryce, abolish the position, stop reporting and repress the facts. Shortly afterwards, it became mandatory for all aboriginal children to attend residentia­l schools.

This is among the reasons why this government’s 2008 apology to aboriginal people is so significan­t. But that apology, so overdue, was just a first step. The history of residentia­l schools needs to be taught to our children. This was not just a shameful chapter of Canadian history. It is our history. We must not be complicit in wilful blindness.

On March 30, I will personally commit to help make Canadians aware of our shared past and this legacy of trauma. I intend to be part of the process of healing, because only when we know the truth and assume responsibi­lity for it can we find the path to reconcilia­tion between our peoples.

Healing may take generation­s, but education will help. As Alberta’s own Wilton Littlechil­d, the TRC commission­er, has said many times, “Education got us into this mess, and education will get us out of it.”

 ?? JASON FRANSON/EDMONTON JOURNAL/FILE ?? Archbishop of Edmonton, Most. Rev. Richard Smith, watches as elder Jerry Woods says a prayer at Edmonton’s Ben Calf Robe School last month. The Truth and Reconcilia­tion Commission holds its final national event in Edmonton March 27 to March 30.
JASON FRANSON/EDMONTON JOURNAL/FILE Archbishop of Edmonton, Most. Rev. Richard Smith, watches as elder Jerry Woods says a prayer at Edmonton’s Ben Calf Robe School last month. The Truth and Reconcilia­tion Commission holds its final national event in Edmonton March 27 to March 30.
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada