A hoop dancer from the Summer Bear Dance Troupe shows his skill at the Winnipeg stop of the Remembering the Children Tour, March 2008. Anglican, Presbyterian, and United churches organized the tour to herald the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Photo contributed.
Anticipation is in the air. Preparations for the first national event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)—June 16 to 19 in Winnipeg—are underway.
This national event will be a communal gathering in Manitoba, a province where Aboriginal children were removed from their homes and communities and sent to any one of 15 residential schools operated by churches on behalf of the federal government from the late 1800s to the 1980s.
Residential school survivors and descendants, Indigenous Peoples, church persons from the pews and the cathedral, government policy persons, legal counsel, and inhabitants in Canada who desire a new future—all will come together at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in June. It seems as if we all are holding our collective breath in anticipation of being shaped and transformed in this encounter.
The head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Justice Murray Sinclair, invites all Canadians to the gathering—the many residential school survivors who will speak of their experiences for the first time, and all of us to come, listen, and speak of what we need to say as well.
People of faith and the TRC
Antjie Krog, who witnessed the South African TRC, observed that in places where unspeakable acts have been directed by powerful people against communities and individuals, the role of truth telling forums is to change public language and memory—although the forums do not necessarily lead to changed behaviour or institutions. This change is the responsibility of people in governments, churches and other faith communities, and educational institutions.
What language shall we use as people of faith in these forums? Indigenous peoples urge us to speak to and respond from the heart. According to National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald, “The growing spiritual movement among Indigenous Peoples will challenge us all to reconciliation and renewal. The land we live in, its ecology and life, will be understood to be a living part of our community of faith. To be a living church, we must attend imaginatively to each other.”
Will our church apologies, lived out, be found wanting? Can we find anew the courage of not giving in to easy justice, but go deep and seek day after day to live out our most cherished values? Overcoming alienation and estrangement—between humanity and God, between peoples, between peoples and the creation—is central to our faith story, writes missiologist John de Gruchy. We have a solid ground for hopefulness and are invited to live in expectation of the Spirit’s transformation.
No shortcuts
There is a coherence to public truth and reconciliation that includes certain elements: truth telling; apology and claiming responsibility; building a transitional justice framework; finding ways to heal; and embracing forgiveness, according to Canadian theologian Russell Daye. Will we commit to paying close attention and not take shortcuts through the field of truth and reconciliation?
What would truth-receiving look like if we all—individually and communally—held to the ethics of believing and trusting the victims, treating them with the most tender respect? How do we bring all of our authentic idioms—traditional, Christian, secular, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu—to the hearing of the truth and the taking back of it to our respective communities?
The factual and moral truth telling and retelling doesn’t end with the TRC. For it to take root in our hearts and minds, it must become a growing part of our public discourse because we are all treaty people. When the treaties were negotiated, they bestowed rights and responsibilities on both First Nations and Euro-Canadian settlers.
Let us not squander the moment that June 16 to 19 offers. Let us strengthen the call for Canada to sign on to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And then let us not stop there, but as global Christians join the new call for an international spotlight on truth commissions in approximately 50 countries around the world throughout a proposed decade of reconciliation. Can you hear the voice of the Spirit say, “Come”?
