Note from
Thunderbird:
Even though the apology was
forthcoming, it was another fight on the part of
Indigenous people to be allowed to respond in
the House of Commons. Harper had denied this right, saying
only Opposition Leaders could respond.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and Native
representatives were allowed to have a voice.
On
the most important day in history for Native
people, our voices were once again nearly
denied.
A DAY, AND A DECADE,
LATER: WHAT HAS CHANGED FOR US
by Kevin D. Annett
I awoke this morning to the same familiar sounds of east Hastings
street, as birdsong was smothered by traffic's din - a day after a
government "apology", and a decade after a Tribunal that started
everything.
Faces have come and gone in one day, and in thirty six hundred, but the
same cold reality stared back at me today in the hard eyes of angry
desperation of the men and women, mostly aboriginal, who share these
streets, and who never rest.
Steven Harper said "I'm sorry" to these people yesterday, but he didn't
look sorry as he lectured the gala throngs on Parliament Hill about the
Indian residential schools. He didn't look outraged, either, as he spoke
about children being ripped forever from their homes and way of life.
Nor, for that matter, did any other politician who spoke to the
carefully arranged crowd of natives and whites.
But there was plenty of sorrow and outrage on our streets yesterday.
Somebody else had just died, a native man named Vince who had,
naturally, been jailed in residential school as a kid and suffered
horribly there, and every day of his life thereafter. The clusters of
people who camp around Main and Hastings were discussing Vince
yesterday, rather than shuffling off obediently to the official viewings
of Steven Harper's "apology" arranged by the government's flunky native
chiefs.
That's one less Indian problem for the fuckers" commented Bingo, a
homeless native guy who is always at the forefront of our protests
outside the Catholic church that killed Vince.
"All their nice words don't mean crap. Maybe to them they do but hey,
it's always been like that, right?"
Right.
As much as Steven Harper and his friends know nothing of Bingo and
Vince, they could not have spoken in Parliament yesterday and garnered
such undeserved praise without the two of them, and all the other
suffering throngs on every mean street across Canada that residential
school survivors call home. Yesterday's Parliamentary extravaganza, in
fact, was built entirely on the efforts and revelations of these
survivors that began ten years ago today, in a union hall in the east
end of Vancouver.
It was called the North West Tribunal into Canadian Residential Schools,
and it was sponsored by a United Nations affiliate called IHRAAM. Early
that spring of 1998, the late Harriett Nahanee and I invited IHRAAM to
come and listen to the stories of the residential school survivors who
we had been working with for two years, many of whom had - like Harriett
- witnessed killings and burials of fellow students at the schools.
From June 12 to 14, twelve IHRAAM judges and a UN observer heard stories
of murder, torture, involuntary sterilization and medical
experimentation in west coast residential schools, from eyewitnesses:
people like Belvy Breber, Dennis Charlie, Elmer Azak and Ed Martin.
Exactly one reporter showed up to the event - the Globe and Mail ran a
short piece about the Tribunal on June 20, 1998 - but the Tribunal was
an historic first: the only independent attempt ever to document
deliberate genocide by the government and churches of Canada.
This single event was responsible for all of the changes and gains that
have been won for survivors in the past decade, including yesterday's
acknowledgment by a head of state that children did indeed die in
church-run Indian residential schools in Canada. The Aboriginal Healing
Fund, the first court settlements, and the Liberal government's 1999
"apology" to survivors all occurred less than a year after our Tribunal.
And yet, like Bingo and Vince, the IHRAAM Tribunal is officially
ignored, and for the same reason: it does not fit into the government's
plan of containment and concealment that was so evident yesterday in the
House of Commons. That plan is quite simple: to reduce the fact of
genocide and mass murder to an accommodated issue of "abuse" that can be
"resolved" with certain words and payments - and, in the process, to
absolve the churches responsible for the crime from any responsibility
for it.
A simple plan, but a potentially explosive one because of two threats:
the spectre of lawsuits and scandal as more survivors came forward in
the wake of the IHRAAM Tribunal; and the appearance of first my book
Hidden from History: The
Canadian Holocaust, spawned by the Tribunal, and then, last year,
my documentary film UNREPENTANT, whose release prompted the raising of
the issue of disappeared residential school children in Parliament in
April, 2007.
Inspector Peter Montague of the RCMP is even more complimentary towards
me. The chief smear artist of the covert operations branch of the RCMP
in B.C., Montague engineered the public relations disaster known as the
Gustafson Lake standoff, when unarmed Shuswap natives were assaulted by
military vehicles and 77,000 rounds of fire from RCMP officers. Oddly,
Montague was then assigned to the residential schools issue in 1996,
after the first lawsuits began against his employer and the United
Church of Canada.
Montague sent a number of undercover agents into our IHRAAM Tribunal,
two of whom are still busy smearing me all over the world. But to one of
these agents, who subsequently spilled the beans, Montague said,
"Kevin Annett is the one to worry
about ... Discredit him and you discredit the issue." (spring,
1999)
It's strangely reassuring to see how so very little has changed in the
past decade, which figures, considering how much the churches and
government have to lose if they ever had to actually face the music over
all those kids they killed in their residential schools. Still today,
the official organs of church, state and mass media in Canada seem
haunted and obsessed by me, as if I am the issue; as if I personify the
massively guilty conscience of "white" Canada.
That guilt struggled to be assuaged yesterday in Parliament, and in the
media orgasm that tries to convince us that the "issue" of residential
schools is finally resolved. But it cannot be alleviated, any more than
can the pain of Bingo, or Vince. We are, all of us, quite missing the
point: namely, that one cannot "apologize" for or resolve that which we
do not understand.
To comprehend the horror and fact of the residential schools requires
that we look first and last at ourselves, as we truly are: as part of a
Thing that has spawned not only genocide, but planetary ecocide.
Holding up such a mirror to that truth and to my own culture has been my
sole waking purpose for the past thirteen years. And, thankfully, I have
witnessed over those years an amazing thing: the official wall of denial
has begun to crumble, despite all the King's horses and all the King's
men.
Last year, it would have been inconceivable for the Canadian media and
government to be speaking almost casually about unmarked graves and dead
residential school children. Yet now, even the National Post proclaims
in its headlines, "Are Reconciliation
and Truth Compatible?" (a slogan I've used for years now); and
it's suddenly become fashionable for the press to play voyeuristically
with tales of buried native children, while holding no-one in particular
accountable.
More
is being admitted, all the time, as the Thing's mask slips. So don't
believe the Big Lie emanating from Ottawa yesterday. It's all smoke and
mirrors, designed to hide the crumbling tower of colonial Canada.
Believe, instead, that Vince's time of vindication is coming; and along
with it is approaching a great and terrible judgment on those masters of
Church and State who like to imagine they have gotten away with their
crime.
Ten years has taught me to stand aside from their world, as it topples.
June 12, 2008
......................................................................................................
Kevin D. Annett is a community minister, film maker and author who lives
and works in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, on occupied Squamish
Nation territory. His website is:
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
NATIONAL CHIEF, PHIL FONTAINE, ASSEMBLY OF FIRST
NATIONS (One of the eleven seated in a circle in the
House of Commons.
"The government's apology marks a new spirit of
reconciliation between the First Nations and all
Canadians. We still have to struggle. But now we are in
this together."
Prime Minister, Chief Justice, members of the House,
elders, survivors, Canadians, for our parents, our
grandparents, great grandparents, indeed for all of the
generations which have preceded us, this day testifies
to nothing less than the achievement of the impossible.
This morning our elders held a condolence ceremony for
those who never heard an apology, never received
compensation, yet courageously fought assimilation so
that we could witness this day. Together we remember and
honour them for it was they who suffered the most as
they witnessed generation after generation of their
children taken from their families' love and guidance.
For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness
today in this House that our survival as First Nations
peoples in this land is affirmed forever. Therefore, the
significance of this day is not just about what has been
but, equally important, what is to come.
Never again
will this House consider us the Indian problem just for
being who we are.
We heard the Government of Canada take full
responsibility for this dreadful chapter in our shared
history. We heard the prime minister declare that this
will never happen again. Finally, we heard Canada say it
is sorry. Brave survivors, through the telling of their
painful stories, have stripped white supremacy of its
authority and legitimacy.
The irresistibility of speaking truth to power is real.
Today is not the result of a political game. Instead, it
is something that shows the righteousness and importance
of our struggle. We know we have many difficult issues
to handle. There are many fights still to be fought.
What happened today signifies a new dawn in the
relationship between us and the rest of Canada. We are
and always have been an indispensable part of the
Canadian identity. Our peoples, our history and our
present being are the essence of Canada. The attempts to
erase our identities hurt us deeply but it also hurt all
Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation.
We must not falter in our duty now. Emboldened by this
spectacle of history, it is possible to end our racial
nightmare together. The memories of residential schools
sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls.
This day will help us to put that pain behind us.
But it signifies something even more important: a
respectful and, therefore, liberating relationship
between us and the rest of Canada. Together we can
achieve the greatness our country deserves. The apology
today is founded upon, more than anything else, the
recognition that we all own our own lives and destinies,
the only true foundation for a society where peoples can
flourish.
We must now capture a new spirit and vision to meet the
challenges of the future. As a great statesman once
said, we are all part of one "garment of destiny". The
differences between us are not blood or colour and "the
ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate
us".
The "common road of hope" will bring us to
reconciliation more than any words, laws or legal claims
ever could. We still have to struggle, but now we are in
this together. I reach out to all Canadians today in
this spirit of reconciliation. Meegwetch.
When Inuit
Tapiriit leader
Mary Simon (one of the
eleven) spoke, she turned to face the
Prime Minister directly.
"I wanted to
demonstrate to you that our language and
culture is still strong," she said in
Inuktitut, thanking Mr. Harper for
having the courage to apologize. "There
have been times in this long journey
when I despaired that this would never
happen. But after listening to the Prime
Minister and the leaders of the
political parties, I'm filled with hope
and compassion for my fellow aboriginal
Canadians."
GLOBE
AND MAIL - June 12, 2008
'I accept the Prime
Minister's apology' -
STEPHEN KAKFWI, Former Premier
of the North West Territories and Residential School
Survivor
"A
century and a half ago, an imported government declared
itself “Canada” – a strong aboriginal word. Almost
immediately, it began the torturous process of
destroying all other aspects of aboriginal culture and
identity it did not value. The policy of assimilation
through Indian residential schools is the most
destructive example.
Finally, Canada admits this shameful
history. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said sorry for
the devastation caused to aboriginal children and
families. He also asked for forgiveness. That message
was no small mouthful. It took personal courage and
political will to utter it. I know, because in 2002, as
premier of the Northwest Territories, I offered my own
apology to our residential school survivors.
I did it despite resistance from the
bureaucracy and my own ministers and colleagues. It was
difficult and humiliating to face the survivors and
their parents and children. I know what Stephen Harper
and the other national party leaders must have been
feeling on Wednesday. As a residential school survivor
myself, I also understand the importance of the apology
offered, and the strength and courage it will take
survivors to consider and accept it.
At 9, I was sent to residential
school. A nun shaved my head and stripped me bare in
front of all the other boys, followed by months of
repeated beatings, whippings, sexual abuse and solitary
confinement in a dark, locked closet. Why? Because I was
bad and deserved it. That's what they said.
But
this is not just about me. It is about my father,
brothers and sisters … and my 87-year-old mother. We
always wondered why she never told stories of her
family. Recently, she finally told us she was taken away
at 6 and never returned home until she was 14.
She
left with baby teeth, and returned a young woman. Her
family all died within five years. She has no childhood
or family memory, no stories to tell.
So many
aboriginal brothers and sisters across the country have
their own versions of this same sickening story.
Twenty-five per cent of us did not survive residential
schools. What a crippling loss to our peoples. Even in
times of active warfare, Canada has never faced such a
high death toll. Generations have been ruptured from
each other. Lives have been shattered. Spirits have been
broken. Our communities are haunted by so many of the
living dead. I was lucky. I survived. Many survivors
learned to fight, we had to. Over the past 30 years,
every single gain for aboriginal peoples has been
hard-fought.
In
school, we learned nothing about our histories and
ourselves. We were told we had no rights. We were the
last Canadians to get the vote, in 1960. Before then, to
vote we had to give up our treaty rights. In the 1970s,
it took a Supreme Court judge to say we had aboriginal
rights for governments to listen! In the 1980s, during
constitutional talks, governments begrudgingly referred
to aboriginal rights as an “empty box” that could be
filled with specific rights only if they agreed. Over
and over in our history, the recognition, negotiation
and implementation of our rights has consistently been
met only with great reluctance.
Is this
the dramatic turning point we have all been fighting and
praying for? The Prime Minister has said sorry to the
First Peoples of this country. I don't know exactly what
motivated him. I imagine that political and legal
factors were carefully weighed. Or is it because he
understands what it is to be a father? Surely all
parents can imagine the horror of having your children
forcibly stolen as little more than babies, to return as
young adults – strangers, who no longer speak your
language. You completely missed their childhood … they
did, too.
Whatever the PM's
reasons, I hope the Canada he represents will now work
with us to restore strong, healthy and vibrant families,
communities and nations, not begrudgingly, but because
it is the right thing to do. You offer an apology, which
I accept. But that restoration work will deliver the
forgiveness, which you also seek. This apology marks us
all. It is the end of national denial, the beginning of
truth. It opens us to the promise of new relationships.
Making amends takes longer; it requires sustained
commitment over time to heal wounds and return spirit
and dignity to survivors and their families.
Reconciliation, with action, can take us there.
Together, we can work to make this the best place in the
world for all who call Canada home.
I am proud of this
moment in Canada's history. I accept the Prime
Minister's apology. It is what my father and grandfather
would have done. We are about to write a new chapter of
Canada's history. Twenty-five years from now, may
children across the land be proud of it, and proud also
of all their grandparents, who today began a journey
together to make things right.
Edmonton Sun, Greg Weston
"A chilling wind
stirred the magnificent autumn forests where the
two rivers meet as the Dene Elders with faces
etched deep gathered to witness the second
coming of the Father of Fathers. It was
September 1987, and Pope John Paul 11 was
revisiting far northern community of Fort
Simpson, a previous appearance three years
before thwarted by fog. The Native Elders were
among the more than 5,0-00 aboriginals who had
traveled for days, some for weeks, mostly in
rusting pickups, but many by canoe, all to catch
a glimpse of the Pope. The more I talk to them
the more I wondered why they had bothere. Almost
everyone I interviewed had horror stories of
Indian residential schools run by Roman Catholic
missionaries and other churches. Through tears
they talked of literally being torn away from
their families as young children, isolated far
away in church-run boarding schools, and
subjected to years of emotions, physical and
sexual abuse. "I was only six years old when the
priests loaded me on a barge and sent me to
mission school at Fort Providence," one of them
told me. "I didn't see my parents for four
years."
A mother told me,
"it was every parent's nightmare. My children
were taken away as little ones. I couldn't hold
them until they were teenagers." Even when
children were reunited with their families, they
were divided by language and culture, the
schools having forbidden all things Indian. All,
over 160,000 helpless aboriginal children were
forcibly removed from their homes put into this
grotesque attempt at cultural engineering
through assimilation -- "to kill the Indian
in the child," as the saying went. In fact,
it is believed thousands of the children
actually died before they could see their moms
and dads again.
If the elders who gathered in
Fort Simpson that
autumn day were hoping for a papal apology, they
didn't get one. In fact, the pontiff praised the
Catholic missionaries who "taught you to love
and appreciate the spiritual and cultural
treasures of your way of life." Right. For over
a century, the federal government was no better
until victims of residential school abuse began
turning to the courts in the 1990s, courageously
sharing their horrific stories with all
Canadians. In 1998, Jane Stewart, the then
Liberal government's Indian affairs minister,
expressed "profound regret" over the past
actions of the federal government. But it was a
$2-billion legal settlement with residential
school victims in 2005 that finally opened the
way for what became yesterday's emotional
national day of mea culpa. With clarity, class
and a rare depth of emotion that brought him
close to tears, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper offered a full and profound apology for
every aspect of the fiasco. In many ways, Harper
was admitting the obvious: Who today would doubt
that "it was wrong to forcibly remove children
from their homes"? Or that "far too often, these
institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and
were inadequately controlled"? But judging by
the tears on the faces of those receiving the
apology, the PM's words were exactly what they
had waited a lifetime to hear. The apology
doesn't suddenly cure the problems plaguing our
aboriginal communities."
CANADIAN PRESS -
SUE BAILEY
"For three decades,
Willie Blackwater suppressed the pain. At age
39, he released his torment when a compassionate
RCMP officer named Al Franczak asked if he'd
ever been sexually abused. What poured out was a
horrific account of repeated rape and beatings
30 years earlier at the Port Alberni residential
school on Vancouver Island.
Blackwater's
courageous revelations, along with those of 17
other former students, helped seal some of the
very first related criminal convictions against
Arthur Henry Plint, a sadistic dormitory
supervisor.
They also
bolstered the class-action claims that would
ultimately lead to a massive compensation
settlement and a historic apology to be offered
Wednesday in Parliament. Blackwater will be in
the House of Commons when the prime minister
finally stands to atone on behalf of all
Canadians for what so many terrorized, isolated
children endured. Ottawa conceded 10 years ago
that physical and sexual abuse in the defunct
network of federally financed, church-run
schools was rampant. But no prime minister has
ever officially apologized.
"I have a lot of
mixed emotions," Blackwater said. "I'm looking
forward to it, yet fearing it due to maybe wrong
wording or whatever. But I think it will be one
of the humongous chapters in my life that will
help bring completion to a lot of...my trauma -
and the trauma I've inflicted on others - from
the residential school legacy. It's got to come
from his heart," Blackwater, now 53, said of
Stephen Harper's statement to be delivered as 10
native guests encircle him in the Commons.
"That's where we as aboriginals talk from, it's
from our heart. We will hear the difference."
His ailing
grandmother, who cared for him when his own
mother died while he was a toddler, was
pressured by government officials to enrol him
and his brothers in the school. Blackwater was
swiftly singled out by Plint. He recalled how
the potbellied, chain-smoking dorm supervisor
awoke him in the night, saying he had an
emergency phone call from his father. Blackwater
would testify years later about how Plint led
him into a bedroom behind his office. Plint
forced him to perform oral sex and, days later,
raped him, inflicting "the worst pain I ever
felt in my life."
Those attacks
would go on at least monthly for the next three
years. When Blackwater sought help, he was
beaten by Plint so badly it kept him quiet for
the next 30 years. Franczak, who retired from
the RCMP two years ago, first interviewed
Blackwater as part of a task force researching
the earliest reports of abuse at Port Alberni.
"To this day I keep thinking how could we, as a
society ... allow this to happen? I don't get
it."
Daily
parliamentary business has been called off for
the apology beginning just after 3 p.m. ET, to
be followed by opposition response but no
statements from native leaders.
Liberal MP Tina
Keeper, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation
in Manitoba, led off Tuesday's question period
pleading with the Conservatives to reverse their
contentious refusal to allow such reaction in
the Commons.
"For many
aboriginal people, the apology tomorrow will be
one of the most emotional moments of their
lives," she said in a rare turn for a backbench
MP as lead questioner. "But they must not be
voiceless."
Harper inspired
catcalls from the opposition benches, citing
parliamentary tradition for his refusal to allow
immediate aboriginal comment for the official
record. He further advised rival parties not to
"play politics" with the somber event. Indian
Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl urged Keeper to
treat the apology with the "gravitas it
deserves." Assembly of First Nations National
Chief, Phil Fontaine, who has spoken publicly of
his own sexual abuse in residential school, was
still hoping Tuesday that Harper would change
his mind. Nonetheless, he put a bright face on
what has been a tense several days of
negotiations with a government accused of not treating
the apology with the respect required."
Julie Marion
was outside the
Centre Block to hear the apology.
Her mother and aunts all attended
residential schools. Ms. Marion,
garbed in a traditional buckskin
dress, said there was no one willing
to teach her the ways of her Mi'kmaq
culture and she was warned as a
child not to tell people she was
Indian. She was forced to learn the
traditions herself as an adult. "It
has been a very long time that the
elders have been waiting for this,"
she said quietly. "I am surprised
that they are actually telling the
truth about some of the things that
have happened."
EXCERPT FROM THE
LOS ANGELES TIMES:
Geraldine Maness-Robertson,
72, a Chippewa from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, said
her six years at an Anglican school were a "horrific
experience," and her hands were often whipped with a
razor strap to break her spirit. "When I left, I was
so full of rage and anger and hatred," she said.
"Today's apology was so helpful, it hit all the
areas of hurt. I have spent my whole life
reconciling, and I turned a page today."
Canada got it right, said Sammy Toineeta, a founder
of the Boarding School Healing Project, a national
coalition seeking justice for similar abuses and
loss of culture in Native American boarding schools
in the United States.
"An apology does not carry much weight unless there
is something behind it. In Canada, they got a
certain amount of land and money, and then the
apology," said Toineeta, a Lakota who attended a
boarding school in Rosebud, S.D. "That's the way to
do it. Action first and then words."
|
"Indians
sometimes think that if government authorities became convinced they
could solve the Indian problem by purchasing gallons of white paint and
painting all of us white, they would not hesitate to try. In fact, the
government’s education policy almost seems aimed in that direction.
Indians recognize that education is one of the major tools that will
help us strike off the shackles of poverty and, incidentally, the
tyranny of government direction. But the white man apparently believes
that education is a tool for the implementation of his design of
assimilation." ![[Figure 1261 - 33k]](mp1261.jpg)
