Every country with a native population that has been neglected, marginalized and underserved by government should take note of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report just published in Canada. Compiled from the testimonies of more than 7,000 people abused at government-funded religious schools, the report eloquently fulfils its mandate “to reveal the complete story of Canada’s residential school system, and lead the way to respect through reconciliation.”
The arresting phrase “cultural genocide” encapsulates many of the TRC findings. Its 386-page report begins with the acknowledgement that the main goals of the government of Canada’s Aboriginal policy have been to “ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada.” Cultural genocide usually entails land seizures, forcible population transfers, religious persecution and the confiscation of sacred objects, bans on native languages and the disruption of family life. In one of its many memorable sentences the report states: “In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.”
There can be little doubt that Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term genocide —and worked tirelessly to give it force in international law —would have agreed with its use in this context. Not only did successive Canadian governments deliberately undermine the social structures of native communities and deny full participation in “economic, and social life to those Aboriginal people who refused to abandon their Aboriginal identity,” they also “separated children from their parents, sending them to residential schools … not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity.”
In light of the horrific physical and sexual abuse that took place in the residential schools, there is no straightforward path to reconciliation. The TRC suggests an approach “similar to dealing with a situation of family violence” in which the traumatic events are dealt with in “a manner that overcomes conflict and establishes a respectful and healthy relationship among people.” It argues that any attempt to make sense of “destructive legacies of colonization” must begin with education for too many Canadians “know little or nothing about the deep historical roots of these conflicts.” Another resonant sentence notes that: “History plays an important role in reconciliation; to build for the future, Canadians must look to, and learn from, the past.”
The TRC recommends that the truth of the residential schools should become a standard part of the school curricula. For while there is considerable publicity about the dysfunctions of reservation communities — drug addiction, alcoholism, crime, suicide — there is very little acknowledgement of the central role that the cynicism of the government’s Aboriginal policy, and the appalling abuses of the residential schools, played in shaping these dysfunctions.
Any Guyanese reading this report will be struck by uncomfortable parallels to our own attitudes towards Amerindian communities in this country, as well as our wider failures to come to terms with “colonialism’s destructive legacies.” Thankfully, we have not had to deal with anything as awful as Canada’s residential schools but our indifference towards, and lack of engagement with our own indigenous communities should be a source of national shame.
Our growing knowledge of the profound impact of “multi-generational trauma” in postcolonial societies has become an important part of the increasingly persuasive case for reparations from former colonizers, but we have done almost nothing since independence to address the multi-generational neglect of our own indigenous groups. Far too few of us have made an effort to listen to their stories, and to learn from their past. Canada’s TRC report shows that it is never too late to take account of silenced histories, and the sooner we do so the hard but essential work of coming to terms with our collective historical traumas can begin.
