What does reconciliation mean to you?

"What does reconciliation mean to you?"

Chief Ovide Mercredi, of the Misipawistick Cree Nation, was addressing the Conference on Reconciliation Processes, held last June at Queen's University by its School of Policy Studies and the First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI).

"We've been together for over 500 years and we are just now beginning to talk about reconciliation. When do we stop talking about it and start doing it?" he asked.

Chief Mercredi was challenging his audience to think about the relationship between the First Peoples of Turtle Island, and the rest of us, from the time of first contact when explorers found these shores and entered into trade with sovereign nations who had survived in this territory for thousands of years, who formed alliances and lived side by side in reasonable harmony, through the creation of the colonial governments of Upper and Lower Canada, to the eventual establishment of a country called Canada.

As we became more numerous, we took over more land, forcing the First Peoples to live in territories called reserves, and with their lives managed by legislation called the Indian Act.

The Canadian government treated them as wards of the Crown, and took their children into residential schools where they were subjected to the ultimate in assimilation: removed as young children from their families, forbidden to speak their language or tell their stories, and subject to hunger, physical and sexual abuse, farm labour and household chores, poor food, inadequate clothing and exposure to communicable diseases.

In the mid-1990's, the government set up a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) which produced over 400 recommendations, most of which still have to be considered, and implemented.

In this new century, there has been an Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRRSSA) signed among the church entities who ran the schools, the federal government who funded them, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), and representatives of residential school survivors across the country. A part of that settlement was the creation of a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, which was to begin work this year but ran into problems and fell apart. It now awaits reorganization, with the hope that the work can be resumed soon - before more and more survivors depart this earth without having had the chance to share their stories. And those stories may come also from the people who worked in the schools, and from survivors who remember good times which helped them to live responsibly as adults.

All of this has happened throughout the past 500 years. Reconciliation was possible at any point along the way, but it is only now that we are hearing that word, and in fact, we have been legislated into achieving that.

Some have mentioned the possibility of simply forgetting about all that has gone before, and just beginning to live in the present moment. That may work for some people in their personal lives, but it may not be possible in our corporate life in Canada.

Rather, I think we are being called to go back and do it over. In one of the videos on residential schools produced by Anglican Video, the late Rev. Ernest Willie tells us:

"If I was talking to Jesus today, I would have to say: "Sir, you have to come back and do it over. They didn't get it.'"

And I think that applies to us. We have to do it over - go back to the beginning and try to build right relationships from the time of first contact.

What would have happened if explorers, and then settlers, had come to the shores of Turtle Island, and had begun by listening to the people they found here?

If, instead of presuming that the only message to be listened to was the one they brought, they had realized that the people they met would also have a message to share?

If, as we began to sign treaties, we had listened to the terms of the treaties as the First Peoples understood them?

If, when we realized that Indigenous children needed education, and in fact Chief Shingwauk and other leaders had asked the government to help them educate their children, we had listened to understand exactly what kind of education they wanted their children to have?

If, after all the time, energy and money that went into producing the RCAP report, we had begun to act on its recommendations?

Would we now be in a place of at least working towards reconciliation?

Well, of course, I know we can't go back and re-live 500 years. But we can begin to listen to the stories the First Peoples tell of those years, to begin to comprehend how they saw their part in that relationship. We can begin to try to listen with understanding and compassion.

This is the way I think the Truth & Reconciliation Commission should be guiding us - but of course guidance won't come until they have figured some of that out for themselves.

Meanwhile, there are small groups across the country who are beginning to sit down together to test out this idea of holding truth and reconciliation gatherings within our own commuinities. Groups of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who are trying to listen to one another - doing the kind of listening that was missed five centuries ago. But that is not easy. It's amazing how many of us need to be listened to - who want to be the first to talk.

So who is to go first? Who, in the circle, will undertake to listen, while someone else begins to speak?

I suggest the one who has been waiting for 500 years to have the chance to speak - and to be listened to - that is the one who should go first. In most circles, that will be the Indigenous person.

After 500 years, it is their turn.


Do we have the time, the courage, the energy, simply to be present and to listen to Aboriginal brothers and sisters?


The future of our relationship within Canada rests on our answer to that question.