This week's Sunday Story is going to talk about something that is deeply important to us as professionals and as human beings: Truth and Reconciliation. September 30th is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federally mandated statutory day of recognition - I will not use the word holiday here, despite this being a “long weekend” - where government-affiliated organizations close operations and communities across the country have the opportunity to host events and activities that help all of Canada’s treaty and non-treaty peoples to come together and find a way forward.
I am a dual citizen - Irish Canadian - and am blessed to be able to carry passports that endeavour to represent values of freedom, peace, and democracy - but one of those passports represents a nation that does a better job of these things, and it’s not the one with the maple leaf especially when one looks at our historic and modern-day relationship with our indigenous people. I was educated in Canada, but learned little of the suffering of our indigenous brothers and sisters under the heel of colonialism from the education system here. In fact, I learned more about the experience of Canada’s indigenous people from my Irish grandmother than I did from the Canadian school system, and there’s a very good reason for that (However, I will say - this has improved dramatically, and kids today are getting a lot more knowledge than I did).
Many of you are probably familiar with the Irish Potato Famine of the 1800s; “famine” is a misnomer; “genocide” would be a more fitting word for what happened. 1847 was a particularly difficult year. Nearly 1 million of my ancestor’s kin were starving to death - not for lack of food, but because colonizing landlords took all the bounty of the Emerald Isle and sold it at market in Europe, forbidding the Irish from accessing anything but the humble potato. When a potato blight spread from Mexico, to the USA, to Ireland, the impact was devastating - in other areas where the blight hit, the shoulder crops were unaffected and could sustain life. In Ireland, those other crops were taken for sale, and many Irish starved. I have a relation who, in desperation, stole a chicken to feed his family; for his crime he was shipped off to Australia and separated from his wife and child. He went on to start a new life that many Australian Whitton’s trace back to, where his child continued the Irish side that ultimately resulted in me. This story is repeated thousands of times, and the impact on the country and its people was immense.
Foreign Aid was incredibly rare; according to one historical anecdote, the leader of the Ottoman Empire attempted to send relief ships, but before he could so so, the Queen of England made a rather pithy donation - which seems even more pithy when you realize it was the Crown’s policies that resulted in the problem to begin with that she refused to change - and that donation served as a “cap” for all other donations from the European powers. Instead of sending ships laden with food, the Ottomans were forced to match the Queens pithiness to avoid broader conflict in Europe, and as a result millions of Irish suffered and died. In fact, Ireland’s population didn’t recover from the genocide until most of us had iPhones in our pockets - 2012. It was a bad time, and it wasn’t bad luck - it was a direct result of colonization and a belief held by other European powers that the Irish were somehow “lessor” than they were and thus deserving of their terrible fate. If that sounds disgustingly familiar, it should - because that same attitude underpins the treatment of indigenous North Americans also.
At the time of the famine, thousands of miles away in America, the Choctaw people had a fresh memory of exactly the kind of cruelty and hunger the Irish were experiencing. Just 16 years before, President Andrew Jackson had forced the relocation of many Native Americans, and the Choctaw in particular were forced to walk thousands of miles along what became known as “the Trail of Tears”. That kind of suffering doesn’t translate from a newspaper article or a historical documentary - it is felt deeply by those who experience it, and leaves a mark on ones soul that is passed on from generation to generation.
And because of those deep feelings, the Choctaw people - not beholden to European politics like the Ottomans - knew that they must help. They didn’t have much - life was a struggle for them as well as they attempted to rebuild a semblance of life so far away from where they traditionally lived and after having lost so many loved ones. But what they had, they gave, and raised $170 dollars to ease the Irish suffering. Like the biblical story of the poor man who gave all he had, versus the rich man only gave a little of what he could, this gesture by the Choctaw people was felt across the nation and across generations - so much so that when my Grandma took me down the dirt road I used to live on to the pond at the end of the street where we could throw rocks at cans, one of the stories she told me was of this important bond between the Irish and the Indigenous Peoples of North America.
There’s an entire story here about how colonization came to be - from the first contacts by fishermen pre-Columbus, to other contacts with Japanese explorers on the West coast, and ultimately to the arrival of settlers en-mass at the start of the 17th century and onwards. We know the version we learned in schools, but never forget that history is written with a particular dominant-party lens, and like any story, there’s more than one side to it. That is why if you are able to, on this National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, please try to find a Blanket Exercise in your area to participate in (and if you cannot find one tomorrow, keep an eye out for one in the future - they are run quite often).
The Blanket Exercise takes you through the experience of colonization but from the perspective of the indigenous peoples who were impacted by it. It covers the whole story - the first arrival of colonists, the displacement and death of countless Indigenous people - both by accident and, horrifically and all to common, on purpose. It speaks to the King George Proclamation which required all colonists and settlers to make fair deals with any civilized peoples prior to settlement - and that those doing the settling decided to redefine what “civilized” meant so that it didn’t include indigenous peoples. It speaks to the horror of government agents in Red Serge - a “proud” symbol of Canada, if you lack this context and knowledge - taking children from indigenous families to have them forcibly sent to boarding schools where they would often be abused, stripped of their culture, and in some cases wouldn’t make it home again.
It’s a horrifying story to hear, but an important one. Because until we hear stories - and actually truly listen to them - then we won’t know the truth of what has historically happened. I don’t mean “learn the truth and judge it by modern values” - though of course, there is some of that that will happen. I just mean truly _learn it._ Understanding the true journey of Canada, from the early days of settlement along the St. Lawrence all the way to the current state of federation where indigenous people have consistently worse outcomes in terms of quality of life than the rest of Canada - with up to 30x the likelihood of suffering from TB, for example, or having tragically high rates of suicide.
This story is just barely scratching the surface of how Canada has treated indigenous people, both historically and in the modern day. And, this is a complex issue - there’s no magic solution. But there is a process, and that’s what Monday is all about. That process is the process of Truth and Reconciliation. Without truth, you can’t have reconciliation, and without listening to the stories of our indigenous brothers and sisters to truly understand their perspectives and experiences, we cannot have truth.
The challenge that I often run into when discussing this issue is people will be highly reactive; for some reason, some folks believe that justice for our indigenous brothers and sisters seems to only be achievable through unfairness or injustice to non-indigenous peoples; that is not at all the case. Often, this defensiveness is in response to a perceived sense of fault - that somehow, by saying we have a dark history that we need to come to terms with, we are blaming the non-indigenous for decisions and events that happened hundreds of years ago. These people rightly state: “I wasn’t even alive back then. How is this my fault?”.
My honest answer is that it’s not. As a relatively new Canadian, it’s not my fault that our Government to this day has serious issues in fairness and justice as it relates to our indigenous brothers and sisters. I didn’t make those decisions, nor have I voted for representatives who are in favour of perpetuating these decisions and their consequences. I can, with a clean conscious and mind, say “This is not my fault”.
But it is my responsibility. It’s _all of our responsibilities._ We didn’t make the decisions that created our current situation - but we have the responsibility to make new decisions to repair the harm that predecessors caused to make things right. If not us, who? And if not now, when? This distinction between “Fault” and “Responsibility” is significant and important in our conflict work - from roommate conflicts to international incidents, it’s a powerful concept that can help reduce reactivity and get people focused on resolutions. It’s taken us generations to create this situations, and it will likely take generations to get out of it - but as they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
The Irish example that I started this Sunday Story with is a good one to end it on, because it speaks to the power of a good relationship. Canada currently has a complicated relationship with itself, and in particular our indigenous brothers and sisters, but there is a path forward - our Truth and Reconciliation Commissions’s Calls to Action identify the roadmap on how to move forward. And if we are able to move these things forward together, our complicated relationship will hopefully become a good relationship, and that can be amazing. For example, the Irish have such a good relationship with Indigenous people in North America that when in 2020, the Iroquois Nation was denied a chance to compete at the 2022 World Lacrosse Championship, the Irish team responded. Tragically, the reason given for barring the Iroquois Nation was because these individuals were not seen as belonging to “a sovereign nation”, despite having passports, a cultural identity, land, and more. It is important to note that the Iroquois people were leading members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which was a political, cultural, territorial, and strategic alliance (not unlike a modern-day nation) that actually invented the sport of Lacrosse. There's a few layers as to why banning this group was not the right call.
But, when the Irish national Lacrosse team heard of this injustice, they did the only thing they felt they could: The Irish team gave up their spot so that the Iroquois could compete at the tournament, hosted in Alabama. "None of us would be going to Birmingham, Ala., in the first place if it wasn't for the Iroquois and giving us the gift of their medicine game," said Sonny Campbell, a player for Ireland Lacrosse when speaking to NPR’s Morning Edition. Beyond the gift of the game, this decision was also based on that special relationship from 1848, forged by the Choctaw giving so much when so many gave so little.
While I encourage us all to reflect on our past to understand the Truth on this year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, you can’t do that without acknowledging that this truth is dark. It’s a shameful mark on the history and present day of an otherwise pretty great place to live and exist. As you reflect on this, however, don’t lose hope, because in the dark there is light. That light is the story of a $170 dollar donation in 1847 that has resulted in monuments, collaboration, multiple generations of mutual respect, a “pay it forward” attitude 150 years later for a sports team, and a cultural moment so important that my Grandma felt the need to tell me about it while we threw rocks at those cans. So don't be afraid of the dark while you learn some truth, but also keep an eye on the light and bring it with you wherever you go on Monday. Share it brightly and respectfully. If the Irish can be honoured with a friendship like I've described here, just imagine the potential for all of us who call Turtle Island home.
Thank you for reading. Please do something that matters for Truth and Reconciliation tomorrow, and we'll see you next Sunday.
Comments