The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” – Ezekiel 37:1-3
The turnout in all four stops of the Aboriginal and Church leaders' tour to promote healing and reconciliation – Ottawa, Vancouver, Saskatoon and Winnipeg – exceeded our expectations and seating capacity. There were optimistic, indeed celebratory moments, such as a spirited round dance in Ottawa led by Aboriginal children wearing colourful regalia. Some 500 people joined hands in this circle, looking forward to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and seemingly believing that there will be real healing and reconciliation between us.
There have been powerful moments: survivors weeping in Vancouver on hearing the recorded voices of other survivors, voices giving life to the pain and suffering of the children who were taken from their mothers and fathers, forced to adopt customs and a religion of another people, psychologically abused, while some were also abused physically and sexually.
Ted Quewezance, executive director of the National Residential Schools Society, reached into the very core of our beings when he described the little boy inside him. He reminded us of the little child inside each of us, helping us move just a little closer to understanding the pain of his childhood experience, and that of his family.
Ted also stunned those of us from the churches by the depth of the gratitude he expressed to the church leaders for the sincerity of their words. They touched him deeply. We did not expect this level of affirmation. He stated that he too had not expected the church leaders to go so far in acknowledging the churches' failure to love him and the other Aboriginal children who attended residential schools.
Ted spoke of the difference it makes to hear an apology or confession from another human being – how much more real and meaningful it is to be in the presence of someone apologizing to you, than it is to read an institution's apology or confession on a piece of paper. It is the same for us who did not go to a residential school. We cannot truly grasp what happened to the First Nation, Inuit and Métis people in the schools by reading the stories of survivors in a book, a newspaper or magazine. We need to listen in the presence of individual survivors as they speak their truth in love to us.
In Saskatoon, a baptism was held for a beautiful child, Dominic Lukan – we celebrated a new life, and the spirit of God's presence. The readings at that gathering were resurrection stories: God breathes new life into the dry bones of the house of Israel; and then the Lazarus story, brought to life by a group of readers, voicing the words of those who take part in the account from John's Gospel.
The question for all of us taking part in the Aboriginal and Church leaders' tour is: Are we responding faithfully, and well, to the work of God, to the Creator's living spirit among us? Are we allowing God to do the work that is needed in Canada to heal the wounds of our past, and to bring about true healing and reconciliation?
I cringe remembering how poor the sound system was in Winnipeg, the event for which I and the Presbyterian Church had the lead responsibility among the organizers of the tour. My heart sunk sitting at The Forks, as I realized people had to strain themselves to hear Elijah Harper, a residential school survivor, and an iconic figure among the Aboriginal people of his home province of Manitoba. And yet there's a lesson here, beyond the obvious need to pre-check a sound system. There are times when we need to work hard to listen.
I suggest we need to be prepared to strain ourselves to hear, in person, the stories of survivors from the residential schools. “Survivors” is what they call themselves. It is not a label others have applied to them. And we should not expect residential school survivors to make it easy for us, by offering comforting words of forgiveness along with a depiction of the pain and trauma they have suffered. We need to be prepared to be exhausted by the process.
After 18 months of work with many partners at national and local levels, I am writing three days after the last tour event with a deep feeling of exhaustion, finding it a bit too soon to assess the tour objectively. The response of the leaders, and of the Winnipeg organizing committee with whom I worked through February, tells me something important happened. Many of them are exhausted. Some of us came down with what I've dubbed the “leaders' tour cold.” Yet the leaders all have felt a change in themselves for their involvement in the tour. Something important happened to them in the process of listening to others at these events. I saw it in Hans Kouwenberg's face as he preached at St. Andrew's, Saskatoon, and privately as he talked about the tour. It has sparked something new in him, new passion and energy for the pursuit of healing and reconciliation.
The tour itself came together through a process of building new relationships, a process which in and of itself contributes to healing and reconciliation. Members of the Presbyterian, United, Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches and Aboriginal organizations and communities worked in partnership, on both national and local committees, to organize the tour events.
New life certainly was given to me during the tour, when I picked up the phone time after time in late January, calling people in Winnipeg whom I had never met, members of the Aboriginal community and other church communities, to invite them to take part in planning the Winnipeg event with less than six weeks' notice. No one asked for time to think. No one said no, they'd rather not be involved. Everyone immediately said yes; they wanted to be part of something designed to support healing and reconciliation. And they all worked very hard to make our event happen. We listened to each other. We scrambled. We made compromises. Everything did not run smoothly. Perhaps this is another helpful message, that there is work still to be done among us. Even with the best of intentions among all parties, getting things to run smoothly, achieving the kind of relationship we long for, will require much more than attending a few remarkable leaders' tour events. We are going to need to invest much time and effort in listening to each other, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, and in working together.
The Moderator of the United Church of Canada, Right Rev. Dr. David Giuliano, said it's not just about remembering the children of residential schools, it is about remembering their children, their children's children, and our own children. “Remembering forward,” as he put it. Healing and reconciliation is future-oriented. It's about breathing life into the dry bones of a broken relationship.
There will be opportunities to listen to each other when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its work, and opportunities for churches and Aboriginal communities to work together. We will need to work hard at listening, be prepared to strain ourselves when the sounds of others' voices are difficult to hear, to allow their voices to touch us, right down to the core of our beings.
