Jordan
Let’s start with this. I don’t feel qualified to speak about truth and reconciliation, and that’s a problem. It’s not a problem because you or the world needs to hear what I have to say about it. God, no. But the problem is why I don’t speak about it. I don’t speak about it because I feel guilty and I feel ignorant and I feel like I haven’t done enough and my family hasn’t done enough. Obviously, my ancestors way back when we have a lot to answer for, too, but we can leave them out of this. The horror of residential schools was happening recently enough that millions of Canadians are old enough to think about it and to know that maybe they could have done something to end it. But we didn’t. And so I don’t think I’m alone in feeling guilty. Personally, I think that when you consider the enormity of the genocide committed through these schools, it’s impossible not to feel guilty if you are a settler and you have a heart. But here’s the problem: guilt stops us from taking action, stops us from talking about what could be done, stops us from pushing through the awkwardness that comes from not knowing enough and not doing enough to actually learn something and to do something and move forward from there. So today on Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we’re going to confront the guilt and try to move past it, towards hope and towards action. And I hope we can figure out how to do that together.
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Karine Duhamel is Anishnaabe-Métis. She was the director of research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Hello, Karine.
Karine
Hello.
Jordan
I want to start by asking you, given that this is September 30, should I say Happy National Day for Truth and Reconciliation? It feels strange to me that the response to all the trauma and horrible news so many Canadians have learned this year is a holiday.
Karine
Well, I think that’s a really important point to make, because I know certainly in the conversations I’ve been having with people, we’re not looking at this day as a holiday. We’re looking at it as a day for reflection. And so while it falls under, especially for federal employees and lots of other employees, a day where they do not work, the expectation is that people will take the opportunity to learn something that maybe they didn’t know before around the history, and the legacy of residential schools. And so I don’t really consider it to be a holiday. But I do consider it to be a day that is an opportunity for people to reflect on truth, on reconciliation and on what they can do to contribute.
Jordan
And we’ll get into in a couple of minutes, you know, how we should approach that reflection and where it should come from. But first, maybe just be practical how can people who have the day off and want to learn more or reflect, how can they use that day? Where can they go?
Karine
Well, I know across Canada there are a ton of events that are being organized by Indigenous people, by Indigenous organizations in every major urban center where people can go and participate in things like healing marches or attend ceremony or listen to elders and listen to community members talk about their experiences. So that’s a great place to start. For those people who are not comfortable or who don’t have access to some of those events, there’s also a lot of online events, which we’ve learned a lot about during the time of COVID, where people can actually engage online or other than that, if people prefer just to reflect and to think about it, there’s actually a lot of material online that people can read and sort of become informed.
Because I think the trick of it is that everybody’s starting at a different place. And so it really does depend on who the person is and what they already know about residential schools, and maybe what they don’t know about the Indian residential school system, to think about where it makes sense for them to begin.
Jordan
In terms of having a day to reflect and whether or not we want to call it a holiday, but giving people time off work to do that. I think back to the spring when news of these unmarked graves was made public for the first time, at least for people who weren’t taught about this properly in schools and didn’t realize, like the extent of this horror. And we’ve talked about it on this show that it kind of felt at that time like something had to really change, like this was the start of a national reckoning with just what our country had done in its past. And I guess the reason I started with asking you about a holiday is because it feels strange to me today for it to be a few months later, and the most tangible thing that seems to have come out of it is a day to reflect, as opposed to hundreds of millions of dollars to find these kids and return them to their families or, you know, anything else. And I guess I feel a lot of guilt about my country’s past actions, and I don’t know how to feel about the fact that a day of reflection seems to be the path that we’ve chosen to reckon with this.
Karine
Yeah. I think a lot of people are in the same situation where they’re not really sure sort of what their role is and what they should be doing on this day. And I think certainly I take your point around the notion that, ‘why is this the thing that we’re doing? Why is this the thing that we’ve landed on?’ I think it is important, though, because, as you pointed out, a lot of people simply don’t know about this history. And more than that, they don’t understand the legacies of the system today. And so when you actually go and listen to a survivor speak about their experiences, you begin to understand really why it’s sort of false to say that this is over, that this period is over, and the extent to which people are still very much dealing with the legacies of the system and a system that is not that far back in our collective past.
I think that in my world and having spoken to lots of different people about what they’re doing on September 30, on this really important day, there’s folks that are still considering what’s most appropriate and what I think is really important is that people take the time to learn about it and also take the time to reflect really on what needs to happen next. Reconciliation isn’t just about thinking, although it does involve that. But truth and reconciliation is about action and how we can all contribute collectively, whether Indigenous or not, to dismantling some of the structures and systems that serve to uphold many of the issues that confront communities today.
Jordan
This is where I want to talk to you about something you’ve both written about and spoken about, which is how we approach this day, particularly as settlers, and whether or not we should feel guilt and recrimination and try to use that for motivation or whether or not there’s another path. Tell me maybe so that I don’t speak for you kind of where that idea came from and how you came around to your point of view.
Karine
Well, I’ve worked in that field of sort of educating the public for a number of years. And one of the things that always struck me in those conversations, many of which were really, really candid and with folks who would identify as settlers was the fact that people said, you know, I feel really guilty, and I’m not sure where to put this feeling. Or they just weren’t sort of sure how they should feel at all. And I think there’s a real spectrum of emotion that will come with this day for a lot of people. And I think what’s really important to note is that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada wrote about this in their final report and talked about how truth had to come before reconciliation, but that reconciliation was really around action, and it’s not so much action in sort of an apologist way in apologizing for past deeds or things that your ancestors may have have contributed to. But it really is about in the now, today contributing to new relationships with Indigenous Peoples, contributing to the idea that everybody has a role to play in reconciliation.
And so I’ve written about this before in terms of thinking about reconciliation in terms of hope and the possibility that can bring forward renewed relationships. But it has to be prefaced by truth and so the first step is learning about it, and the second step is doing something about it. And when we look at issues that continue to plague communities today, for example, the mass over-representation of Indigenous children in care, the mass over representation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prison system or Correctional system and the heightened rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and to 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
I think we really need to think about how there is a lot of work yet to be done. There’s a lot of action yet to be taken. And if we can look forward to the future in terms of the vision of a shared future and one that is based on a hope for addressing many of these issues at a systemic at a structural level by all contributing to it, then I think we can sort of reframe reconciliation and thinking about what can we do now and using that as a bit of a spring board to think about an improved future.
Jordan
How do you approach that in your own work to come from a place of hope because, you know, you worked on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry, and I can’t imagine what it takes to approach that kind of work with a sense of hope and pushing forward to the future.
Karine
I think what really struck me and working on the national inquiry was probably actually, without a doubt, the most educational experience of my entire life. And I include the years that I spent in University and learning about things. Working with families and survivors is really the most education that I got, I think ever. And thinking about that through the perspective of hope was important because all of the stories that we were hearing, the thousands of people that we heard from, all had a story to share about the worst thing that you can ever imagine happening to you or to your loved ones in your life.
But alongside, they also came forward with really important solutions, really important visions around the importance of Indigenous people reclaiming power in place. And that’s why that was the title of our final report, it wasn’t titled an account of the litany of oppression and abuses that people have suffered. It was entitled Reclaiming Power in Place, because the people that came forward to share these experiences about the very worst thing that you can ever imagine happening to you, for the most part, still had hope in a better future, that was based on this act of reclaiming Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous cultures, Indigenous traditions that have historically contributed to communities and individuals being well. And so that was the hope in that process. As dark and as difficult as some of those days were. We knew and we were hearing from families and survivors that there was a lot of hope for the future and that it lay in Indigenous led solutions. Indigenous Led Services and in the reclamation of Indigenous power and Indigenous place.
Jordan
I want to ask you a little bit about how guilt can get in the way of progress. And I’m thinking here again, from my own perspective, as a straight white male Canadian, as privileged as all get out, I should feel guilty. And that feeling sticks with me. You know, it’s not as though to your point, this was something my ancestors did hundreds and hundreds of years in the past, and I don’t feel a connection to it. This is stuff that was going on while I was growing up. And, you know, I look at my daughter today and I fight with her to try to get her to wear an Orange shirt and she won’t wear it. And I feel guilty about that. And I feel guilty that we haven’t done more to push for answers on residential schools. I mean, it can feel really deflating and really tough to reckon with. And I guess I struggle with pushing past that to be hopeful when it sometimes doesn’t feel like my own government is doing enough to push past that and be hopeful.
Karine
Yeah. I think your point is a really good one. And I mean, the issue is that guilt is a very heavy emotion. And if we take it out of the context of the Indian residential school system and we just put it in the context of everyday life, feeling guilty about something is really draining. It takes a lot out of you. And it’s demotivating in the sense that guilt engenders sort of this feeling, as you know, of hopelessness. I think that the guilt needs to be sort of mobilized to this understanding or this action oriented thing around learning the truth and then figuring out what I can do. To rest in guilt is not helpful. It’s not productive, and it’s not useful. To acknowledge the truth, and then to think about how you can contribute in your own way to this issue is hope engendering.
And you provided the example about your daughter and orange shirt day. You’ve done some work. Already you’ve done some work and you’ve identified that this is important and why it’s important, and whether or not your daughter or whoever you talk to believes that is also the case, you’ve already contributed. You’ve done some work. And so these are the conversations that I think we all need to start having around what we can all do. And I’ve used this example a lot. And I talk to a lot of different kinds of professionals, some of whom will say, Well, you know, I don’t make the laws, and I don’t make the policies and my role is a very small one. And to them I always say, look around where you live, look around your family, look around who you talk to, look around what businesses you frequent and think about in those interactions, even if to you, they’re very small, there’s a space to create a better basis for a relationship with Indigenous people, because that all does contribute to reconciliation. And if everybody did one or two or three very small things. If every single person in Canada did it, this is how we start a movement. And this is how ultimately, I think we move beyond guilt and toward action and ultimately toward hope.
Jordan
To be clear, my daughter is four years old and she won’t wear the shirt because it doesn’t have a cat on it. But in general, I love that idea of pushing forward. Do you have some examples you can share? Because again, it feels like one thing to use this day to learn and reflect and another to find a place where you can join in.
Karine
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it can be as complicated as joining a reading group to go through the final report of the National Inquiry, to go join a reading group to better understand the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and calls to action. And it can be as simple as finding out what territory you live on and acknowledging it appropriately. Can be as simple as thinking about if there are Indigenous owned businesses in your community that you can support or Indigenous lead service organizations that you can support, either through a contribution or through our time.
This is the thing for me: it’s very easy to see this. And I say this in the sense of truth and reconciliation. And I encountered the same thing in the context of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. It’s easy to see all of these things as much bigger than we are as individuals. Because there are big issues and they’re super complicated. But I think ultimately there absolutely is small things that everybody can do in the every day. You can talk to people about the importance. You can put an Orange shirt in your window. You can join a March. You can read a book, you can buy from an Indigenous owned business and support Indigenous entrepreneurs. You can go volunteer at a local organization that supports Indigenous people and all of these things I think do contribute. And it’s not a matter of needing to be the person that creates the legislation or implements the laws. It really is a matter of finding your spot.
Jordan
That’s great advice. And I know we began this interview by talking about how this day feels strange this year as a day, whether it’s a holiday or not, because it’s the first time and maybe to end on a hopeful note, this will remain a national day of truth and reconciliation for years and years to come. When you think about what this day might look like five years, ten years, 15 years from now, what do you hope for?
Karine
That’s a big enough small question for me. I guess when I think about what this day will look like 5-10 years from now, I think that there’s still going to be a lot of learning to do. The reality is that the teaching around the Indian residential school system is a relatively new thing. And so there’s an awful large segment of Canadian society that doesn’t know, and some people who don’t care to know more about it. And so I suspect that five or ten years into the future, maybe people will still be learning.
Beyond that though, I hope that ultimately, what this day can be about is about restoring the spirit and intent of treaty relationships and thinking about how relationships writ large between Indigenous and non-indigenous people, when they’re nurtured, and when we do it well, can contribute to a better country for everyone. And so I think it’s really important to think not just immediately because I think there’s a lot of learning that will happen, but also long term in terms of ultimately, maybe this can be a day where we get to a point where we can celebrate these relationships because they are good and because we’re basing them on an acknowledgement of truth and a call to action.
Jordan
That is a great thing to look forward to and a very hopeful way to end it. Thank you so much for this, Karine.
Karine
Thank you.
Jordan
Karine Duhamel, former director of research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
That was The Big Story. You can find more at thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN, and you can email us at theBigStoryPodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. We’re also in every podcast player that you can imagine. And if you have a smart speaker at your home or in your car, wherever, you can ask it to ‘play the Big Story Podcast’.
Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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