HANNS’ BLOG

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

Hanns F Skoutajan

A few weeks after settling on our farm (1939), an abandoned homestead on very marginal land in northern Saskatchewan, I was exploring my new environment. I noticed several children emerging from the woods. They were dark in colour with black hair and carried a sack and a spade. 

“Ah, Gypsies.” I thought. Having come from central Europe I was well acquainted with these people who travelled in horse drawn caravans and from time to time set up camp in a field near the edge of town.  

The children I encountered at the edge of our woods were not Gypsies but Indians. They were a bit shy. However, they showed me the contents of the sack they were carrying. In it were small roots which they were digging up. Seneca roots, they called them and showed me how to harvest them. They told me that they would be sold for a few cents at the general store. The roots are to be ground up to make an herbal remedy.

The fate of the Roma, their proper name, and the Indians of North America had some similarities. They were outcasts. In Europe they were ostracized. Hitler tried to exterminate them as he did the Jews. In Canada efforts were made to assimilate them and eradicate their culture, to turn them into apples, red on the outside but white within. 

It was only later that I learned that the children of Canada’s natives were taken from their homes and families to what was known as residential or industrial schools. The police came to the native communities and rounded up children and took them far from their homes.

At first I thought that residential schools weren’t a bad idea in order to teach English or French, to read, write and do basic arithmetic, to learn useful trades in order to make a living rather than trying to exist off hunting and fishing. It would introduce them to a better life style. Only much later did I learn that these residential schools run by churches were anything other than benign but were part of the government’s policy of assimilation, (ethic cleansing?).

At school they were forbidden to speak their native language or practice native customs. They were garbed in ‘white’ clothes and were harshly punished by people who one would think would be compassionate teachers, priests, nuns, and protestant clergy. Some in desperation tried to escape and many perished on the way. It has been said that the ratio of survival of Indian children at residential schools was similar to that of allied soldiers in the war.  

“Cultural genocide” is what it has been called.  They have succeeded in becoming stronger and insisted that they were Canada’s First People. They were, after all, here when the white man arrived. They welcomed them, helped them to know this new world and survive in the harsh climate of this land. They traded goods such as furs. But the white man proved to have a voracious appetite for land and all that it is able to produce, including oil in our time. 

White officials made treaties which were more often broken. Their land was taken away and they were relegated to “reserves” which continued to shrink in size. They were forced to live on very marginal land under poor conditions. Their rights to fish, for instance, were infringed upon, something I observed first hand while living in the Georgian Bay area. 

Lets face it, the white man has not been ‘nice’ to the indigenous people he encountered. His corporations aided and abetted by governments and their military, have exploited not only people but the environment.  Religion rather than preaching a gospel of love has often been used to pacify the natives, it is sad to admit.

A week ago thousands of aboriginals and white people walked through the streets of Gatineau and Ottawa to signify the end of the work of the  Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It had exposed a shameful record of Canada’s treatment of our First Nations. A verbal apology as had been offered by our prime minister in 2008 it is not nearly enough. He has stubbornly resisted setting up a national inquiry. Much has to be done in the area of housing, education and health care and the criminal justice system. What is demanded is not words or charity but justice.

It was not my intention to compare the Roma and Indians but to point out a similar fate. The fate of the Roma is still grim whether in Hungary, Rumania, the Czech Republic or even in Canada. Many who have immigrated to this country have found themselves ostracized, some have been deported to countries that had been unfriendly to them. It seems to me that the dynamic of xenophobia and just plain avarice  is very much alive even here in Canada.

The truth has been heard in thousands of submission that constitutes the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is imperative that the report and its findings be taken seriously whatever the costs.  People of whatever language and culture need to be reconciled to live in peace and harmony together. 

Spirit Quest , June 2015