For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; 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.
On Tuesday, June 2nd, the long awaited report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was released. The news coverage across the country was extensive and the conversations about meaningful action to implement must continue – inside Parliament and beyond.
The opening paragraph above is from “Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future”, and is a horrifying and excellent reminder of why this commission was struck in the first place:
The TRC began its mandate in 2010 with a series of national events for survivors and families of Indian Residential Schools, and ensuring Canadians understood what really happened in these schools. In September 2013, the YWCA’s Elsbeth Mehrer, Director External Relations, was privileged to attend one such session in Vancouver. Her account of that experience can be read in the YWCA Blog: Reflecting on Residential Schools.
Now the coast-to-coast events are complete; more than 6,200 statements and stories have been gathered and will permanently be housed at the National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools. The report seeks to help each of us understand the lasting impact of policies which forcibly removed children from families and communities: an atrocity called out as ‘cultural genocide’ by the TRC report.
As the largest and longest serving women’s organization in Calgary, the YWCA supported more than 8,300 individuals in 2014 across all of our program areas. Nearly one third of the women and children seeking support related to deep poverty, family violence and isolation were Aboriginal. Many continue to experience vulnerabilities that can be linked to the direct and intergenerational impacts of Indian Residential Schools.
With the release of the report we have the opportunity and the responsibility to move forward towards reconciliation. YWCAs across the country, and locally, are committed to improving the lives of women and girls and will not be silent in the face of systemic issues and cultural barriers that prevent women from thriving.
Each of us can play a role in forging new, healthy relationships with First Nations, Inuit and Metis people. The TRC report includes 94 recommendations: some too big for any one of us alone.
Our way forward? As electors we can hold governments accountable to change discriminatory policies and adequately fund services for Indigenous people. We can demand an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. We can seek school curriculum which educates all children about the contributions and history of Indigenous people. And we can have a conversation, today, at our kitchen tables about a just and equitable future.
