“This is the 20th anniversary of this special moment in the relationship between the Presbyterian Church in Canada and indigenous peoples,” said Chief Phil Fontaine in his remarks to the assembly. “It’s important in many respects, but especially in terms of setting the stage for this journey we embarked on that day.”
Much has happened in the 20 years since the church’s 1994 confession, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations said. The residential school settlement agreement was reached, the government made its historical apology, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission undertook its important work. “And so we are at a point in our collective history when we can make a real difference. Where we can establish and create the kinds of changes that are absolutely necessary and that will speak clearly and loudly to fairness and justice to all peoples.”
Following the assembly in 1994, Rev. George Vais, then the Moderator, presented a copy of the church’s Confession to Aboriginal Peoples to Chief Phil Fontaine, then grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. Fontaine refused to accept it, saying he would see how the church lived it out.
This year the 2014 Moderator of the General Assembly, alongside Vais, presented Fontaine with copies of the Confession in six languages—in English and French, the official languages of Canada, in Korean, the language of two of the church’s presbyteries, and in Dakota, Ojibwe and Plains Cree, the primary languages spoken by the children in the two residential schools that were run by the church.
“Mr. Fontaine, I am very reluctant to make any promises,” Moderator Stephen Farris said. “You know very well we haven’t been good at keeping them. Maybe we’d better keep the ones we’ve already made before we make any new ones. So I’m not going to make a single promise today. I’m just going to say what’s happened. We’ve listened. We have heard you speak and we have been moved.
“This is a symbol. But sometimes symbols also represent reality. I’m not going to promise that this symbol represents reality. What we’re going to do instead is pray that this symbol represents reality. And I ask you to take this now as a symbol of that prayer.”
“I accept this, as a prayer,” Fontaine said to Farris very softly as he took the copies of the confession.
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“Twenty years ago the Aboriginal Peoples were the most impoverished peoples in Canada,” Fontaine said in his remarks to the assembly. “We remain so today, 20 years later. And there are many manifestations of this poverty including children. There are between 27,000 and 30,000 Aboriginal children in state care today. You compare that with the number of students that were in residential schools at the height of its experience, between 9,000 and 12,000. …
“This matter of First Nations poverty, poverty that cripples so many of our communities, is simply in my view, my respectful view, the single largest challenge facing Canada. It’s the single most important matter before us. So that represents the biggest challenge that sits before us as we talk about the journey over the next 20 years. … I also recognize as I present what appears to be dismal picture, that there is a lot of hope. And there are so many good reasons why we should be optimistic.
“Our community has become better educated. Fifty years ago, we may have had 10, 20 First Nations pupils in university in all of Canada. Today the number varies from 20,000 to 30,000. I’m prone to exaggeration, I say 30,000 today. … You name the discipline, the profession, we are there. We are making a difference. And so this has been a significant, an absolutely significant change. In the space of 50 years we’ve jumped from an extremely low number to the number 30,000. But because of poverty, we’re being held down. That number ought to be 90,000. … Can you imagine just for a moment what it would be like to triple that number [30,000]? It would be such a positive difference.”
