Truth and Reconciliation
Today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation here in Canada. A tall order. The vision is perhaps a good one, but the realization so far from where we are. The axiomatic presuppositions that we know what Truth is or that Reconciliation as a goal or an action is understood are what keeps the vision and the intention reiterating in virtue signalling. Of this I am truly weary.
We will see photo ops today, read opinion pieces, and probably carry on as we always have. This blog perhaps is no exception. Yet, here I am. Here we are. While the banks and government offices are closed today, schools and stores are open. There is little that stops us these days. Not even death. Surely not history. We shoe horn almost everything into business as usual. According to Canadian Heritage, National Truth and Reconciliation Day is a federal statutory holiday that “honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities.”
How might this day be singled out? How might I recognize the ways in which our inhumanity is as much our heritage as our humanity? I can start with a land acknowledgement. Most meetings I attend these days goes this far. Foxhaven acknowledges with respect, the history, spirituality, and the culture of the Anishinaabek, Six Nations of the Grand River, and Wendat-Wyandot-Wyandotte peoples on whose traditional territories we live and steward. I often wonder what these words actually mean. I bristle at the axiomatic presuppositions that pivot most of us as settlers and colonizers. We surely walk on the bones of all our ancestors, and when it comes down to the skeletal remains of those who went before us, isn’t there is more that unites than divides?
Last night the stars tumbled over the horizon. Without light pollution, these twinkling wonders draw our attention and open our sensibilities to vastness. A russet forest does the same. As does a wood fire. A roaring surf. A newborn’s smile. There is so much to behold and if this day gives us pause, slows us down, stops us for a moment and asks that we reconsider what is “self evident”, maybe we come an inch closer to truth, a fathom closer to reconciliation. We are surely stardust and finger prints. And the truths we laud as self evident, were hard won.
I studied extensively with First Nations People and came to deeply appreciate the beauty in ceremony and in alternate ways of knowing. I remember one gathering in Toronto whereby Jungian analysts and First Nations healers came together to explore dreaming. It was a fairly typical back and forth, the stringing together of monologues with fleeting moments of real dialogue. Few scholars or teachers or healers or leaders are willing to explore and question and challenge the unpacked bias woven into our enshrined positions. We often lob dogma across the divide. At this gathering, as I was helping stack chairs and clean up coffee cups, I overheard a conversation between an indigenous woman and an and Irish woman. The flaming red hair and pale freckled face of the Irish woman opposite the rounded copper face and braided raven hair of the Mohawk woman was striking. A meeting of worlds? I eavesdropped. The Irish woman, in all sincerity, apologized to the Indigenous woman for what her ancestors had done. I held my breath. I was soul tired of so called white guilt and impossible reparation. I felt the toxic shame in the field as the Irish woman seemingly erased her ancestors and their deeds. Most deeds committed centuries before her birth. But, to my surprise and my delight, the Indigenous woman reached out and touched the forearm of the woman facing her. They locked eyes. I felt something deeper soften. “Never disown your ancestors” the elder woman whispered. “Rather, ask what was done to them that taught them what they did”. It was a moment I define as transgenerational healing. For them? Certainly for me. A sincere acknowledgment that there are victims and perpetrators in the tribal soul. No race, no people, no continent is one sided. Maybe we need to focus less on what was done to us and more on what we do with what was done. Perhaps this is the deeper truth that needs to be reconciled. Rather than turning only toward those whom we harm, what if we turned toward those who we have disavowed. In our lineage. In ourselves. What if we turn toward the ancestors or proclivities we would rather shame than claim? It is a big ask.
I will walk the land today. I will make an offering in the ancient stone circle tucked deep in the forest. I will linger at our Mother Tree. I will walk our Marian Way and say the rosary. I will light a candle beneath my Saint Kateri icon. With this day, I will try and reconcile my long history, my lauded and forgotten people, my hidden and unpacked truths.