Responding to the Canadian government’s establishment of an Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Churchill argues for the need to situate the formation of this commission within the broader history of indigenous/settler relations in North America, and within a legal understanding of the crime of genocide.
“Residential Schools were one of many attempts at the genocide of the Aboriginal Peoples inhabiting the area now commonly called Canada. Initially, the goal of obliterating these peoples was connected with stealing what they owned (the land, the sky, the waters, and their lives, and all that these encompassed). . . . A variety of rationalizations (social, legal, religious, political, and economic) arose to engage (in one way or another) all segments of Eurocanadian society in the task of genocide. For example, some were told (and told themselves) that their actions arose out of a Missionary Imperative to bring the benefits of the One True Belief to savage pagans; others considered themselves justified in land theft by declaring that the Aboriginal Peoples were not putting the land to “proper” use; and so on. The creation of the Indian Residential Schools followed a time-tested method of obliterating indigenous cultures, and the psychosocial consequences these schools would have on Aboriginal Peoples were well understood at the time of their formation.”
Roland Chrisjohn, Sherri Young and Michael Maraun, The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada, Theytus Books Ltd, Penticton, 1997.
Truth is one thing, and reconciliation is something else entirely. The two terms have somehow become fused, however, to the point where they usually come out as just one word: truthandreconciliation. Kind of like some other fusions that I’ve encountered in my life — innocentamericans, for example. I had thought innocent was a qualification that had to be earned, and you didn’t just have it by virtue of some national identity. It’s nonsensical, and I would suggest that truthandreconciliation might be as well.
You see, were the truth to be expressed, internalized and acted upon, there might be a basis for reconciliation. People and communities can indeed reconcile within and among themselves, but that process is fundamentally different from the sort of superficial blather of the dominant society which is the primary promoter of the truthandreconciliation process in Canada, especially with regard to the ongoing effects of the system of residential schooling imposed for well over a century upon First Nations children.
Apologies mean little if we do not address the fundamental wrong that has occurred-in this case, colonialism and genocide. I had a formative experience with this idea that might help to illustrate this point. In 1993 I was asked to serve on a tribunal on the rights of indigenous Hawaiians-or Kanaka Maoli, as they call themselves. Their rightful territory is the entire Hawaiian archipelago.
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Starting from the belief that all Canadians bear a responsibility to work for justice in indigenous/settler relations, Briarpatch assesses the sorry state of this troubled relationship and the emerging prospects for change. From examining the genocidal legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools policy to seeking an antidote to teen suicide in the Mohawk cultural resurgence in Tyendinaga, Briarpatch calls for indigenous and settler activists alike to make common cause in the struggle to decolonize this land.
