Moving Forward…Sharing the Cultural Burden
Seems quiet out there . . . it’s been, what, 3 or 4 weeks since the last revelation of unmarked graves on the grounds of a residential school? Yet we all know there will be more, many more, and part of me feels like I am sitting in a room with an unexploded bomb and the bomb squad is AWOL. Going around in my head is the chorus from the old Neil Young song: “Helpless helpless, helpless . . .”
Decades ago, I attended a conference on violence against women in Ontario. There were quite a few Indigenous women there, and I have a memory of a presentation of an Indigenous model of community, with the children in the middle, then the mothers, then fathers, then grandmothers, then grandfathers. I remember tears flowing at the thought of these concentric circles of love. Then, on the last day, the whole conference disintegrated in Indigenous rage and frustration. I can’t remember the spark. I just remember - and this has stayed with me ever since - trotting after one of the women I had met, and as she strode over the ground, asking her, “Don’t we share anything?” Wanting desperately to find connection, a sense of oneness and solidarity, of community. She glared at me and said, “We all bleed.” She strode on, I lagged behind - slapped down too harshly, I thought.
I continued to think she was too harsh, for a long time. This in spite of living and working with Indigenous women in Fort Chipewyan and Fort Mackay and hearing their litany of ridiculous living conditions. Then, a few years before the Truth & Reconciliation Committee got underway, I remember seeing a movie featuring a black kid from the inner city and a privileged white guy from the suburbs. When the latter came to the ‘hood, he suddenly realized what the kid had been saying: We live in completely different worlds. That one scene got me thinking about what the Indigenous woman had said to me years before.
Over the past several years I have come to believe that we are in separate worlds, we settlers and Indigenous peoples. The worlds overlap, for some more than others. Indigenous people know a lot more about my settler world than I know of theirs. We will never be in the same world; we come from different cultures and we all want to hold our culture. Indeed, that culture - that residential schools tried very, very hard to expunge from all Indigenous children - that is the foundation for each one of us, where we come from, who we come from, our legacy. I know that my legacy is New England thrift and independence; French arrogance; French-Canadian adventure. I treasure all of it. Why would I want anyone to give up theirs?
What can I do? Any of us? Beyond feeling guilty for what “our” people did before us? I believe we settlers have a responsibility to educate ourselves, to understand. I am so grateful to our new Indigenous club member who has told us stories from her grandparents and parents and introduced some knowledge of culture. But it isn’t up to our Indigenous friends to bear the burden. So I recommend . . .
• any book by Richard Wagamese
• any book by Lee Maracle, especially My Conversations with Canadians
• https://indigenousawarenesscanada.com/ - the world leader in Indigenous Awareness Training
• https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/canada/takeatest.html - an opportunity to test your own unconscious biases
I am so grateful to the Indigenous leaders in the place I live who are focused on going forward together. What a generous sentiment. We cannot have reconciliation without understanding and acknowledgement.
I would love your comments on any discovery you have in delving into your own understanding.
Governor Suzanne