“I don’t know who I am!”
How often have I heard that desolate cry from the heart
of a First Peoples person struggling through an adulthood ravaged by the
memories of residential schools or of foster care from the Sixties Scoop era?
I heard it again in the voice of Johnny Indian one recent
Sunday afternoon as she engaged Assistant Bishop George King who Johnny remembered
as the man who had abused her in residential school many years earlier.
And how often have I said to my First Peoples friends
after listening to their stories of residential schools: “I am sorry – so sorry
- for what my people, and my church, did to you and your families through the
residential schools”.
All the pathos of both these heartfelt cries were caught
in Drew Hayden Taylor’s play, GOD AND THE INDIAN, though 75 tension-filled
minutes, with no pause, in the intimate setting of the Aki Circle Theatre in
the downtown Toronto neighbourhood where so many of those same lost and lonely
souls exist; where St. James’ Anglican Cathedral raises its lofty spire to the
sky.
It has been my privilege, my duty, and my agony, as a
life-long Anglican who has walked with the First Peoples for almost 50 years,
to listen to many, many stories of IRS survivors, and the survivors of the
Sixties Scoop, First Peoples children taken from their homes by social workers
and placed in non-First Peoples foster and adoptive homes across Canada and
beyond.
Watching the talented Lisa Ravensberger share Johnny
Indian’s story with us, I was remembering so many women I had met over the
years who had walked the same path, suffered the same nightmares and pain, but
not all of whom had the chance to confront their abusers in later life. Watching while sitting with a young Anishinabe
Kwe (Ojibwe woman), shedding tears as she experienced once again the tragedy of
intergenerational IRS trauma, remembering her grandmother who raised her but
was unable to give her the love that every child needs to grow into healthy
adulthood.
So many men and
women came out of the IRS with no understanding of how to nurture children in
love, since they had never experienced love in the institutional setting,
separated from their parents, and siblings, and their language, culture,
ceremonies and the spiritual and traditional teachings of their people.
I had read the play, just recently published http://www.drewhaydentaylor.com/books/god-and-the-indian/,
so I knew what was going to happen, in a way.
What I was not prepared for was the shock of hearing
Assistant Bishop George King, trying to defend himself as the charges of sexual
and other abuse are raised by Johnny, and he shows her the words of the apology
spoken by Anglican Church Archbishop Michael Peers: “I accept and I confess before God and you,
our failures in the residential schools. … I am sorry, more than I can say, that
in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally, and
emotionally. On behalf of the Anglican
Church of Canada, I present our apology.”
How many times have I listened to that apology, spoken on
my behalf, by a friend and a highly respected leader whose lot it was to steer
the Anglican Church though those tumultuous days as we began to hear the truth
of our shared history stretching back over many generations.
I sat in the darkened theatre with tears in my eyes,
because I had walked with the members of the Anglican Council of Indigenous
Peoples in those dark days – the sense of betrayal as the lawyers took over the
management of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
It’s true, we were not the lone defendants: the Agreement
was signed by the Federal Government of Jean Chretien, the Assembly of First
Nations, the four church entities (Anglican, United Church, Roman Catholic and
Presbyterian), and the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, but as a
life-long Anglican, I carry the responsibility for the legacy of the Anglican
Church’s involvement with the historic relationship between Anglicans and the
First Peoples for the past 400 or more years.
GOD AND THE INDIAN helps me to understand ever more
deeply the full import of that relationship.
God grant that I and my fellow Anglicans will begin the work of healing
that broken relationship under the leadership of the First Peoples, especially
those now claiming that position of leadership in our midst.
Thank you, Drew, for offering us one more step along that
path of healing.
