Tuesday, May 26, 2015

GOD AND THE INDIAN - A Play by Drew Hayden Taylor



“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.


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