Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Indigenous folk reflect on past rights abuses
Global leaders gather in Durbanville
INDIGENOUS leaders from around the world gathered this week to reflect on the scars and damage from more than five centuries of terror and destruction committed against the world’s most ancient cultures.
Indigenous people from Canada, Colombia, Hawaii, the Pacific Islands, Kurdistan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa spoke of a pattern of killing, torture, land theft, sexual and physical abuse and cultural genocide that eviscerated some cultures and peoples and left rich and ancient heritages in ruins.
The Durbanville conference, called the Healing Journey of Indigenous People, was held by the Institute for the Healing of the Memories and The organisation From the Nation to the Nation.
There were also deliberations by the 70 delegates on land dispossession, genocide, education, perceptions of identity, restitution, official recognition, cultural resurgence and the encouraging of indigenous peoples to tell their own stories to liberate and heal themselves.
The conference addressed the effects of this process on their descendants, including mass incarceration, a high incidence of alcohol and drug abuse, linguistic destruction, broken families, forced assimilation, gangsterism, selfhatred, social and political
The conference
bia, said the conference was a critical intervention to highlight the struggles of indigenous peoples in Colombia and elsewhere. In her country they constituted 3.4 percent of the population, and there had been significant strides in recognition. Vigilance was required to protect their rights.
“During 1998 and 2008 we experienced the highest levels of abuses against indigenous peoples, but even at this time there is still a high level of violence and displacement being experienced, specifically against those communities living in isolated areas.”
This international story of hurt, shame and generational emotional and psychological damage was addressed by Bishop Mark McDonald, a native American from Canada, who heads the World Council of Churches in North America.
Reflecting on the situation in North America, McDonald noted that Native Americans had suffered irreparable damage, the effects of which continue today.
He said his people were once the custodians of the vast lands violently wrested from them during colonisation. “We still do not know how many of our people were wiped out by epidemics or in those armed conflicts.”
McDonald said the recently concluded Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission had investigated past and recent violations and had concluded that cultural genocide had been perpetrated against Canada’s indigenous population.
Among the primary findings by the commission was that schools were specifically created as assimilation instruments to undermine indige- nous language, culture and spirituality. More than half of the students suffered serious physical and sexual abuse.
While the state and its related agencies was the primary instrument through which Canada’s indigenous peoples’ rights were undermined, McDonald said they were determined to ensure accountability by other institutions who were the handmaidens of this process.
“Indigenous people have sought a specific apology from the church and a formal and direct apology from the Vatican.”
McDonald’s remarks on the church were prompted by Cochoqua chief Johnny Jansen who said “Pope Francis has recently apologised for what the Catholic church did to indigenous people”, referring to a papal edict issued 500 years ago, granting permission for the usurping of lands and the subjugation of the people who were its custodians.
Father Michael Lapsley said the conference was conceived to “create permission and space for indigenous people to tell their stories and to listen to each others’ stories”.
The stories bore remarkable similarities, not only in scope, but also in “the sheer scale of death, dying and destruction”.
Referring to South Africa and the effect of colonisation on the Khoi and San, Lapsley said: “South African history begins with genocide, when indigenous people were killed, and permission was granted to kill people like animals.”
Lapsley had direct experience with the continued struggles of indigenous people in New Zealand, where the Maori had been subjected to abuse, and with his work among the indigenous Sami people in Northern and Eastern Europe.
Although these peoples had made numerous advances, there was much work to be done for their restoration.
Lapsley said: “It is about the role and power of acknowledgement, because they are issues facing the entire human family, but that is not the end of the journey, because people are frightened and don’t want to face the implications.
“It is a journey to an apology, and a journey from an apology.”