Sunday, March 2 was the launch of Remembering the Children, a cross-Canada tour promoting the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools. Aboriginal and church leaders gathered along with a colourful collection of singers, dancers, musicians and children in the Grand Hall of the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. This enormous hall, designed by Aboriginal architect Douglas Cardinal, is home to six reconstructed Native houses from coastal British Columbia and 43 totem poles, the largest collection in the world. Through the three-storey windows, you can see across the river to Parliament Hill. It proved an appropriate backdrop to a dramatic evening.
The event began with the pounding of drums. The assembly of almost 500 people rose to their feet as five young Aboriginal women entered the Grand Hall dancing. With ribbons, feathers, hoops and clattering beads, the dancers opened an evening focused on beginning the journey of reconciliation.
Right Rev. David Giuliano, moderator of the United Church of Canada, spoke of the “audacious hope” of the gathering. It was a night to listen to the history of residential schools in Canada, to confess and mourn the damage done in the name of Christ, and to celebrate Aboriginal culture. As Giuliano said, “To truly hear someone else's story is to be changed by it.” The path of reconciliation – of restoring goodwill in relations that have been disrupted – begins with hearing.
In 1857 the Gradual Civilization Act passed to assimilate Indians. As Giuliano described it, this assimilation was born from a misguided desire on the part of the churches to share the truth paired with an unwillingness to hear the truth spoken by others. The ensuing assimilation was gradual at first, though deliberate, but by 1920, attendance at residential schools was compulsory for all Aboriginal children, seven to 15 years. Children were denied family, language, tradition, and religion in an effort to remove Aboriginal cultures and assimilate Aboriginal children into the lower fringes of the larger Canadian society. In the 1980s, residential school students began disclosing stories of sexual, physical and psychological abuse.
Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and himself a survivor of the residential school system, said this sad story “belongs to the country.” Over the last 12 years, since the closing of the last federally run residential school, the Gordon Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canadians have worked together to develop a path towards recognition and healing. In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples Report was released and recommended that a public inquiry be held to investigate and document the abuses suffered in residential schools. September 19, 2007 marked the finalization and implementation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Canada is among many countries to use the model of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That commission, established in 1995 and chaired by Archbishop Desmund Tutu, provided the means for South Africa to recognize and face its legacy of apartheid. It proved a major step in the peaceful transition to democracy in that country. Unlike other TRCs, Canada's will happen after compensation has been agreed upon.
The Canadian TRC will create a permanent record of the residential school experience. To this end, churches and government officials have agreed to make their archives and historical documents available to the commission, and a national research centre will be established. However, the process of truth-sharing will not be centralized. It will happen in the communities where the survivors and their families live. This process will belong to the people who have suffered. By bearing witness in appropriate and accessible ways to what has gone before, it is hoped that right relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians can be established and a shared hope for the future can be created.
The Remembering the Children tour marks the path of hope from suffering into peace, from ignorance into healing. The evening ended as it began – with drums – but this time, the dance was much larger. The whole assembly stood and joined hands in a powerful, pulsing circle dance, weaving in and out among the chairs, under the shadows of the towering totem poles.
The Remembering the Children tour stopped in Ottawa (Mar. 2), Vancouver (Mar. 5), Saskatoon (Mar. 9) and Winnipeg (Mar. 10).
The Native and Church leaders were:
- Phil Fontaine, National Chief, the Assembly of First Nations
- Rt. Rev. Dr. David Giuliano, Moderator, the United Church of Canada
- Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, Primate, the Anglican Church of Canada
- Rev. Dr. J.H. (Hans) Kouwenberg, Moderator, the Presbyterian Church in Canada
- Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, National Indigenous Anglican Bishop, the Anglican Church of Canada
For more information, please go to www.rememberingthechildren.ca.
