Only the top of an iceberg is visible above water; four fifths of it lurk beneath the water, ready to sink your boat. This reminds me that there is more to any situation than meets the eye. If I begin to think I understand what is going on in a Cree community, that is precisely the time when I must remind myself that I don't see more than a fraction of what is really happening.

Varying the comparison, cross-cultural communication can be like walking across a field of landmines: when you step on somebody's hidden fuse, the result can be explosive. Feelings have been hurt, and relationships damaged, by generations of abuse. With the best of intentions, a middle-aged white priest like myself can trigger irrational fears in my best friends.

Culture is like a pyramid: at the top are the "outward and visible signs" - ceremonies, rituals, customs. Beneath these, however, are more fundamental features of a culture, like language, arts and crafts. More fundamental still are the "deep structures": subconscious patterns of behaviour, relationship and communication, often unarticulated and taken for granted.

Ceremonies are the most vulnerable to suppression and loss. The pow-wow, the potlatch, the sweat lodge, the Sun dance, all these, at times, have been suppressed. Language and medicine have been eroded and hidden, but are not so immediately lost. Even those who have lost their language may still communicate in an "Indian way": for example, by not interrupting until the present speaker has finished, and taking turns to speak in the circle.

Nowhere is indigenous culture intact; yet the deep structures remain despite damage from several centuries of colonial contact. The most devastating form of damage comes from the residential school system, in which many vulnerable members of First Nations were victims of physical and sexual abuse.

Not all children were victimized in this way, and not all their teachers were scoundrels. The Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples has acknowledged that many teachers were kindly and well motivated. However, even those children who did gain some benefit from their schooling were victims of cultural abuse. Even if they gained something from our culture, they lost much of their own culture, and their own family structure was damaged and distorted by their removal.

Healing happens in community, but so does damage and hurt. Family and community were given by God to pass on healthy relationships. But when these are damaged by sin, family and community are damaged and become the means of spreading the damage from one generation to another.

The abuse may be in the past, but the impact continues, a terrible legacy of damage done, not just to isolated individuals, but also to whole communities. This legacy is expressed in personal and communal dysfunction, for which the victim is often blamed.

According to the Gospel, when one of us suffers, we all suffer. We were all created by the same Creator and saved by the same saviour. We are all related. As the Anglican preacher and poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island entire of himself." We are all part of the vast body of humanity. When my neighbour is hurt. I am hurt. When my neighbouring community is hurt, my community is hurt too. When one part of society is damaged, our whole country is damaged.

The legacy of abuse does not hurt just our First Nations - it hurts our whole nation. The damage done to our First Nations alienates us from one another, damaging our relationships with one another and with our Creator. We all need healing.

We are called to be partners with our Creator in helping one another.

This essay first appeared in the newsletter of the Henry Budd College for Ministry, The Pas, Manitoba, of which Canon Stewart is president.

Of my time at Celia Jeffrey School I clearly remember many nights I went to bed crying - lonely, afraid, and feeling no sense of security anymore because my parents, my friends were not there.

I also remember one day turning the water tap on and as it was running I poked my finger up into the faucet and wondered where all the water comes from. I was called into the office and told that I was not to do that. When I was caught speaking my language I was again called into the office and taught that my language was forbidden there. In my young mind I could not comprehend the rationale behind this. Why could I not be me, the person my parents had taught me to be? Why was being an Indian not important?

I remember a lot of shameful things that happened there to my friends. I became angry and my resentment built up to a point where I vowed that every white person would pay for this.

My self-esteem (spirit) became weak to a point of brokenness and I had to get away. I rebelled and ran away from that school with three other friends. We walked for two nights to Redditt without food. I remember walking by night and hiding by day, being very hungry and the lack of sleep overcame me. I remember falling down asleep and losing my friends.

When I awoke I felt I had no other alternative and went to the train station and hid in the dark. I sat there waiting, not caring where I would go or if I would die. This was the lowest point in my life. Imagine a boy of 11 wanting to die.

As I sat at the station in the dark a little dog came barking up to me and a white lady came upon me and said, "Can I help you?" I gave her a look that said, "Leave me alone." She pointed out to me where she lived and said I was welcome to come to her house. Later, my hunger got the best of me and I knocked on her door. She invited me in.

I entered her home reluctantly, ate a sandwich and went to bed. For two days I stayed with her, watching her knit and waiting for her son to come home from school to play. I couldn't figure out why she hadn't called the cops to take me back to the school. Finally, I asked her if she knew that I had run away from the Celia Jeffrey School. She said she knew that, but wanted to know why I had run away from the school.

Her "why" was the key word that has stayed with me to this day. It meant that another person (a white person) cared enough about me to ask. I said, "Your people are all mean" and she said, "No, not all of them." She said she would accompany me back to the school. And she did, she intervened for me and she spoke with the principal. I wasn't punished for running away.

She had instilled in me some sense of trust. From that day I tried to please within the system and hung in there to the end of the school year.

I returned home that summer and I asked: "Please Dad, don't send me back." My older brother, who had been to residential school, knew why I didn't want to go back and he spoke up for me and I was able to stay home and not return.

To this day I have not returned to school. I have always felt a lack of trust in these institutions. That year I returned to the land with my dad and lived my traditional way of life. I didn't speak English again until I was 25 years old. I became a leader in the community as a Councillor and as Chief. I have always strived to help young people, and to instill good values for a better life.

My calling to enter into the ministry came when I was 38 years old and it was at mother's urging, because of her dream. I studied and was ordained three years later, believing in my heart that I would be serving my native people.

My bishop came one day and asked me to speak in the churches in the southern part of the diocese. It was then that I discovered that I still carried resentment in my heart toward white people. I then had a dream and I heard, "God loves your people and he loves the others just as much."

I realized that I needed to deal with my anger and my resentment. I had to purge the seeds of anger that were planted in me at the residential school. I remember grieving, asking God to set aside my thoughts of revenge, to lead me, to guide me, to be the Lord of my life.

Two things that came to mind:

First, the woman in Redditt who cared for me and who had planted a good seed in my life, who showed me there is hope despite abuses and that we can respond to victims of residential schools with a compassionate and kind heart:

And secondly, the understanding that God loves each of us and that he wants us to come together to address past mistakes, right the wrongs. We cannot repeat these attitudes, and that it is a lesson to guide us to a brighter future.

I have had very mixed emotions coming here. One side of me was telling me to run. This is the first time I have met the people who ran the residential school of Celia Jeffrey School.

The other side of me said, it is time to come to meet you, to speak about hope, walking together, grieving and healing together, and journeying together toward wholeness.

I have come to say yes ... forgiveness leads us to peace within ourselves.

Forgiveness also teaches us to become peaceful. Forgiveness instills in us new hope a new sense of direction, a new sense of journeying together.

I have come, though it is hard, and often difficult. I want to forgive and continue to work with you in ways that will bring healing for both our nations.

I extend my hand to those who meant well and grieve today. Both of our people need healing. I extend my hand to you who are here so that we might journey together.

My hope is that we will journey together. Sometimes we struggle. By the grace of God and his son, we will overcome.

Adapted from an address by Bishop Gordon Beardy of Keewatin to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1934, before her fifth birthday, Gladys Cook was taken from her home, as so many other children were, and sent to the residential school at Elkhorn, Man., where she was to spend 12 years, lose much of her culture, and be raped several times, the first time when she was 9 years old.

Eight years ago, at an Elkhorn school reunion, she came face-to-face with one of the men who had raped her ... and she forgave him.

Between the little girl sobbing on the blood-stained sheets, and the mature woman courageously extending a hand of forgiveness, lies a truly remarkable journey: marriage to an abusive, alcoholic man; a parting from him and work at menial jobs to support her children; confronting and struggling with alcohol; reconciliation, after almost two decades, with her husband (by then sober); and ultimately establishing, without formal training, a ground-breaking agency that would eventually become known as the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program.

While counselling Native people about alcohol and drug abuse, Gladys Cook became aware that many of them had been sexually abused as children. But she wasn't ready to deal with her own abuse, and so she turned many of them away.

It wasn't until 1988 - 40 years after she was first raped - that Cook sought therapy and began a process of healing. "It was like I'd been living in a deep dark hole," she recalls. "I went to hell and back so many times ... but every time I surfaced, I saw beauty.

"Through therapy, I began to see myself as a person. It made such a difference to me. And especially, it meant so much to my children. Before, I'd seen myself like a sergeant-major, raising them in the same kind of military style that I'd experienced in the school. Very quickly after I started therapy, I realized I didn't want that for them."

Gladys Cook has maintained a paradoxical relationship with the Anglican Church throughout her life. "It's very hard to connect God with anything that happened to me in residential school," she says. "My parents gave me the meaning of the Great Spirit, and I knew the Spirit was a support and comfort to me. The residential school's god was a mean and angry god.

"People say, 'The Anglican Church was so mean to you. Why do you keep coming back?' I tell them, 'I am the church.' But I've had lots of hate and anger inside me, and I don't want those things in my church. I have to help get rid of them."

A deeper exploration of native spiritual traditions has helped Cook reconcile traditional ways with a Christian faith. "Honesty and forgiveness are the two keys to my healing," she says. "Sometimes people say, 'I wish I had your calmness.' They don't know how hard I've worked at it."

Even to the point of taking the hand of a man who had raped her as a defenceless child and offering forgiveness. How is such forgiveness possible? Is it even desireable? Cook does not gloss over the effort it took her to reach out that day - so much so, that afterward, she had to be helped to her car. But she has no doubts that, for her, this was the right course.

"Immediately, I felt a new sense of freedom. I knew then that the Creator and I were walking hand in hand. But not just my Creator: everybody's Creator."