How will you commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation?
“Orange Shirt Day” brings the commemoration of the tragedy of Indian Residential Schools in Canada forward every September 30th. Phyllis Webstad’s story recounts how her treasured orange shirt was taken from her on her very first day of residential school – illustrating a child’s memory of the longest-running human rights abuse in Canada’s history – Indian Residential Schools.
There will be many options for commemorating how this system was imposed on Indigenous children, sanctioned by government and enforced by Christian churches. A National Event on Parliament Hill, commemorative walks, ceremonies, prayers and school assemblies will all thankfully be prominent this year.
A huge debt of gratitude for retelling the stories from the point of view of the children taken, and in the words of the parents left behind, is owed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Although the TRC issued its Final Report in 2015, many of its 94 Calls to Action remain unfulfilled, yet relevant, today. I was often moved to tears while reading a moving and perceptive new book by Commissioner Marie Wilson, recounting her years of experience in this painful yet prophetic work.
Marie Wilson is a journalist, a long-time resident of the NWT, and married to a prominent Dene leader who was sent as a child to Grolier Hall in Inuvik, a school described as “a pit of child sexual abuse.” (As a personal aside, I first met this man, Stephen Kakfwi, in the mid-1970s in Saskatchewan where our Interchurch Committee on Energy hosted him on a speaking tour. He later became Premier of the NWT.)
Wilson’s account may resonate with a majority of Canadians: she was the only non-Indigenous TRC Commissioner who often questioned her own involvement and place in such grueling hearings and encounters with school Survivors. (Of course, the TRC Chair, Murray Sinclair, is a well-known Anishinaabe judge, Companion of the Order of Canada and later, a Senator; while Wilton Littlechild, the other Commissioner, was himself a residential school survivor, a Cree chief and Member of Parliament. Oblates will remember Willie’s words spoken at the 2024 Convocation in St. Albert, AB.)
Marie Wilson’s book is a reminder of key moments in recent residential school history: the 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, Prime Minister Harper’s June 11, 2008, apology in the House of Commons, as well as key moments in the 2009 – 2015 TRC journey, including many local hearings and the seven National Gatherings held across Canada where more than seven thousand Survivor testimonies were heard. It is not possible to read of these without shame and remorse.
More than this, however, Wilson writes from the standpoint of a deeply Christian woman, whose very faith was challenged as she came to understand that “even God was a victim.” As a church person testified, “We lost our identity the moment we tried to wipe out yours.” A Survivor recounted, “Those people taught me to be a Catholic…they talked about a kind-hearted Jesus, but before the day was over, I’d get a licking or more abuse…” Wilson recounts that “I began to see our TRC Gatherings as a kind of confessional for many…”
It is hard to read the account of how the first National Gathering in Halifax almost broke down in “an eruption of boos” when the Catholic Archbishop stated, “I’m hearing about this for the first time.” (Remember: the Oblate apology for IRS was issued a full two decades earlier, in 1991.) Other church leaders and many parishioners were equally adamant that they had no idea of the horrors of the IRS system – even after the May 27, 2021, revelations of 215 anomalies suggestive of unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops IRS. (Remember: in 2015, the TRC published an entire volume of their Final Report on missing children and unmarked burials.) To be clear: the TRC confirmed 3,200 child deaths at IRS, with ½ of these recording no cause of death, 25% reporting no gender identification and 1/3 lacking full names. At least 1,000 more children died within a year of leaving.
We all have a lot to learn, but there is no place for willful ignorance or denial.
For me, the commemoration of September 30th is beyond a 24-hour job. To make reconciliation real, Catholics must be committed to the on-going transformations of the very structures of our church. And as Marie Wilson states, “Reconciliation is an ongoing, everyday process, a long-term commitment to a new way of living together in a shared country.”
This sounds to me like a clarion call to shared ministry for justice and peace.
To end on a personal note, I remember how Le Centre Oblat and ecumenical partners organized an on-line webinar on May 4, 2021. We invited the three TRC Commissioners to address how Canadians could support passage of Bill C-15, the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples Act. Over 1,000 persons participated, anxious to hear insights on how this Call to Action might be implemented. Near the end of the event, someone asked Marie Wilson how she could continue to hope for change. Her answer was profound…
Marie Wilson responded, “We Christians all know why we do this work – because it changes us!”
Marie Wilson, North of Nowhere: Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, Anansi Press, 2024.
By Joe Gunn
