By Sandy Klowak
The Ottawa Citizen
June 16, 2010
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Ottawa+makes+gesture+healing+Truth+Reconciliation+event/3163263/story.html
| St. Mary's Indian Residential School boys' dormitory, 1950. |
In a gesture of reconciliation, the federal government announced Wednesday it will strike out sections of the Indian Act that allowed the government to set up residential schools and forcibly remove native children from their homes.
Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl made the announcement in Winnipeg as hundreds gathered to officially kick off four days of the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada national event.
The provisions of the Indian Act, sections 114 to 122, haven't been in use for years, since before the last school closed in 1996.
The government's overture was, in keeping with one of the overarching themes of the day, about helping people to forgive, but not to forget.
With drums, prayers and pipes, those who survived abuse in the residential schools and those affected in other ways gathered to share their stories and their pain.
Dignitaries, including the three Truth and Reconciliation commissioners, Strahl, Winnipeg-area MP Pat Martin and elders, passed a 250-year-old pipe, said several prayers and swayed to drum songs.
Earlier, a sacred fire was lit with a diverse crowd of more than 200 people gathering for the sunrise ceremony.
Nancy Morrison, 81, is part of the grandmothers-and-grandfathers group. She's long advocated making public the full truth on residential schools.
"This kind of happening is very essential because we learn from each other," Morrison said.
Morrison said she saw some "horrific" things in residential schools. Talking about it now is like breaking open an old wound.
"The thing is, I'm searching for a way to forget," she said quietly. "Which I know is going to be quite impossible to do."
There was a listening tent that was staffed Wednesday by representatives from the churches, where survivors could say what they never could at school. At a sharing circle, a Lutheran bishop and an Anglican priest sat quietly on the grass, listening to dignitaries call survivors to healing.
Edward Andy remembers being a little boy, growing up on the Big Grassy First Nation on the south shore of Lake of the Woods. He said he would "cry uncontrollably" for his big sister and big brother. "I wanted to be with them," the now-64-year-old recalls.
He didn't know that being with them would mean shipping off to St. Mary's Roman Catholic School in Kenora, Ont., where he spent three years before transferring to a Presbyterian residential school.
"It hangs like an umbrella over me," he says. "It's a lifetime journey for me, but they didn't know what they were imposing."
Edward hasn't forgotten the schools. But he knows that those of the clergy who stood on stage Wednesday and made their apologies to aboriginal people were, mostly, too young to really know.
"They weren't there when the schools were operating. They grew into it, and grew aware," he said.
"Let's do this negotiation together," he continued. "No one of us has control over how things are going to finish."
Jorge Hookimaw, of the Attawapiskap First Nation, walked to Winnipeg from Cochrane, Ont., for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event.
"We walked for people that couldn't make it here," he said. "I walked for my mom, my brother and my sister."
The four-day event is meant to focus on gathering statements from survivors and celebrating aboriginal culture.
Hookimaw's brief experience at a residential school was not as damaging as others', but it still affected his life, he said. "Dealing with it makes me a better person," he said. "Now I'm just here to acknowledge it for other people."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.