Setting the record straight on the TRC
Re: No Truth, No Reconciliation, Rodney E. Clifton And Hymie Rubenstein, June 3. As scholars at the University of Manitoba, it was with great concern and some embarrassment we read the recent article on the final report of Canada’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission by Hymie Rubenstein and Rodney Clifton. Their perspective — both on the TRC’s report and Canadian colonialism more generally — in no way reflects the main currents of thought in those disciplines devoted to understanding genocide and settler-indigenous relations, nor is it consistent with the view of most of our colleagues at the university.
The U of M has publicly acknowledged both the harms of Canada’s Indian residential school system and the university’s role in perpetrating them. Moreover, later this year the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation containing the archives of the TRC will open at the university, where it will act to preserve the memory of the residential schools while serving as a powerful resource for survivors, their families, researchers and the public.
Rubenstein and Clifton’s remarks echo the insensitivity and moral inattention the TRC is attempting to redress. They lean on a half-baked understanding of what genocide is and show little evidence of having read the report. They assume the role of arbiters in an unsavoury competition for the mantle of true victimhood and bizarrely equate the boarding school experiences of indigenous children with those of immigrants and the wealthy. Their article also ignores the substantial historical record and places heavy weight on the authors’ anecdotal experience from late in the residential schools era. It minimizes the high death tolls and abuse occurring as simply common features of an earlier era of schooling, and portrays the stripping away and denigration of indigenous languages, beliefs and cultural practices as somehow good for aboriginal children. To suggest others are reinforcing half-truths is to misunderstand the concept of truth itself. It also shows a lack of willingness to engage in a process of reconciliation by accepting the truths of others or truths that may be difficult to admit.
We reject Rubenstein’s and Clifton’s characterization of the Indian residential school system and its effects. Their attempt to downplay the schools’ harms is indicative of their failure to understand the history of residential schooling and the TRC , its mandate, its careful evaluation of the available sources and scholarship, and its conclusions. Marlene Atleo, Education; Jarvis Brownlie, History; Diana Brydon, Centre for Globalization & Cultural Studies; Aime´e Craft, Faculty of Law; Kiera Ladner, Political Studies; Adam Muller, English, Film & Theatre; Judith Owens, English, Film & Theatre; Debra Parkes, Faculty of Law; Adele Perry, History; Niigaanwewidam Sinclair, Native Studies; Jocelyn Thorpe, Women’s & Gender Studies; Christopher Trott, Warden, St. John’s College; Andrew Woolford, Sociology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. Rodney Clifton and Hymie Rubenstein wrote that much of what was contained in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s report was exaggerated and a half-hearted effort to force indigenous perspective onto a generally well intentioned system. These two gentlemen are outstanding examples of precisely why we need the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation and why we recorded the voices of survivors. Their words remind us reconciliation will not be an easy task, but will take time and effort to unite all people in Canada, indigenous and non-indigenous. The report has only just been released and already we see people are making effort to deny the brutal reality of the schools.
Yet on the permanent record we have the voices of about 7,000 survivors who lived at the schools and later bore their effects. This should be given dramatically more weight that 1½ years of work Clifton conducted in a residential school. Compare that to the voice and experience of Commissioner Wilton Littlechild, who spent 14 years as a student in one of these schools. What did the survivors tell us? They told us what was reflected in the TRC’s report — that the schools amounted to cultural genocide.
It’s time we stop listening to those writing about the system from the outside in and start listening directly to survivors. I’m sticking with what the survivors tell me, all 7,000 of them.