A Shameful Chapter Aired, by Andrew Stobo Sniderman, Montreal Gazette, May 7, 2011

A Shameful Chapter Aired

By Andrew Stobo Sniderman
Montreal Gazette
May 7, 2011

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/decision-canada/shameful+chapter+aired/4743361/story.html

Before and after images of young Thomas Moore, Regina Indian Industrial School, Saskatchewan, Department of Indian Affairs Annual Report, 1897 Library and Archives Canada.

They speak of wandering hands of priests, unanswered cries for help, and tears of parentless children and childless parents. One by one, Aboriginal survivors of residential schools are publicly sharing their heartbreaking stories. Chief Wilton Littlechild has listened to every one.

After one elderly woman finished a wrenching description of her sexual abuse, she locked eyes with Littlechild and concluded: "I pray for you. I don't know how you listen to all these stories."

Chief Littlechild is one of three commissioners leading Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on residential schools, and the only one to have attended a residential school.

"When I listen to survivor stories, often they are telling my story," he said. "I have shed many tears with them." He spent 14 years, from the age of six to 19, at two schools in Alberta, Ermineskin Indian Residential School and St. Anthony's college.

Littlechild and the TRC face two daunting tasks: assembling an oral record of one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history, and using truths about the past to heal the present. Littlechild has become a historian of pain and cheerleader for forgiveness.

Mostly, he listens. Across Canada, in gymnasiums and community halls, the following scene is unfolding:

A survivor speaks into a microphone facing only the three commissioners and TRC banners that read "For the child taken, for the parent left behind." Some stories last a few minutes, others a few hours. The audience is arranged in a horseshoe behind the survivor, who is joined by a friend with a hand of comfort and tissues at the ready. When a voice cracks, and most do, the audience cannot see the tears, but they can hear them.

Blooming tissue boxes litter the room. Health counsellors prowl the aisles looking for someone to hug. Along one wall, large fish tank booths house local translators, and headsets buzz with English and the local Aboriginal language.

When a survivor concludes testimony, they are met with handshakes and hugs from friends, family and strangers. Faces read relief, if not catharsis.

For most survivors, this is the first time they have told their stories, and perhaps even more importantly, the first time anyone has listened. "We know," as one attending Health Canada psychologist said, "that talking is better than not talking. And the more you talk, the more you heal."

The TRC began listening last summer, and it plans to wrap up by 2014. It is funded by $60 million that survivors set aside from a $1.9-billion settlement in 2007 with the Canadian government and Christian churches, the largest class action lawsuit settlement in Canadian history. The TRC recently concluded its "northern tour" through 19 communities in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and northern Quebec.

The history of residential schools is not found in high school textbooks, which is why many Canadians would agree with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's comment in 2009 that Canada "has no history of colonialism."

This is a conveniently misleading claim, critics say. Canada did not invade other countries, but colonized within its own borders. For more than 100 years, the Canadian government funded Church-run schools to assimilate Aboriginal children. The first legislation to this effect in the 19th century was called the Gradual Civilization Act. Euphemism would later be abandoned in 1920 when Duncan Scott, the most senior public servant in the Department of Indian Affairs, promised to "kill the Indian in the child." Over time, more than 150,000 children would be sent to residential schools.

For commissioner Littlechild, the hearings over which he presides are part of his own healing journey.

His glittering career spans sport, business and politics, including stints as a semi-professional hockey and baseball player, an oil and gas lawyer in Edmonton, First Nations chief, and member of Parliament. His toothy smile radiates warmth, and he retains the backslapping ease and banter of a politician.

But even this man of uncommon success dealt with his past at residential school in the most common way: with silence. Only recently, after he accepted the job of commissioner, did he begin to open up about his own experiences to his family, though he did not share many of the details.

"I spent 14 years in residential schools, so I had no bond with my mom and dad or my grandparents. I didn't get to know my brothers or sisters. I didn't know how to be a dad or a grandfather, or a husband. I had no source of reference. I needed to apologize to my family, and ask for their forgiveness."

Thus far, the TRC has collected testimony from more than 3,000 people. As difficult as it is for the commission to solicit the skeletons rotting in so many closets, this is the relatively easy part of its work. Reconciliation is the real challenge.

The commission refers to truth and reconciliation, as if one leads necessarily to another. If truth, then reconciliation? If only.

After recent hearings in Yellowknife, Littlechild told the audience of over 100, "Sometimes I think about how difficult it is to ask that you go from truth to reconciliation. Because really there are a bunch of intervening steps, including forgiveness."

Since the average residential school survivor is 66, the average nun or priest who taught them is dead. This is an obvious complication for the process of forgiveness, because "I forgive" comes far more readily after "I apologize." As it stands, the overwhelming majority of the participants and audience of the public hearings are survivors. At times, Littlechild worries that the TRC and the survivors "are just talking among ourselves."

As Helen Tologanak said during her testimony in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, "I don't know how many of my teachers and supervisors are still alive, but I don't see them here." Later, another survivor publicly forgave her former tormentors, but wished she could "say it to their face."

At its best, the TRC led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in the mid 1990s brought together repentant whites and aggrieved blacks. Victims and oppressors were contemporaries and acknowledged each other, face to face. Reconciling with past wrongs is more complicated.

To great fanfare, Harper delivered an apology about residential schools in the House of Commons in 2008 on behalf of the government of Canada. For many survivors, this was an important step in their healing.

Harper's speech was historic, yet it was lacking. Overtly racist government in Canada is dead, but in its heyday it acted with impunity. Canada's Aboriginal people have received an apology for the past, but are expected to forgive ghosts.

To the extent that churches are participating in some local TRC events, it is to lead prayers before and after hearings. Littlechild admits there has been little testimony by the perpetrators. "The invitation is always open," he added. "Some survivors want to hear a sorry. We haven't had enough."

Nevertheless, in transcendent moments of courage and grace, many survivors use their time in front of the TRC to express forgiveness to those who wronged them.

Reconciling with Canada is another thing altogether. As part of its mandate, the TRC is tasked with renewing and rebuilding "the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians."

Littlechild views the need for reconciliation in a broad way. "To me it means resuming respectful relations: within your family, within a community, and within Canada. As a country, we have to grapple together with the concept, to figure out what reconciliation means collectively."

Marie Wilson, another one of the TRC's commissioners, added, "Our audience is not survivors. It is all Canadians.

"The rest of Canada cannot think this is just about survivors telling their truth, having a measure of catharsis, and that's it. It's about healing Canada's amnesia, and thinking about the problems that continue to plague First Nations people," she said.

At the end of a long day of testimony in Yellowknife, after a spirited drum and dancing session, Littlechild lingered as staff folded up banners and tables around him. He paused next to the empty chair where survivors had sat in front of him telling their stories.

"Do you think you'll end up in that chair?" I asked.

"Yes, definitely. But not yet. I need to tell my family the whole story first."

To find out more about the TRC and which communities it will visit, go to www.trc.ca

Andrew Stobo Sniderman is a Sauvé Scholar at McGill University, and attended TRC hearings in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories April 12-15. His writings are collected at www.Stobo.ca