Reconciling: My Whiteness on Stolen Lands, Among Stolen Kids

I’ll be 51 this fall. After a conversation with a friend a few years ago, I realized every single First Nations person I knew growing up was raised by whites. Never even clocked that until my 40s.

My upbringing was different from a lot of white folks. My parents were pretty evolved for the ‘70s. Mom’s favourite book was Black Elk Speaks (which has since been somewhat discredited). There was always a tattered hardcover copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee on our shelves.

My teacher father ensured I knew who Nazis were, and what slavery was, by the time I was into grade school. One of our "children's picture books" that I loved at the age of 5 was Nazi Gold, for crying out loud, the true story of Norwegian kids who smuggled the nation's gold out from under occupying Nazis. Dad gave me a book on the Underground Railroad when I was 11.

So, yeah. History-loving hippies made for an interesting childhood. Doesn’t mean I 'got it,' but I certainly was aware the world was complex and dark at times.

Then, when I was 12, a Nootka* Chief named Nick spent the summer carving totems in our basement. At 21, I lived in the Yukon for a year and attended a Tlingit sweat lodge, a guest of Chief Phil. A few years later, I did the same on the Vancouver’s North Shore with the Burrard Nation.

I didn’t grow up ignorant… yet, I grew up ignorant.

Even now, often, I am ignorant. How could I not be? I was raised white among white neighbours, while attending white schools.

That’s colonialism, baby. The ignorance is bred into us by design.

Same Old Evils, Shiny New Names

We like to think we’ve turned the corner on that past, but people younger than me were in Residential Schools. They ended in 1996.

Those children, their ancestors — they all carry trauma from cruelty and crimes inflicted on them by white people tasked to care for them, white people paid by, and protected by, the federal government.

Of course First Nations People are angry. Of course they’re troubled by these traumas.

I still remember bullies who kicked my ass in school, and those who betrayed me along the way in my life. Don’t you? I still resent them. Don't you?

Now imagine you’re First Nations and the society you live in has done that to you all your life, and to your parents, and their parents, and it’s happening anew to a generation younger than you. How could you not feel rage?

We Canucks, the settlers on Canada, must recognize that Canada’s systems remain pitted against Indigenous Peoples. Until the Indian Act is repealed and a modern, inclusive way of managing our relationships with First Nations is built cooperatively with them at the table, we will continue damaging First Nations Peoples and traumatizing (if not outright killing) their youth.

There are other ways forward. People far smarter than me have proposed them time and again. Thanks to the Truth & Reconciliation Committee, we even have a roadmap.

Our lack of progress is a choice.

Even now, this very week, our governments are insisting tense times give them the right to further erode First Nations' stewardship of their own land in Bill C-2 and Bill C-5.

Mark Carney says consultation will be "at the heart" of this new Bill C-5, according to the Globe & Mail (gift link), but really? That's like an abusive lover saying "Just trust me, this time it's different, baby."

The Elders' skepticism is warranted.

Our lack of progress has always been a choice, and it's a choice we keep making. Why would we stop now?

When Genocide Keeps on Keeping On

Murray Sinclair of Canada’s Truth & Reconciliation Committee once described “systemic racism” as being what’s leftover after you get rid of all the racists. It’s policy, culture, laws — everything initially designed to sustain colonialism on stolen land.

So how can that same system become anti-colonialist in a post-colonialist society, if the foundations we've built it upon remain unchanged even now?

The Indian Act was devised in 1876. At that time, settlers were actively slaughtering Plains buffalo to kill the Indigenous way of life. Settlers were giving Indigenous People smallpox-infected blankets on purpose.

And we're still governing on laws written by racists with that mindset 150 years ago?

Is it any wonder we live in a state of genocide?

Got this from the United Nations' page on genocide:

If you don't know the Indigenous experience with healthcare in Canada, or social workers, or 'justice', then you might fail to grasp how thoroughly all five of those genocide criteria were achieved decades ago in Canada — or how they continue to be achieved even now, today.

Systemic racism plays out daily, in every province and territory in Canada. Full stop.

For instance, more than half the kids in foster care nationally are First Nations. Government stats prove it. A staggering 54% of kids in care in Canada in 2021 were Indigenous, and that doesn't address those scooped up by white families.

It's even worse here in British Columbia: 67.5% in a province where they're a mere 5.9% of the population.

Why so many in care? “Because alcohol”? "Because drug use"?

Get the hell outta here. If drugs and booze are the line then where are the white kids? I had white friends whose couches were loaded with their parents' drug stashes and no one came hauling them away.

My father loved me. He was also an alcoholic. If he were First Nations, I'd have been raised by white folks. But he was white, so he got a pass when caught drunk-driving with us in the car. I never saw a single social worker, I kept my parents, he kept his job. My mother never even found out!

Instead of being a cog in the adoption/foster system after my father drove under the influence, I grew up knowing parents are complex and flawed, yet capable of loving and protecting us. Sure, it’d take a 12-pack of therapy decades on, but I made it through and I’m okay.

But First Nations kids often grow up wondering if anyone ever loved them, even what their parents looked like, because their folks were denied at their birth the chance to go bump-in-the-night as they bungle their way through child-rearing like every other non-Indigenous parent does. That ain’t right.

We continue to remove these kids from their culture, from their traditions, from their languages, from their families. We’re tearing them away from people who love them, and far too frequently just after birth, before their parents even have the chance to make a mistake — or to succeed.

It’s wrong. It’s a crime every time stolen kids cross the stoop into a new home. It’s a crime that hurts them every day, for a lifetime, destroying their parents in the process — and it never, ever stops hurting. It transcends generations.

It lives like echoes among us all.

Who pays? We all do. We all pay when people rail against the system or get lost in the miasma of their tragedies. We all pay when people medicate away the residual trauma of generations of oppression. We all pay when children don't reach their potential because our government is doing everything possible to quash who they are.

We all pay, one way or another.

The Two Ways

Years back, when I thanked Tlingit Chief Phil for allowing me to participate in the sweat lodge, he did the old “oh, our pleasure” humble bit. Then he explained, simplified and in general, that Indigenous People looked at sharing their culture two ways.

Many believed — as were the prevailing winds of the times — they should keep all outsiders out, because whites had stolen their languages, lands, industries, and traditions for centuries. They wanted to be secret-keepers of their ancient cultures. What couldn’t be seen couldn’t be killed, like a thief in the night.

Chief Phil, though, liked the other school of thought — sharing their ways, in turn allowing others to see the beauty of their beliefs and traditions. We’d then see First Nations were not a threat, and not people of “savage” lifestyles, but noble people whose cultures deferred to their ancestors, Mother Earth, the great spirits, sustainability, and the seasons.

Bring others in and we would see the beauty, and in turn give our help in preserving those sacred practices.

It's really only been in the last four decades that this has been a conversation, too.

Indigenous Peoples practiced their traditions in secrecy. Here in BC, they could be arrested for any gathering above three people, at one point — less than a century ago.

Now we’re being invited in. What a privilege.

Maybe now we’ll learn the beauty of what we’ve misunderstood for so long. Maybe the next generation of kids can be raised by loving parents, in their cultures, with their languages, living their traditions.

But that’s a generation too late. We need to effect change now.

Reconciliation is a Long Way Off

We have much work to do. We can get there. We need to do it.

Write your MPs. Remind them of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's Calls to Action. Ask them why First Nations kids (and their parents) to this day receive nearly 25% less funding for their social safety nets, education, and other needs than other kids in Canada get. Tell them we need to end these kids' trauma now, because it'll play out for decades if we don't, with a compounding cost we'll all bear.

Tell them it’s time to give First Nations what they’re owed, that it’s time for legislative colonialism to end, and that means repealing the Indian Act — a racist, backward, outdated legislation that has no business in a modern country.

Find your MP’s contact information here. Reach out. It’s important. Change requires we all keep telling those in office that we've made a pledge we need to honour. We will need to keep on this for years.

Governments only do what they know constituents want.

So: Want reconciliation. Want change. Want human rights. Want clean water. Want kids who have loving parents and their cultural roots intact. Want treaty rights finalized. Want greater resources for solving cases of missing and murdered Indigenous People. Want reformed policing.

Want racism to end.

Want these things. All of them. Demand them.

Write and call your MP. Make your voice heard. That’s reconciliation too. That’s our job: Keeping our government accountable on Truth & Reconciliation, and achieving every recommendation in that document.

Every child does matter, every day.

They always mattered.

Wanna do more?

After you’ve reached out to your Members of Parliament and your provincial MLAs, consider getting involved with, or donating to, The Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS) here in British Columbia, or similar organizations in your province or territory.

The Caring Society advocates for First Nations kids and families, and provides resources as well, and you can learn more, or donate or get involved, here. Many cities have Friendship Societies that can do with donations and volunteers.

Learn more about the Truth & Reconciliation Committee's 94 Calls to Action here.

But the easiest and most relevant thing you can do is to speak up to your politicians to ensure they know the Calls to Action matter for you, too — then keep reminding them, month after month, year after year.

*Nick referred to himself as Nootka then. Now, the preferred name is Nuu-chah-nulth.