Churches Leader Tour

Year two of the Churches Leader Tour January 24, 2009

Edmonton Journal – Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009

Remembering the Children

An Aboriginal & Church Leaders’ Gathering in Support of Truth and Reconciliation

An Invitation to Journey

Canadian Native Friendship Centre – Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009, 7 p.m.

mahaffyc@shaw.ca 780-479-3524

Cheryl Mahaffy

In a circle, no one can merely observe.

The power of the drum and musky smell of smudge called an unlikely circle together Wednesday night as participants in a two-day interdisciplinary studies conference at The King’s University College took a field trip to the Canadian Native Friendship Centre to face the truth of residential schooling—and to remember the children who suffer as a result.

Drumming and smudging occur often in this First Nations gathering space just north of Edmonton’s downtown. What happened next does not: four dark-suited church leaders—Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, United—approached the low table just circled by the smudging elders and bent their heads to light four candles.

And so flickering tongues of fire joined the pillar of smoke as survivors, singers and dancers demonstrated the strength of spirit no residential school could extinguish—and as the church leaders stood, one by one, to apologize, ask forgiveness and pledge solidarity for the healing ahead.

A passionate Rev. Terence Finlay, Anglican Church of Canada special envoy for residential schools, set the tone: “I am sorry more than words can say for the ways in which we removed your children from you and your care, for the way in which they lost their sense of dignity, for the way in which they lost their culture, for the way they were abused. I am so sorry for what we did. I ask your forgiveness.”

Finlay traced his denomination’s journey from apology in 1993 to involvement in the residential schools court settlement in 2005 to joy at the national apology made by Prime Minister Harper in mid-2008 to dashed spirits when the Trust and Reconciliation Commission appointed to put words into action splintered and stalled.

“Regardless of what Canada does, we are in it for the long haul,” he said. “Our church needs healing. We also believe the healing of Canada is crucially important, for the injustice caused by residential schools eats at the psyche and soul of our country.”

Rev. Robert Smith, moderator of the United Church of Canada in 1986, when that denomination first apologized for its suppression of First Nations cultures, shared his deepening sorrow in the years since as survivors revealed treatment so horrific as to be termed sexual terrorism in court of law. Through the tears of children, he said, “I have had to come face to face with who we were and who we are.” Using the words of the 1986 apology, he asked those assembled to forgive and walk with the church “so that our peoples may be blessed and God's creation healed.”

Earlier in the day, students had learned that a true apology includes not only heartfelt truth-telling on both sides, but recognition that the wronged person holds the power to forgive. Each person who spoke, sang or pounded the floor in dance exposed the bow-tight tension that runs between forgiveness and memory.

“I forgive you to the best of my ability. However…” said

hip hop artist Kristin Smith, known in onstage as Mother Peace. “I’m not cool with what happened to my ancestors. I’m really not cool with that…. Despite all this anger and pain,

I hold you accountable with love.”

So there was a particular hush around the circle as Elaine Brass, one of the four elders who had led the opening smudge, walked to Catholic Archbishop Gerard Pettipas, extended her hand, looked into his eyes and said, “I can truly forgive you.”

The fourth generation in her family to experience residential schools, Brass only recently has begun to speak about the experience—and heal as a result. “I can forgive you because I’ve learned to forgive myself,” she said. “I can set that shame and negativity aside.”

But this is not a case of forgive and forget. Rev. Mark MacDonald, the Anglican Church of Canada’s first National Indigenous Bishop, drove that point home with this story: A mother who drank during pregnancy gave birth to a son with fetal alcohol syndrome. She could barely stand to look at him. After a short and hard life, that son contracted AIDS. In a break from the past, his mother was there for him, sitting by his bedside in his final months.

“That was my mother—and that was my brother,” MacDonald said. “She realized her future depended on becoming something new, but she couldn’t erase the past. And the decision before my mother also is the decision before Canada. When we truly change, who we are and what we did wrong becomes a part of our new reality.”

(Or as Mother Peace put it: “The wisdom and knowledge I got is age-old—you reap what you sow.”)

MacDonald recalled John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, a song sung moments earlier by Mother Peace. A slave trader who repented of his ways, Newton had these words chiseled onto his tombstone: servant of slaves.

“I hope that I can live to see this hurting generation finally free.” With those words, Edmonton Native Healing Centre’s Michelle Nieviadomy, who has only recently embraced her aboriginal ancestry, expressed a desire that permeated the room

To remember and heal—that takes reconciliation, a concept central to both Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality. “Every song and every dance is a call for reconciliation, a balancing of interests,” said Chief Bobby Joseph. “When good people sit together, they can reconcile. We don’t have to wait for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to start moving forward.”

Reconciliation has already begun, Elder Ted Quewezance said, noting that his grandparents would have been jailed for any one of the evening’s events, from smudging and drumming to the simple act of congregating. Taken from his grandfather at age five to attend residential school, Quewezance has come through abuse, addictions, attempted suicide and family breakdown to be a leader in the National Residential School Survivors Society. Needed now, he said, are not handouts and pity, but peace in aboriginal communities, coupled with awareness among a mainstream population still in denial.

“Go home with a clear conscience,” he said. “Do not feel guilty about what has happened. Go educate a friend.”

At evening’s end, the tongues of flame spread around the circle. Holding my pencil thin white candle, I recall the words of co-emcee Lewis Cardinal: Pain that is not transformed is transferred.

In a circle, no one can merely observe.

“Despite all this anger and pain,

I hold you accountable with love.”

Kristin Smith

Hip hop artist Mother Peace

“I hope that I can live to see

this hurting generation finally free.”

Michelle Nieviadomy

Edmonton Native Healing Centre