TEAM CANADA
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Truth.
Reconciliation.
A very long time ago …
How do you fix 500 years of getting it wrong, doing it badly – and not having been here ourselves as perpetrators of those wrongs?
There is no magic wand; there is no single silver-bullet package of solutions.
There is only attitude.
The successive governments of Britain and Canada, Liberal ones and Conservatives ones have done an appalling job. In recent decades they’ve done more than they’ve done before, but nobody believes they’ve done enough – yet the governments of the day always say they’ve done as much as they could.
Poppycock.
They’ve done as much as their political calculus tells them they must, and a little as they could get away with doing.
Seriously, what self-respecting government can admit to unsafe drinking water on reserves, perpetuating the name ‘Indian Act’ and failing to address systemic racism?
Answer: they all do and tell you they are doing the best that they can.
Of course, they are not.
Nobody on any of the many sides of these issues has a solution – and nobody has a time machine or that magic wand, because if we went back 500 years, to before Europeans conquered/took over and apportioned North American and dispossessed or killed all the people who lived here.
The notion of reconciliation is one of making peace, but, in my view, all those lovely platitudes together with much work by well-meaning people have still proven inadequate and ineffective so far in affecting change.
Reconciliation, the word, implies coming to terms with things that didn’t happen as they should have, so many things which cannot be fixed or undone, and ‘sucking it up,’ but sucking it up by mutual agreement. On that issue, I believe all the well-intentioned parties to this have failed.
It seems to me, if you can’t fix something, you do the next best thing to fix it.
But what we have in Canada is a legacy of doing the ‘least best thing’ so many times it has become acceptable within our society to do the least on governance, health, safety, education, and poverty rather than to do the best of anything.
If truth and reconciliation are to be meaningful, they should first be rooted in reality. As we’ve seen through history and so often recently, the truth is a convenient word that governments use so emphatically – especially when they are not being truthful.
Wherever you stand today in Canada – geographically, economically, and socially – 10,000 years ago, original Canadians stood. They stood tall and proud; they were hardy and survived on the land, respected nature’s bounty and never sailed off to conquer foreign lands. About 500 years ago, their descendants welcomed their European conquerors as trading partners and visitors – instead, they were overwhelmed, corralled and swindled.
That is the truth.
These legacies – of sins, wrongs, guilt, and blame – rest on the shoulders of European backers, governments of England and France, and many politicians and leaders who are long dead. Many are having their revered names on streets, buildings and statues removed.
That seems right but yet woefully incomplete and insufficient.
It’s not about apologies because nobody can apologize enough to re-write history.
What is needed are initiatives to help people be lifted from chronic poverty and systemic belittlement – because we need to be equals, and indigenous Canadians aren’t equal yet. I don’t mean ‘make them equal through affirmative action alone,’ but that’s a great starting point. Not just through employment equity programs for federally regulated companies but everyone.
Let’s give them help, a leg-up, an advantage ~ not a fulsome solution, but it would be a far more credible showing of good faith than any governments of Canada have shown to date. I believe the key, if there is such a thing, is education. Education lifts people. Educated people lift their families too. Families that are lifted out of difficult situations lift their neighbours. We are ALL members of this Team Canada, and it’s time we start seeing each other as members of a team trying to help each other better and realizing that, until we lift every member of the team, the team cannot improve.
Our country is more than its founding peoples.
Our country is not a Canada without them, no more and no less, than anyone else descended from someone who came from somewhere else.
We all have much to learn, and much to teach and lifting each other’s consciousness, and education can’t do the job if we tolerate chronic poverty and chronic unemployment too – because no family can ride that out without help.
Reader feedback:
Thanks Mark for sounding out about "detached from humanity". Apart from social media scales that tell us who is "leading" and a little about opinions/platforms - the future scenes are very foggy. I'd welcome an electronic chess game style assessment. What would be the best match between the various permutations of mayors and councillors? That's a reality show with real tension. Could that be any worse than the crap game we are playing at the moment?, JR, Calgary, AB
I know its not all, but for far too many politicians (1 is too many) humanity or caring is and always has been much too far down the list of the things they consider when making decisions. LH, Lethbridge, AB