Solution for First Nations healing in education, says TRC chair

It is unrealistic to expect a five-year mandate to deal with 150 years of stress and seven or eight generations of residential school, stated Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC) Chair Justice Murray Sinclair at a Sept. 28 address to a six-person senate.

Already in year two, Sinclair and Commissioners Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild said their findings are only the beginning—that all parties will have to proceed together to complete the court-ordered process. Addressing the six-person Senate Committee on Aboriginal Affairs to report on progress since the Residential Schools apology of June 2008, Sinclair noted while Canada has embarked on a significant journey, the legacy of residential schools has left no Aboriginal person untouched.

“There is no issue…within Aboriginal communities that is not connected in some way to the residential school experience,” said Sinclair, adding this means all Canadians are affected.

“Because racism was such a prevalent part of the residential school system, we must also see that racism played a part in the public school systems of this country throughout the years as well. While Aboriginal people in residential schools were taught to feel inferior and that they were inferior, in the same way, unconsciously, non-Aboriginal Canada was taught to believe they were superior,” he said.

Describing residential schools as Canada’s great shame, Sinclair added the major key to addressing the policies of forced assimilation is the one that originally left Aboriginals feeling alienated and disassociated.

“Education, or what passed for it, got us into this situation, and education is what will lead us out,” Sinclair stated.

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families; today an estimated 80,000 former students are still living with intergenerational trauma and a systemically poor relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada.

“We see social difficulties on a massive scale, children caught up in the child welfare system, Aboriginal people caught up in the criminal justice system; we see family dysfunction; we hear about domestic violence that is at historically high rates,” said Sinclair. “Not only is mutual respect required, but self-respect, and providing Aboriginals with access to their full history is a part of the process.”

Wilson added all public institutions and government levels need education, along with other recommendations from the TRC made as part of the settlement agreement, including a national research centre housing the already thousands of nation-wide statements gathered as well as community commemorations.

“We see this whole exercise as an opportunity to reconstitute ourselves as a country based on respectful relations,” said Wilson.

Littlechild noted Canada’s actions at the UN were deeply disturbing to him—while the UN was praising Canada for establishing the TRC, calling it a global model of best practice—Canada is still trying to turn the clock back at the international level.

Rather than building reconciliation, Canada is stalling the UN Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, demanding removal of the word “human” and “human rights”, one of only four countries holding out. He told the Aboriginal-only media teleconference, following the Senate presentation, that he would not apologize or back down from his position.

“I think that should be a concern for not just me but for everyone,” noted Littleton. “As a commissioner and as a former student, to tell me to reconcile with someone who keeps doing that, is a very difficult proposition.”

Sinclair noted the challenge is to show both sides of the country why they need to engage in conversations. While some survivors are not ready to reconcile, many non-Aboriginals simply do not find it as important “because they do not see it as something that affects them.”

But Sinclair also wrote of a reconciliation between student Edward Gamblin and schoolteacher Florence Kaefer, who began her teaching career in 1957. Both experienced trauma at Norway House – Kaefer stopped mentioning her experience teaching in the residential schools when stories of abuse began to surface, while Gamblin recorded country songs about loneliness, neglect, isolation, and abuse.

When Kaefer came across  Gamblin’s CD she contacted him and Gamblin said he remembered her classroom as a refuge. During the first national TRC event in Winnipeg,  Kaefer brought their story to the public reconciliation event because Gamblin was in hospital.

The second of seven national events of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission takes place in Inuvik, NWT in June, 2011.

Photo Caption:On Sept. 28, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chair Justice Murray Sinclair and Commissioners Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild addressed a six-person Senate Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.

PHOTO: COURTESY NANCY PINE, TRC.