The Bulletin — June 3: There's No Flowchart for Truth and Healing on Indigenous Land
'We aren’t talking about building an IKEA cabinet. Repairing a relationship is much harder than that'
“If there’s a piece of advice I would give to a municipality looking to engage in this work,” says Ryan McMahon, comedian, writer and podcaster “it would be to be kind, to be gentle and be humble. Look around. I can almost guarantee you are on Indigenous territory.”
June is Indigenous History Month and it’s off to a grim start with the shocking news of 215 bodies of children found near the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
The news led the Legislature and city halls in Alberta to lower their flags in mourning, and many people put out children’s shoes or teddy bears in solidarity with Indigenous mourners. Now, many people are asking what concrete steps they can take to address reconciliation.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer to that question.
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded its work in 2015, it released a report with 94 calls to action. These calls to action were specific steps that all levels of government were asked to take. While the TRC was an important information-gathering tool, the aftermath has not produced the desired results of healing Indigenous people and healing Canada.
So what should people do? In 2017, McMahon made a documentary with CBC about a stretch of his hometown of Fort Frances, Ontario that is literally named Colonization Road. He spoke to Rage about the ongoing project of reconciliation, as someone who has been doing the work between settler and Indigenous communities.
“In 2021, we are in an interesting spot,” McMahon says. “We know a lot of what there is to know about our country … [and] because of this country’s history we should embrace this moment about how to make things equitable across the board.”
He adds that it isn’t just about more funding for Indigenous language programs, or taking down the statues of problematic historical figures.
“We are not going to get a do-over. So, once we start this work you’re committed to it. What was once acceptable: grand gestures of friendship, and pleasant words and the occasional renaming of a street or unveiling of a mural, is not going to be enough,” McMahon says.
“A survivor said to me, respectfully, at the Edmonton TRC event, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might be the worst name. She said, ‘I would have called it the Healing, Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”
And how do we start this healing?
There’s A Lot of Healing Left To Do
McMahon, talks about the ongoing experiment that is Canada and it’s reconciliation with Indigenous people: “It’s a sobering realization. We are locked into this deal and when you find out that maybe the person who made the deal with you wasn’t serious, or interpreted the deal differently, it is really a tough pill to swallow.”
McMahon says that’s why many Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth now say reconciliation is dead, and many have moved on to the #landback movement. Landback can mean many different things to people, but it is about learning Indigenous history in Canada as a first step.
Asking for concrete ways to heal the rift between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis people is a bit like asking for a three-step process to reconcile an abusive or unfaithful relationship. We aren’t talking about building an IKEA cabinet. Healing a rift in a relationship isn’t accomplished by a three-column document or flow chart.
Colonialism Does Not Spark Joy
Justice Murray Sinclair, the former chair of the TRC, made public statements about the testimony regarding abused and missing children from survivors of residential schools. On June 2, he told CBC’s The Current that the number of children who died at residential schools could be as high as 25,000.
Says Sinclair:
Since the revelation of what has happened at Kamloops has come to light, I have been inundated with calls from Survivors. Hundreds of calls, often just to cry. I can hear not only the pain and the anguish, but also the anger that no one believed the stories they had told. I can also hear their sense that they have lost some hope that maybe those children that hadn’t returned might still be found. They now know that may not happen.
Not that long ago, in 2009, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that there was no history of colonization in Canada.
Years later, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded that Canada had committed genocide against Indigenous people.
Genocide. Colonialism. These are words we talk a lot about when we talk about Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
Patrick Wolfe, in an academic journal, wrote Settler colonialism and the elimination of the Native, where he distinguishes between genocide and settler colonialism while also discussing its ties. He refers to settler colonialism as something that’s ongoing. It is a structure, not an event of the past.
The same week as the bodies of 215 children were uncovered in Kamloops, the Edmonton football team announced a rebrand of their long-standing team name, the Edmonton Eskimos to the Edmonton Elks.
Renaming things is a concrete action, and it’s one that people tend to gravitate to as we have seen with the recent petitions to change the names of the Edmonton neighbourhood, Grandin, which is named after a French-Canadian Bishop, Vital-Justin Grandin, from St. Albert, who in the 1800s lobbied the government to fund residential schools.
In McMahon’s documentary on Colonization Road, he explores how a community makes that decision.
“Fort Frances Ontario, where I come from, when we made the documentary on Colonization Road it was followed by years of debate and just a couple of weeks ago, the two sections of the road have been renamed. That was through a process with the municipal council and urban Indigenous populations, and the neighbouring First Nations. They all talked about the impact that this road had, historically and contemporaneously.
“If we get distracted about the name Colonization Road, and we are not looking at colonization itself, we’re in trouble … we can change the names of roads and universities, we can remove statues but we need to stop looking at all of the shiny things.
McMahon says that Indigenous groups pre-Canada prized many of the same things that settlers do, like beaches, beautiful sunset views.
“When you understand that and accept that, you have an opportunity to consider new partnerships, new ideas, new energy, new hope for municipalities. The work is more than not being mean to Native people in Tim Hortons,” says McMahon
Reconciliation is about equity and justice. It is a need to listen and to understand that when Indigenous people thrive, so does Canada.
TRC Actions for Municipalities for Candidates
Here are a few of the calls to action. You can read all 94 here. In Edmonton and Calgary, there have been major steps in some of these recommendations, such as training for public servants. Calgary released a report, White Goose Flying, which explores their work on reconciliation. Here are some links to projects that have already occurred in Canada.
Monuments for Residential School Survivors
Training for Public Servants on Indigenous history and practices
Funding Indigenous youth programs
Funding museums and archives on Indigenous history
Collect the data on missing children and burial Information
Top Photo: Indigenous drum, Canva