Regarding Residential Schools: Listening is the important thing

Maybe you've seen it, and maybe you haven't. An email has been going around, written by a fellow with a good heart, no question, but what he says misses the mark. It's dropped into my inbox three times already, from friends who also have good hearts. Folks who wish that all the anguish about Residential Schools would just go away.

The email in question is the fellow's lengthy letter written to a newspaper columnist, extolling the virtues of the good people who worked in Residential Schools, telling how the missionaries in his more northern community provided education and healthcare when both were lacking in the area, even mentioning how a certain brother built a merry-go-round for the children who attended the school.

But white settlers like him spreading happy stories about all the good things missionaries did is tantamount to telling residential school survivors and their children who suffer from intergenerational trauma that their experiences are not valid, and that they should just "get over it."

The fact of the matter is that the Indigenous People of our country were doing just fine before Europeans arrived on the shores of this continent. They had a very rich cultural heritage. Their world view and spirituality saw all of creation as sacred. They lived in harmony with the land and its creatures and developed a kinship with them that helped their environment to thrive even as people harvested enough to live on. They operated with a sense of abundance rather than scarcity, and gave generously rather than hoarding or commodifying things. Yes, there were disagreements and even a few battles among tribes, but overall, they sued for peace in the covenants known as treaties, for the sake of good relationships. They had rich trading, gifting, and sharing practices, a deep understanding of the medicinal values of plants, and a deep gratitude to Creator for all the gifts Creator provided for them. They saw everything as gift.

To put it bluntly, THERE WAS NO NEED FOR RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS.

But then Europeans came with their sense of superiority over the Original peoples, and a desire to own this land, and the past almost 400 years of historical injustices wiped out entire Indigenous communities that had been self-sufficient for over a thousand years before settlers arrived. 

Blaming government for setting up the system and creating legislation that took away Indigenous land and rights, and defending the missionaries who got mixed up in the mess (or took advantage of it as employment for its many religious folks) is definitely not what's needed right now.

Settler peoples have talked at First Nations people long enough. It's time to listen. With shame and humility. To hear their pain without defending anything. To let their hurts seep into our souls. To let them know that even though we are deeply ashamed about what happened to them and our own past apathy regarding their struggles, we are with them, and that we want to walk with them, to right past wrongs, so we can all move toward healing and hope as a community, as a planet.

We need to learn from Indigenous people by hearing their stories and their wisdom if they are willing to share. But we should not expect them to educate us -- they owe us nothing, and they have been through enough already without having to revisit their trauma for the sake of helping us to understand it. Rather, it's up to us to seek out the many educational resources available -- books, webinars, videos, documentaries, websites. There are so many options, and there is so much to learn.

And once we have learned, we need to shift our thinking, our world view, toward seeing that all is gift, including the people who are hurting -- and who are forgiving us. And we still need to listen. Listening and walking alongside them, and feeling that we are all relations is the only way to heal this centuries old rift -- and save our planet from the kind of destruction that has been caused by forgetting that we need to live in harmony with it and each other. 

They are our teachers in learning to see everything as Creator's gift. Listen!

If you are looking for useful links and resources, here are some (that I keep flogging because I have found helpful):

• Treaty Talk: Sharing the River of Life  -- a beautiful 50 minute video about the re-beginnings of relationship between some settlers and Indigenous people in the last few years
• Indigenous Canada -- an excellent free course through the University of Alberta that teaches Canadian History from an Indigenous Perspective
• 21 Things You may not Know about the Indian Act -- short summary article by Bob Joseph and his more detailed book, 21 Things You may not Know about the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality
• Edmonton Public Library's Prairie Indigenous Collection, which includes books by Indigenous writers from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta (maybe your library has something similar, or has these titles in its collection)
• Aboriginal Peoples Television (APTN) and many CBC radio programs

If you have other favourite resources along these lines, I'd love to hear about them!

Patience for something beauty-full

My six-year-old blooming
Lionheart amaryllis

Some years ago, I asked a florist to send an amaryllis to my dear friend in Belgium as a Christmas gift. Gaby was delighted and wrote to me, saying, "she is very beauty-full!" So the next fall, I ordered a bulb for myself, and planted it so it would bloom for Christmas. And yes, she was very beauty-full!

She also managed to produce a roundish pod where one of the flowers had been -- because I transferred pollen between the blossoms with my fingers. I allowed the pod to ripen into a hard brown shell, and eventually it cracked and opened to reveal many black, flat and crinkly seeds about the size of a loonie (dollar coin here in Canada).

I turned to the internet for information about how to grow an amaryllis from seed, but all I could find was that they produce the plants in Florida, and it takes about four or five years from germination to flower stage. Wow, that long, I thought.

I was game to try for germination at least, curious what those flat black seeds would do. So I spread them out in a large-ish shallow pot, covered them with a fine layer of soil, and kept them well watered. Before long, the pot appeared to be growing fine grass.

That fall, I transplanted a dozen of the grassy plants into small pots and left them to grow in a sunny window through the winter. By the next spring, they looked like baby leeks, and I put a half dozen into four slightly larger pots and set them outside, bringing them indoors before first frost. The next summer, I kept only the three healthiest specimens. For three years, they spent their days in the sunny back yard or the south-facing kitchen window, depending on the season.

But last fall, as they were ending their fourth year, I cut the leaves from bulbs about the size of medium onions, shook the dirt from their roots, and put them in my basement cold room for a winter's nap with my original bulb, which has bloomed every year after its winter break. 

I promptly forgot about them all -- until after Easter!

The one that didn't bloom

In the middle of an episode of insomnia, I remembered! The next morning, I planted them in some good potting soil and set them out in our little greenhouse, where they put out some healthy looking leaves... and two of the three plants sent up a flower stalk! All that patience had paid off!

I gave one amaryllis to my sisters and one to my mom, and the flowers didn't disappoint! As Gaby said, they were "very beauty-full." Perhaps the third plant hadn't stored quite as much sunlight as the other two, as it hasn't blossomed. Maybe next year!

The lesson I am taking from this is that people are like amaryllises. We all grow at our own pace -- especially when it comes to discovering and accepting the truths of life. For some people, it takes much longer than others. 

In this season of uncovering many painful truths about Canada's colonial history and its myriad injustices against our Aboriginal Peoples, we need to be patient with one another, not to give up on each other. If we can bring each other along with gentleness, kindness, atonement, forgiveness, and healing, hopefully we can all bloom together into something very beauty-full.

Please pray with me for that, and let's all do what we can to further reconciliation...

Reflections on National Indigenous Peoples' Day 2021

The t-shirt I'm wearing today

With the recent revelation of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former Residential School in Kamloops, BC, 104 others near Brandon, Manitoba, and the potential for many more across the country (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave 4,100 as a number of named and unnamed students who died at the schools -- but it's likely higher), our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and hopefully those of us around them, are very aware that there's a lot of grief that comes with being of Aboriginal descent these days. Yesterday at the Inner City Pastoral Ministry, Garry* told me that he was a Kamloops survivor. I'm so glad he is! His smile is a reflection of the sun even as his community carries so much pain... pain that no one should ever have to carry.

Today I'm marking National Indigenous Peoples' Day quietly, thinking of him, and of the childhood friend who taught me about indigeneity through her friendship. We were friends for just a few years in my childhood, as my family moved away from our shared small town in Saskatchewan when I was nine years old. Noreen was a child of the Sixties Scoop and a wonderful friend, but wasn't a letter writer, so we lost touch. She paid my family a visit in Edmonton when I was in High School and it was so great to see her again, but again, we lost touch. For many years. And I never stopped missing her.

When the internet became a place to find people, I googled her and found a picture of her riding a camel in Madagascar, but the website that displayed it offered no way to reach her. Then in 2015, Facebook came to the rescue. I found someone with her name, sent a tentative message, and our friendship as adults (in the same city!) began. 

Then three years ago, Noreen returned to her First Nations community in Saskatchewan, and lost her connection with Facebook when her phone died. I tried everything I could think of to reconnect, but was at a complete loss. I wrote a poem for her and sent it to her last email address, not knowing what else to do. That didn't work either.

But with the announcement of the 215 children lost because of the Kamloops Residential School just recently, I dreamed of my friend, and redoubled my effort to find her. Fortunately, I discovered her daughter on social media and asked to connect with her mom once again. And in no time at all, Noreen and I were texting like no time had passed, talking about our families and gardens and friendship. She has made a huge difference in my life in ways I can't even begin to express, but mostly in giving me an unending desire to connect with many other Indigenous sisters and brothers. Her friendship is an incredible gift, one I've done nothing to deserve, and I am grateful for her, so today I sent her the poem that got lost in cyberspace, and tomorrow we might video call each other, I hope!

I'm very grateful for her, and for the wisdom and goodness of Turtle Island's Original peoples, who have forgiven us so much already, and who are willing to work with us toward reconciliation of the many wrongs Canada's settler population have ignored for too long. There's so much I learned in the Indigenous Canada course two months ago that all Canadians should know -- so that we can begin to heal the hurts.

I pray that in the years to come, we will become aware of all the festering issues that need to be healed and attend to them with speed and compassion. We have so much work to do to apologize and fix things, and it all starts with reaching out to each other. Yesterday at the Inner City Pastoral Ministry, a group of dancers came to do a demonstration and educate us a little bit. I leave you with a few beautiful images from a very touching morning with such kind, and talented dancers, all! Their strength and goodness were more than inspiring. 

May we all be inspired to build relationships of peace and justice!

*Not his real name.

Learning from Indigenous Canada

Just last week, I finished a free online course from the University of Alberta called Indigenous Canada. I've been working at it since February, one or two modules a week, and it has been an excellent experience and a real eye opener. 

We all know that history is written from the perspective of the winners -- and that our tendency as human beings is to see people in binary terms of being winners or losers. When I took Canadian History 210 at the University of Alberta all those years ago, there was passing reference to the Algonquin, Iroquis and Mohawk communities encountered by the French and English colonizers, and a brief lesson on Louis Riel and the Metis Rebellion -- but everything else was about the colonists and their glorious settlement of Canada. The so-called winners got all the press.

But North America's first name was actually Turtle Island, and there's a lot more to our country's history than what European settlers (my ancestors included) brought to it. When Columbus arrived in 1492, people had already been living here for thousands of years, and had established a way of life that included gatherings, trade routes, and territories that supplied them with all that they needed to live happy lives. They were wise about the land and how to work with it through all seasons.

It makes me wonder -- where did Europeans ever come up with the idea that the Original Peoples weren't civilized? According to what I learned from Indigenous Canada, their ways of sharing the land, handling conflict, respecting nature, and raising children into responsible and caring adults involved healthy cooperation rather than nasty cycles of competition and punishment. They only took from nature what they needed, and operated out of a deep sense of appreciation and generosity rather than hoarding and one-upmanship. Whenever conflict arose, they came together to make peace treaties, covenants, with one another.

Thanks to the course, it's crystal clear to me now that a clash of world views is one of the main reasons for our need for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Had Europeans arrived in North America with a willingness to work with its inhabitants rather than a desire to exploit the New World, the U of A course I just finished would not have modules called "Trick or Treaty," "New Rules, New Game," or "Killing the Indian in the Child." 

Had Champlain come with a spirit of cooperation back in the 1600s, I suspect we would now have better conservation practices, fewer Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, lower crime rates, a restorative rather than retributive justice system, and a richer overall culture that welcomes simplicity and diversity over consumerism and homogeneity. There were points in the course where I cried for the things Original Peoples have been put through by our government and by our "settler" apathy toward them, and for all that our society has lost because of it.

But crying over broken history is not the point. The point is to listen, to learn, and to make positive changes. The resilience of Indigenous people is really incredible -- they are the fastest growing demographic in Canada, and are forging new paths in spite of the many injustices they've been forced to deal with.

I highly recommend this course to all Canadians. It is free to anyone with computer access, and all you have to do is watch a series of videos each week for about 12 weeks. If you don't want to do the quizzes at the end of each module, no one will raise a fuss. There's an online discussion option that I barely explored, but would also be interesting if you have the time for it. And if you like, you can receive a certificate at the end of the course for a pittance (in comparison to the cost of a regular university course!)

It's a free opportunity for a deeper understanding, and one worth taking!

Click here!

Something everyone needs to see

It's a low-ceilinged grey day, not quite as cold as the day that killed 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack. He was taken from his family in Northern Ontario to a residential school in Kenora. Imagine what that would be like -- to leave your family, your culture and your language, everything and everyone you know and love because you must be educated. It's still happening here in Canada, not in residential schools any more, but many of our young Aboriginal brothers and sisters must travel to larger centres away from their homes to complete their education.

Chanie Wenjack ran away from school and tried to walk the 600 km home to Ogoki Post through a miserable autumn storm, wearing nothing but a light jacket. His story has recently been retold by two Canadian artists -- Jeff Lemire is an accomplished graphic novelist, and Gord Downie is the lead singer of the Tragically Hip. Gord has terminal cancer, so you could say that this work is a very special project.

The Secret Path tells the story of Chanie Wenjack's attempt to walk home. Jeff Lemire's graphics evoke the cold faced by the child, his thoughts, memories, and deep desire to get home. Gord Downie's music provides the only words to the story. I'm not a fan of the Tragically Hip, but I found the songs deeply moving, a fitting soundtrack to the loneliness and desolation faced by a twelve-year-old on an impossible, body- and soul-chilling journey. Chanie died on October 22, 1966, and this program aired 50 years and one day later as part of Gord Downie's effort to help the healing and reconciliation process begun by our country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The legacy of Canadian Residential Schools has done deep damage to our relationships with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and healing won't happen until we face the facts and ask forgiveness.

It's a slow-moving film, but definitely one worth watching. For more information about the project, visit the website: http://secretpath.ca/

And now for a message from our sponsors

It's Aboriginal Awareness Week here in Canada -- Aboriginal Day is tied to Summer Solstice. And here's a great little video from Wab Kinew, who is one smart guy. I am celebrating my Aboriginal friends this week, and sharing this video with you.

The title of this moodling might seem a little off the wall, but if you think about it according to Wab's fifth point below, First Nations people have supported our lifestyles a lot more than we have supported theirs... It's time to learn more about their history and work for reconciliation in a serious way, Canada.