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Murray Sinclair (on Aboriginal justice)

This is not news, but it, too, is reality. (A tip o’ the cap to Peter Trueman – and how’s that for the name of a news reporter? – who finished off his nightly Global TV newscasts way back when with a commentary, which always ended with a similar line.) I’m thinking, again, this morning of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its work is done. Its recommendations are out there. Many a heart-tugging reminiscence has been aired, stories of the often-bitter legacy of Canada’s residential schools for Aboriginal children and youth. And as is the way of modern life, we are on to other things, most of us.

Just for this quotable minute, let’s remember. First, while I’m tipping my invisible fedora, I want to remember Desmond Tutu. As I understand it, he was the key mind behind South Africa’s origination of the “Truth and Reconciliation” concept, which has built into it not only the idea of an unblinkered and fearless gaze at the rancid facts of his country’s racialist history, but also this notion: look, we all have to live here together, and we’ll stay sick, slaves to the past, if we don’t forgive. That’s what the congregation of the Charleston Emmanuel church have (again) taught us in the aftermath of murder: that forgiveness is not some spineless absolution of another’s evil, but a courageous and hard-won insistence on clearing one’s heart of the barnacles of vengeance and the chains of hate. Tutu was a churchman. He knew and preached that Christ’s call to forgive must harmonize with the cry for justice. I’m glad we had the wisdom, however imitative, to call the Canadian investigation into our earlier policies of de-culturalization the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It’s a mighty marriage of mutually reinforcing principles. Hurray for us.

Many truths have been told. However, I’m not sure that reconciliation has been advanced much. There is greater awareness. Awareness is good. There is greater understanding and real sympathy, but it won’t take too many Aboriginal protests that infringe on suburban Canadian complacency to erode that. (I’m from Caledonia. Uneasy lie the heads of those on opposite sides of racially stained land disputes.) Still, I’m hopeful that the work of Justice Murray Sinclair and his Commission is a watershed moment in the history of Canada’s movement toward greater harmony and equality among our founding peoples and all the boat people, wagon people, car and airplane people that have joined them on this favoured hunk of Earth.

In a June 6 interview that bears re-reading, Justice Sinclair made a point that still echoes. Speaking to writer John Ibbitson, but through him to all Canadians of Anglo-French and other European backgrounds, he offered a particular and ominous reason for getting right the relationship with the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.

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Guest Post: Canadian? Nations, First Nations, Homes & Hearts

My second-most-recent post concerned something retrieved from an old file, and who knows what I wrote it on — our best guess is an Apple Mac Classic II, circa 1995. It was about love, renewal, nature, politics and several other things, but one line irritated/inspired one of my most thoughtful readers, Michael P. Freeman. “Many of us have trouble feeling like Canadians,” I had written in “Honeymoons and Rear-view Mirrors”. Mr. Freeman often comments on my stuff, but this submission was so long, so interesting, at times so poetically heart-punching, that I put a truncated blurt in the comment section but asked him if I could publish the whole thing, too. He agreed, and so here’s my second guest column. The first was a brave and moving piece written by a Chinese student; this one comes from a man of Aboriginal heritage who lives not far from my old stomping ground in Haldimand County, southern Ontario, Canada, Turtle Island, the World.

“Many of us have trouble feeling like Canadians,” the man wrote. It got me thinking. The whole desire of the first half of the 20th century was nationalism. We entered into world wars to defeat countries that had a different concept of nationhood. Some would readily trample on the rights of others to impress upon and impose their own brand of ‘nationhood’ on them, and all in the name of what? World advancement? World domination?

Now, with the infusion of a couple of the newest ‘world’ religions, the nations and peoples of the world are being asked, subtly or overtly, to consider nationhood differently, to see it in the context of one world, one global nation without boundaries. It’s a difficult concept for many, especially given that most are still pondering and transitioning to a national vision. Ask a small-town guy what he thinks of nationhood, and I suspect that he would focus on town and kin, on hills and seclusion, on quiet and solitude. Leave behind the busy-ness and bustle of the city. Leave behind crowded buses and streets lined with vendors.

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