The story has changed; healing can begin

Published Monday June 16th, 2008

"I will tell you something about stories. . . They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death."

These are words from the book Ceremony by Aboriginal writer Leslie Marmon Silko.

In the wake of Stephen Harper's apology for perhaps one of the darkest legacies of our imperialistic culture, the Indian residential school system, these words have certain poignancy.

Now I have heard cynicism abound since our current and even antecedent government spoke the words which very clearly laid guilt upon their shoulders. There are those who believe them to be hollow, those who believe that there is no possible way to move from "words" to "action" in any meaningful way, and of course, those who wonder what this has to do with them.

This is what it has to do with each and every one of us.

In the words of Chief Phil Fontaine, two "sins" were actually named on the floor of Parliament, "white supremacy" and "colonialism"; and whether we like it or not, we are complicit in these sins, we are the bearers of all of the animosity, all of the racial hatred, all of the stereotypical archetypes which separate our two nations. When I was young we played Cowboy and Indian -- when I was older we made jokes. We would say or do anything to make us feel righteously superior.

Now, I happen to have had the honour to be in a room with Ched Myers following the apology. Ched is an American who among other things does "truth and reconciliation" work. He was involved in the reconciliation work between white supremacists' and blacks after the Greensborough Massacre of 1979.

As an American who was deeply moved by what he saw our government do, he made this observation: the only time that he could imagine his government acting unanimously, moving beyond partisan differences, would be in the decision to bomb a country. He could not possibly imagine a time when native leaders would be allowed on the floor of Congress, much less be able to talk about white supremacy and colonialism.

The largest civil uprising in the history of North America was the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. In the midst of the chaos that ensued there was a slogan, and that slogan was "No Justice -- No Peace."

I would like to suggest that we have already taken the tentative steps towards addressing the issue of justice.

First of all we have the Residential Schools Settlement which is the largest legal redress suit ever in history.

Now we have a formal apology and a truth and reconciliation process very similar to what they had in South Africa.

This is ironic as it is widely held that before setting up the Apartheid system in South Africa their government came to Canada and studied our Indian reservation system.

And while we are talking about South Africa, there was another friend of mine in the room after the apology, Russ Daye, who went to South Africa in the midst of their process and interviewed people about it.

He tells the story of the day when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president. He was standing on the dais when five fighter jets soared overhead. As Russ tells it, he looked around to see many of the people cringe and cry out -- a coup -- the military was taking over.

And then the jets let out coloured smoke in a rainbow streaming above Mandela's head. It was at that moment, some would later recall, that they knew everything was going to be all right.

Phil Fontaine has said about the apology, and I paraphrase; now we know that we will never disappear -- now we know that everything is going to be all right.

And don't underestimate the power of words; the power of Harper's statement as the person who speaks for each and every one of us. When people do work with victims of sexual abuse, there comes a time when no more healing is possible until someone simply acknowledges the reality of the situation: "You were abused."

Harper said clearly, you were taken, you were neglected, and you were abused. There is power in those words -- there is healing in those words; there is freedom in those words. In telling the story truthfully, in admitting that it happens, we are giving everyone the power to engage the story, to take it seriously, and to feel the pain.

I opened with a quote from Silko, and the reason for that is simply that I believe words to be important -- very important. Shakespeare once commented that the pen is mightier than the sword, and for good reason -- we live life, we understand life, by telling stories, by sharing stories -- the narratives that warp and weave their way through our understandings give us the strength to take those next tentative steps.

Now the story has changed. Now we are equals. It might not alter the fabric of our lives immediately, but it is a start. This new story will soak its way into our subconscious and we will be guided by it.

Now, we need to be faithful to our own truth telling.