Another step on long road to reconciliation
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2020 (1644 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
If it’s true that reconciliation is necessarily an ongoing and deliberate journey, then Tuesday’s announcement by the federal government to designate residential schools a “national historical event” qualifies as a small but necessary step in a progressive direction.
In defining the residential school system as “a tragedy born from colonial policies in Canada’s history,” the federal government in a news release declared the practice — which separated more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families between the late 1800s and the 1990s — “has had negative effects on generations of Indigenous peoples with enduring impacts on… communities, cultures, economies, traditional knowledge and ways of life, languages, family structures and connections to the land.”
The acknowledgement, which responds in part to the recommendations of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is important as a good-faith gesture and is bolstered by the government’s accompanying designation of two former residential-school locations — one in Portage la Prairie — as national historic sites.
Call to Action 79 (of 94) in the TRC’s final report demands, in part, “Developing and implementing a national heritage plan and strategy for commemorating residential school sites, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canada’s history.”
Portage residential school named national historic site; First Nation plans museum
Posted:
A former Manitoba residential school has been deemed a national historic site, which local First Nations plan to use to educate the world about the system's impact on generations of Indigenous children.
The building once known as the Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School will be transformed into a venue that includes a museum, library and memorial garden aimed at educating the world about the devastating effect of the residential school system on generations of Indigenous children and families. (The other designated site, called Shubenacadie, is in Nova Scotia.)
“The story needs to be told through Indigenous eyes,” Long Plain First Nation Chief Dennis Meeches said on Tuesday.
And so it should be. As was the case with the seven-year process of gathering of personal stories of residential-school survivors by the TRC, the purpose of designating the former school locations as national historic sites must be to create opportunities for the stories of Indigenous people to be heard and better understood.
The removal of children from their families set in motion a multi-generational trauma whose effects continue to resonate in Canadian society. One need look no further than the statistical fact that 90 per cent of children in care in Manitoba are Indigenous for proof that the familial damage has deep roots and continues to spread.
The efforts of the TRC and the continuing work of the University of Manitoba-based National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation have been essential to this country’s ongoing reckoning with the consequences of past policies, but the transformation of a bricks-and-mortar structure into a place of education and enlightenment could provide another important point of access to stories that all Canadians need to hear.
During a week in which a more destructive attempt to confront Canada’s colonial legacy took place, in the form of protesters toppling a statue of prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald in Montreal — an event condemned by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as having “no place in a society that abides by the rule of law” — news of the transformation of the structure in Portage la Prairie offers a hopeful sign that the reconciliation process continues to take steps in the right direction.
Mr. Meeches, whose mother was forced to attend the school, rightly said it’s important to turn the building’s troubled history toward a more positive purpose: “Although sometimes (Canada gets) it wrong, today is an important milestone, and a recognition of what happened.”
