You are welcome Kathy, right back at you.
Canada is going through a years long much needed reconciliation process, with a particular focus on the Indian Residential School Debacle, our Royal Commission into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (Three times as many missing and murdered Indigenous men, BTW.) As well, in many Provinces, there’s the long ignored perpetually interminable ‘lands claims’ issues.
Unfortunately, there’s been so much blame and shame levelled against the ‘white colonizers’, of course historical wrongs can create such levels of absolutism, that another malaise has taken root: empowering victimhood beyond non-accountability.
Of course, there are still so many wrongs being committed that pointing the boney finger of blame towards the majority’s social and legal governmental ‘laws’ and behaviours seems a small sin.
But, there’s a scant few people still alive today who had the power to both create, institutionalize or even halt such systemic degradation, let alone be aware that the travesties were occurring.
So, it would appear that the stain of some Canadians’ ancestors must reside in our collective soul: how ironically Biblical…the sins of the fathers visited upon the heads of their children.
And that is unfortunately counter productive if not counter intuitive to bringing about true reconciliation.
As both sides must heal, blaming all Canadians, and labelling all non-Indigenous people with a pejorative appellate, more than half of Canadians come from other cultures and most certainly are not ‘white’, will not bring about true reconciliation.
As trite perhaps and as cliched as this old adage is, two wrongs do not make a right.
Rather, it will instil in many non-indigenous people the mistaken notion that no amount of reparations, no amount of apology will ever atone let alone be accepted for the sins of the past.
Even worse, it allows some to hide behind the facade that ‘many Reserves can’t even deal with their own systemic issues of victimizing corruption, nepotism, racism, abuse, greed and misallocation of funds.’
This means that those Reserves which do not have their ‘houses’ in order must address the above issues with as much vigour and demands for transparency as they do from our governments.
I’ve written on Medium about this before, but a Lakota elder Dr. Martin Brokenleg changed my life with these words: “the movement from adolescence to adulthood must be marked by these signposts.”
“The ability to both give and receive a complement” and more germane to your work and our conversation, “the ability to both give and receive an apology.”
Until both sides fully embrace those words, we will still have an impasse, albeit a diminishing one because of people like you.
Lastly, and his words pertain to your writing, he also said,
“Work should be love made visible.”