Little truth, less reconciliation

Re: No Truth, No Reconciliation, Rodney E. Clifton And Hymie Rubenstein, June 3. Denial is the first step in healing from loss or grief. Rodney Clifton and Hymie Rubenstein’s reaction to the TRC report denies the impact of Canada’s aboriginal policies, and shows how far the country still has to go in healing its relationships with aboriginal people. The writers argue (anger is the second step) that teachers and priests “cared” at residential schools, but they miss the point: the schools were only a small part of the bigger state project to eliminate aboriginal people by destroying their governments, banning religions and languages, seizing land, displacing communities, and through purposeful assimilation. Yet, the TRC points to aboriginal resiliency. The final step of healing is acceptance: it’s now up to us all to learn how to take the next steps, together.

Sam Bradd, Burnaby, B.C. There is no doubt a number of native students of residential schools experienced abuse. That is truly regrettable. What disturbs me is the commission appears to have gone out of its way to focus almost exclusively on the wrongs and injustices experienced by the students and written its report from this narrow perspective. For example, many of the native leaders who have accomplished so much in the interest of the betterment of aboriginals are products of the school system that is so roundly criticized by the commission. Are they not examples of good outcomes? It is also troubling that an uncritical media have bought into the multi-day media event regarding the issue of the summary report, which, without balance, conveys an agenda rather than a factual report of what was right and what was wrong with residential schools. Yes, there are things the white man should be ashamed of and no one condones the abuse that took place. But something important is missing in the report. With the exception of Clifton and Rubenstein, the media appear determined to buy into another aboriginal myth. Such deference is counter-productive. It is regrettable another opportunity to address the real and serious ills of native communities is likely to go nowhere because without truth, there can be no reconciliation.

Robert Teskey, Ottawa. It is shameful, though not surprising, the National Post published Clifton and Rubenstein’s response to TRC report. Their defensiveness functions much as the Canadian state does — it protects the ongoing process of legislated land theft, cultural genocide, targeted state violence by giving it the patina of good intention and modernity.

Scholars from a range of disciplines and life experiences continue to document the specific ways in which the physical, psychological and spiritual abuse are perpetrated against aboriginals. More personally, however, as a Jewish person with a deep commitment to Jewish identity and Jewish life, I am unsettled by the idea that calling genocide by its proper name debases the memory of those killed by the Nazis. Many of the Holocaust’s architects borrowed techniques of quarantine and torture from the colonial settlers of North America. If they acknowledged the connections be- tween these two genocidal projects, why can’t Clifton and Rubenstein?

Griffin Epstein, Toronto.