BishopAccountability.org
	Too Early to Write off the TRC But Odds Are against New Commission Probing Residential Schools By Lorne Gunter Edmonton Journal June 1, 2008 http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/opinion/story.html?id=9c5e80c7-651f-4aee-8d1a-8bbdbf4e7f13 Given past experience with federal commissions on aboriginal Canadians, I could reel off a hundred reasons why Ottawa's five-year, $60-million Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on abuse of aboriginals in residential schools will fail to find truth or reconcile anyone to anyone else. The odds are decidedly against the TRC serving as a catharsis for native Canadians that leads to a healing of their animosity towards whites, or as a bridge between native and non-native Canadians. If I had to bet, I'd put my chips on the commission making things worse by June 2013, when it is slated to wrap up. Rather than being a salve for jagged aboriginal views of non-native society, of history and of land claims, I am predicting the commission will serve as an amplifier for First Nations' discontent. Rather than stimulating understanding, I'd wager the commission will serve only to reinforce aboriginal victimhood -- the myth, too prevalent among First Peoples, that their plight is entirely of someone else's making, namely non- natives. It is a view that is, of course, not entirely wrong, but it is far from right, too. And the fact that the TRC is too narrowly focussed on residential schools means it is prone to repeating the all-eggs-in-one-basket mistake of the Mulroney-era Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. That commission, which cost nearly as much and took nearly as long, decided to lay the blame for all the ills that have befallen aboriginal Canadians at the feet of residential schools. Like slavery for African-Americans, residential schools have become the catch-all excuse for everything that has gone wrong with the community and the absolution for any self-inflicted problems. The conclusions of the Royal Commission of a decade ago can basically be summed as: Residential schools are the main reason aboriginal culture and communities are dysfunctional. Since residential schools were foisted on aboriginals by non-aboriginals, this means non-aboriginals are responsible for aboriginals' plight. Therefore, it is up to non-aboriginals to fix all the problems. Of course, non-aboriginals are partly to blame. Each generation's public policy solutions to aboriginal needs have tended to exacerbate problems rather than alleviate them. Residential schools are a prime example. They were propelled by the socially enlightened thinkers of their day. They were seen as progressive by the social engineers of their time. The liberal thinkers of the 1920s, when the schools got going in earnest, believed residential schools would make aboriginal children better characters and citizens. Assimilating aboriginals into the broader Canadian culture was the right (and kind) thing to do, in their minds. A frequent criticism of the schools is that they were engaged in cultural genocide, for which a strong case can be made. But the people running them on behalf of mainline churches and the federal government weren't engaged in a holocaust, at least not wittingly. They saw themselves and their policies as the pinnacle of compassion But as much as the unintended consequences of the schools have contributed to modern native problems, so has collective land ownership on reserves, lack of accountability in reserve government, corruption, welfare dependence, the cult of victimhood, and so on. Addictions, family breakup, unemployment, poor drinking water and housing, high dropout rates and other problems cannot be blamed entirely, or even mostly, on residential schools, particularly since it has been more than 50 years since the schools were at their zenith. If the TRC is going to look only at residential schools and hear only from those people who see them as a) all bad and b) the primary reason for aboriginal social and economic ills, then in the end the commission will not have been about truth nor will it facilitate much reconciliation or improvement in the lives of First Nations Canadians. It will have been just another politically correct whitewash. Still, while I could make a case for doubting the worth of the TRC from the outset, I keep coming back to one thought: give it a chance. The three commissioners will meet each another for the first time Monday in Ottawa. It will be a non-descript affair in a departmental office. It could be a year or more before they figure out how to proceed -- where to hold hearings, who to invite, what kinds of testimony to permit, etc. -- and thus more than a year before their work goes public. But, since it is import that someone eventually succeed in devising solutions to aboriginals' many problems, rather than dismissing the TRC out of hand, I am willing to hold out some hope these commissioners will finally find the formula. According to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, "since 1996, the aboriginal population has increased by 47 per cent compared to eight per cent for non-aboriginals." Half of on-reserve aboriginals lack a high school diploma, compared to 15 per cent of non-aboriginals. And by 2017, one-third of the population of Saskatchewan, one-quarter of Manitoba's and 15 per cent of B.C.'s will be aboriginal. The pressure to find a reconciliation will only increase. So it is too early to write off the TRC. Contact: lgunter@shaw.ca.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.