A few words about Treaty Six are a good start
Catholic school board is right to acknowledge part of its own history
I have to hand it to Edmonton Catholic school trustees. No one can ever accuse them of being afraid of a good culture war.
It wasn’t enough that Tuesday night’s meeting focused on the contentious issue of how to craft a policy for the inclusion of transgender students, one that respects both Catholic teaching and Alberta’s human-rights legislation. It’s not enough that Education Minister David Eggen has just appointed an “expert adviser” to give the board remedial lessons in board governance.
No, having passed a proposed transgender policy through first reading, the trustees then used the last few minutes of their meeting to open up a whole new can of worms.
Trustee Cindy Olsen, who fought hard against a transgender policy at last month’s infamously toxic meeting, noted Tuesday the board has now created policy for a small group of people. Aboriginal students, she argued, a far larger community, also face social discrimination.
And so, Olsen made a motion that the board, which serves many First Nations and Métis students, should open each meeting with a brief acknowledgment that they meet on Treaty Six land.
Edmonton city council, as Olsen noted, opens its meetings with such a statement. Indeed, these days, it’s hard to attend any local arts festival or conference that doesn’t begin with such a recognition.
Cynically, you could decry it as a platitude, a post-modern mea culpa, a fashionable phrase for non-indigenous people to salve their consciences.
Idealistically, you could see it as a mark of respect and the first step toward truth and reconciliation.
Either way, beginning a meeting with such an acknowledgment is hardly radical.
But although the motion eventually passed, 6-2, not everyone embraced Olsen’s idea.
Trustee Larry Kowalczyk seemed to find it down right heretical.
“We might be better off opening every meeting with a prayer that God created this land,” he thundered. “This is God’s land. And we are just here at His discretion.”
Trustee Marilyn Bergstra did eventually support the motion. But she worried acknowledging treaty history would somehow be disrespectful to new immigrants or leave them feeling alienated.
And trustee John Acheson had two different objections.
“The great problem I have with this motion is that it implies we are on land that belongs to someone else,” he told the meeting.
“This land belongs to all who live therein. ... It belongs to everyone in this room.”
A few words at the beginning of meetings wouldn’t improve the actual lives of aboriginal students, he said. And it wasn’t the fundamental change the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had advocated
“This is a gesture, but it doesn’t seem to have much substance to it,” said Acheson. “What is needed is far more substantive than gestures.”
Fair enough. If we simply begin their meetings and events with pro forma words that whitewash the past without inspiring real improvements in the here and now, then such gestures are indeed meaningless.
It’s not enough to say that we’re on Treaty Six land — we need to know what that means and why it matters.
Because this is Treaty Six land. That is a simple historic fact, not up for debate. Without those treaties, without those legally binding contracts, Alberta wouldn’t exist. And this wouldn’t be a part of Canada. There’s nothing about teaching our history that should be alienating to new immigrants, nor to any of us whose families moved here after the treaties were signed. We are all treaty people, whether our roots here go back five generations, or whether we arrived last Tuesday. The treaties bind us all.
Edmonton’s Catholic school board certainly should acknowledge that fact. It’s part of its own history.
It was Oblate missionaries, including Father Albert Lacombe, Father Emile Grouard and Father Constantine Scollen — some of the very same people who established Catholic education in Alberta — who helped negotiate Treaties Six and Eight. They did so despite their own ambivalence with the treaty process. And they struggled, with limited success, to ensure First Nations got the best deal possible from the Crown. These are fundamental facts every Alberta schoolchild — and school trustee — should know.
No, just saying high-minded words doesn’t improve highschool completion rates, or fund all-day kindergarten. But words can shift paradigms. Repeated and understood, they can change the way we see ourselves and our community.
In the beginning was the word. That’s not where this essential conversation should end. But it’s where it starts.