We're All Sorry

Today is a historic day. At some point today Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who I normally cannot stand, is making me and other Canadians proud for owning up to the abuses and victimization of the First Nations of Canada through our so-called “residential schools” of old.
A lot of who I am stems from my parents teaching me about the ills against Natives and blacks when I was a child. I was raised on books about things like the Underground Railway and atrocities at Wounded Knee. I was taught that our forebears could make mistakes, but that it was our responsibility to learn from them and to always be better.
Here in Canada, our residential school system destroyed entire generations of Natives, and spawned more than 160 years of social abuses against those least able to fight them: children.
I believe we are too new to the science of psychology to really understand the generational repercussions, the legacy of our systematic ill treatment of others, and we may never understand the true toll taken on Canadian Natives through our schools.
And I believe today’s monster apology, which is expected to be more far-reaching than Australia’s was last year, and has been building up anticipation in the media for days, is a first step toward an entire people healing just a little more.
I love Canadian First Nations’ beliefs and culture, and was lucky enough to have a Nootka Chief, Nick, once carve two totem poles in my basement over the course of a summer, when I was 7, and learned much through that sage old man. With the beauty I saw in their beliefs, I have never understood the venom with which Canadian and American authorities sought to eradicate Native ways.
Today I am more proud to be Canadian, and I too am sorry for the sins of my ancestors.

3 thoughts on “We're All Sorry

  1. Scribe Called Steff

    Ha! Yeah, they were small totem poles, though, like 4-5 feet high, and he made them for my aunt and uncle. He was a regular character on the White Rock beach back in the ’70s-’80s. He’d carve Indian masks sitting there on the beach and sell ’em to tourists. His stuff’s seen in secondhand shops around town even still. I have four masks myself. I inherited ’em all from that summer, though, when he was carving a totem pole by commission for my aunt/uncle, so he sat down there and carved for about a month, I guess. Wrote a story on the other blog. I think there’s a picture of my masks up there. Okay, I bought one when I saw it at an old movie props curios store next to Benny’s Bagels back in the ’90s for $35. Ha ha.

    But when I lived in the Yukon for a year at 21, the first social thing I did up there was to go to a native sweat ceremony (T’lingit tribe) and that’s when I really learned a lot about Native beliefs, from Chief Phil there. It was a fucking great experience.

    Phil told me how there are two opposing beliefs in Native Canada today. One is that, with so much of their culture raped and stolen during the Residential School years, they believe that they should protect their faith from other cultures and not allow outsiders to participate.

    Phil, however, believed in the other school of thought, that to protect their culture they needed to display it in all its strengths to other cultures, because he believed the traditions could stand their own against others in the world, and that others would come to love and respect all the Native cultures once they came to know it better.

    But life’s had some variety over the years, yes. ๐Ÿ™‚

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