Reconciliation and storytelling
Why conversation for reconciliation is important: this story about neighbourhood dialogue in a gentrifying Portland, Oregon neighbourhood contains this sheer nugget of wisdom:
“The one who strikes the blow doesn’t know the force of the blow,” Mowry says. “Only the one who has received the blow knows its force.”
That quote serves to me to point out why reconciliation efforts led by the striker don’t really heal. I think a little about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Canada which is supposed to look at the residential school experience in a way that hears the story. But it is a Commission that has been set up by the federal government as a part of a legal settlement. It is not the aggreived forgiving the oppressors, as it was in South Africa. It is – or has the clear potential to be – simply the government feeling good about itself, as it did with teh Royal Commission in the early 1990s.
The one who received the blow has a story to tell in this country. A powerful story that needs to be heard and collectively owned before we can truly move to justice for First Nations in Canada.
via Speak. Listen. Heal. | Special Coverage – – OregonLive.com.
The attack on the principle of residential schools has always been confusing to me. Not because I don’t think they’re wrong (I do), but because the people that criticize them most heavily are the ones that most loudly advocate the idea of equal opportunity.
And given that the attitudes of your parents and the quality of your home environment have the most effect on how much preparation you will have to meet (and precipitate) the opportunities that become available to you later in life, I see the removal of children from the bad environment as the only way you can achieve equality of opportunity.
So, I disagree with the idea of residental schools because I disagree with the idea of equality of opportunity. And I disagree with the idea of equality of opportunity because it is a necessarily totalitarian ideal, for the above reasons.
But I am confused about why those that believe in equality of opportunity don’t also believe in residential schools.
Matt…the flaw in this argument is your assumption that children were removed from bad homes. they were not. They were removed more or less systematically because of a policy that was stated openly as “removing the Indian from the child.” You can’t deny surely, that a policy of forced removal of children from a family home to ethnically cleanse them provides a good starting point for any kind of education.
Unquestionably, people’s experiences of residential school were wildly varying. Some had a good time, others suffered terrible abuse and trauma. In general though, many of the social problems facing First Nations communities have long been tied to that multi-generational break between parents and children that was the result of a racist policy. The effects of residential schools are far ranging in the lives of individuals and communities and families.
Declarations of equal opportunity aside (and it is a mark of privilege to have the choice!), the policy of residential schools was wrong, and has resulted in lasting social and psychological damage to communities that results in lots of other work being incredibly hard and complex to do. It would be interesting to hear your take on what rights people DO have (if not a right to equal opportunity) and what remedy you feel in appropriate for the violation of these rights. Which rights are okay to take away from you?
Chris, from my point of view, you either do that — wholesale conversion — or you stop sending funding their way. This is the 21st century and we have moved on. This is not the same as immigration, where there is
an eventual willingness to be a part of the new country and a need for bridge-gapping. This is a determination to be different at the expense of others. From this perspective, all households are bad when the goal is to build and participate in life in Western society.
The abuse that took place in these schools was absolutely wrong and there’s no excuse for that. But abuse was not the intent of the idea. The idea was to assimilate the incompatible culture to the dominant one.
If First Nations want to live with traditional methods then they should do it on the land they have and on their own accord. I am tired of seeing stories in the Toronto Star about how First Nations communities have to pay five times as much for a case of Coke or three times as much for a loaf of bread. It is not hard to set up a small bakery operation and make bread from raw ingredients that have a much longer shelf life than a pre-prepared loaf of bread.
I feel the same way about Quebec, too. Although they probably do have a better culture, if it can’t stand on its own two feet (i.e. without periodic bribes from the federation) then it should be left to fall or stand by its own devices.
With respect to the First Nations, there should be all kinds of strings attached to the funding we send their way, and a timeline for the funding to stop. And when it stops, it’s all over.
Personally, I think that this is not the time for unconditional rights. Rights work when you have a population that accepts responsibility to hold up their end of the deal. When you don’t have that, rights don’t work. We don’t have that. I only see room for best efforts.
Lots to take on here Matt. First, if there are no inalienable rights, then who decides which rights you get and which you lose. I sniff fascism in your statements. It’s an appalling notion to me, that my rights would ever be conditional to your whims or definition of expediency.
As for First Nations funding…two things. First Nations are governments, not special interest groups. I have never heard people calling for municipalities or provinces to have a limited source of funding that is cut off at a certain point. First Nations receive funds the same as every other government: to provide services to their communities. Because there is a very limited possibility for First Nations to raise money from their own common lands (and believe I know, having worked for two years with a tripartite fiscal relatrions group to sort out the mess of tax codes and own source revenue and other forms of fiscal relations) the federal government maintains it’s fiduciary obligation to provide for the fiscal needs of governments.
Funding for First Nations is so bound up in “strings attached” that the auditor-general consistently calls for these strings to be loosened. There is such a high level of red tape and accountability with First Nations funding that many Nations spend more time administering the funding relationship that the program. To say that First Nations funding is unaccountable is not to know what you are talking about frankly. Do the research. Look at what the A-G says.
First Nations government are set witha quandry of living with traditional rights to land and resources and participating in a contemporary economy and political system that radically restricts their rights and has never addressed the fact that the very tools that First Nations need – land and resources – have been taken without compensation. Provincial and federal government derive their operating funds from activity that happens on lands that were previously owned by First Nations. Treaties secured the alienation of these lands, but never addressed the ongoing relationship besides “we’ll buy you some medicine and pitchforks.” The modern day treaty process, court ligitagtion on Abortiginal title and other high level initiatives are the work of First Nations trying to assert rights that the common law says exist.
But iof you think rights should just be waved away when they don’t make sense, then this argument won’t make sense for you.
Things cost more in remote communities. Governments and the market compensate with higher salaries and living allowances. What’s the problem? The same is true in Red Lake, Attiwapiskat, Fort Nelosn and Inuvik. Native and non-native suffer alike.
Also, hard to grow wheat north of 60. A better option is to hunt off your land and provide from indigenous protein and food stuffs. Oh wait. The tar sands/logging/hydro dam ruined the natural animal populations. Guess we now have to eat food from the south. A free trout full of mercury or clean potatoes from BC at 10$ a pound. What’s your choice?
And if you think First Nations people don’t want to be a part of Canada, you aren’t doing the research. The Inuit in Nunavut chose to settle their land claim by making a public government that everyone can be a part of. the Nisga’a talked about their relief at finally joining Canada. Very few people and hardly any First Nations governments expect Canada to go away. The goal is to live together.
So much more to be said, but enough breath has been spent by me here. Perhaps others can join in.
Chris, I think we are working from a different premise here. What I am saying is that the past doesn’t matter and if the traditional methods can’t be practiced then they should be abandoned and replaced with ones that are compatible with the new culture.
How many of their kids would really want to carry on the old traditions if left to their own devices? Raising them in this way is akin to what Richard Dawkins would call child abuse if the context of a Christian upbringing. And it’s amazing to me that people who will criticize the traceable history of Christianity and the attached rituals will turn around and act all respectfully about a group of aboriginals throwing cornmeal into the wind (this is Navajo, but I assume there are similar rituals in Canadian aboriginal culture) and telling you that they have no books and that their weird truth is tied into stories that are undocumented and have been subject to the telephone game all along the way.
As for wheat, I didn’t say that they should grow wheat. I said that they should make bread from flour themselves, rather than complaining that Wonder Bread (and Coke, and vienna sausages) can’t be flown thousands of kilometres up there for the same price as it can be trucked regionally from the bakery to a store in the GTA. Manufactured bread has a shelf life in terms of days (and only because of preservatives) and mostly consists of water and air (weight and volume) while flour has a shelf life measured in months, is packed more densely, and water can be supplied locally. Less weight + less volume + larger delivery window = far cheaper to transport, and local jobs in a small bakery, probably for less cost. Better yet, give them a grinder and send grain — whole wheat bread, and unbroken grain lasts for years.
The list of solutions goes on, but instead we only hear complaining. If milk is too expensive, you can use dried milk. Not perfect, but you don’t have cows and you live in a remote area. There are tradeoffs. There are ways of making sausage that require no refrigeration, as the Mennonites still do. For some reason, enterprising aboriginals have figured out that alcohol can survive being bootlegged up there (by their own people) because of its long shelf life, but this hasn’t extended to other areas of inquiry.
There is no way that any of the things you’ve described can be worked out in any kind of satisfactory way. Pollution sources for oceans and waterways are worldwide. Also, you must know as well as I do that there are aboriginal leaders in Alberta who are working toward developing their own land into tar sands in order to provide jobs for their communities (i.e. Jim Boucher). These are First Nations communities that work.
I am not advocating the dismantling of functional First Nation communities or governments. I am advocating the dismantling of those that don’t work, rather than funnelling money in there to stop them because of guilt or to stifle the complaining. Per-capita investment should be no greater than to any other government. The past is over.
As for accusations of fascism, I prefer to be called “realistic”. If you have a human right to something and the society is so constrainted that it can’t provide that right, then what is the point? Do we just keep saying that it’s a right, anyway, while the right goes undelivered all the while feeling good about ourselves because our heart was in the right place? What about the people who lose all sense of gratitude for life and come to see everything that they want as their due? I don’t think you can underestimate the negative effect of handing out these unearned things on the psyche of society. Maintaining such pathologies may keep you employed, and keep your view of the world intact, but they are counterproductive for society in general.
Isn’t it better to look at the problem realistically and determine where the money can be best spent? For example, how do we deal with H1N1? If we didn’t have enough vaccine to go around, should we give it to an 85-year-old with emphysema before we give it to a 25-year-old with decades of productive life ahead of him if both are likely to succumb? Or would that now be discrimination on the basis of age, and therefore a violation of human rights?
We are becoming mentally unfit to run this planet.