The times need to be a changin’ {to paraphrase Bob Dylan}

Perhaps it’s now time:

So there aren’t all those piles of buried Aboriginal kids after all. In fact, most of the dead children are properly buried, but often in unkempt graveyards. And the media frenzy was more: a work of woke, inadequately trained pseudo-journalists than of investigative reporters. And the burning down of churches did more harm to Aboriginals, especially older devout folk than to anyone else…

My, my, my – I will not say I told you so. But I will once again suggest that we will not get to Reconciliation until we are prepared to seriously look for the Truth. Furthermore I think it is time for the churches, particularly the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC) to issue a new apology: to all those members who worked in or with Residential Schools, in or with Aboriginal communities. The PCC has allowed itself to get caught up in a myopia of forced guilt that has not helped any one, but has done serious harm to the reputations of good people and/or the psyche of solid Christians. I have long claimed that the church is more woke than awake. And when I challenge ministers or other church leaders to a conversation they simply shirk away or make some off-handed comment about my cynicism. We can see this in the response to the Gaza Hamas attack. We can see it in the apoplectic rush to judgment over our supposed terrible treatment of kids in Residential Schools.

I will save my thoughts on Gaza for another moment. I will not let this moment on the Aboriginal front get the same pass. Church leadership, right up to the last Principal Clerk of General Assembly, simply did not do their jobs to make sure that a reasonable effort was made to determine just where the educational policies and practices of the various governments responsible for education of Aboriginal children went askew. There was no serious attempt to meet with, let alone consult, people with front line experience who were outside the designated authorities. Like the Commission into truth & reconciliation itself, it tended to listen only to those with axes to grind, people with accepted/preferred roles.

How can it be explained any other way?

For example: why was the Birtle Residence not closed in 1963 as was intended, but remained open for another four [4] years. It wasn’t because the people managing the Residence were mistreating the students. I was there in 1963 and was told by several students that they loved the Residence and that Mommy & Poppy (the names they gave to the Director & his wife) were super good to them. Moreover they were terrified of going to public schools the following school year because: they don’t like us! We won’t get to play on school teams, or have any serious chance at success; not like we have here (at Birtle). And they were right – there was significant racism in Manitoba at that time and many public schools didn’t want to take in Indians. And they got their way for another four [4] years. Why wasn’t this fact ever allowed to get decent coverage, if not from the press, then at least from the pulpit?

And why did the church cover up information it received in the early eighties, that the Director of Education for the Saskatchewan Region was stopped BY THE CHIEFS from closing the six residential schools there even though it would have meant considerably more funds would have been invested in Cultural & Language education in on-reserve and public schools serving Aboriginal students? Again, how do I know this: I was the Director that the chiefs wanted to have fired for even suggesting such a thing. Furthermore, all but one of the Residential Schools was already de facto being run by the relevant District Chiefs organizations, and many chiefs had their kids in those institutions. So where is all the cultural and language desecration in these instances – certainly not the church and definitely not the governments.

I challenge the PCC to open this subject up, have a thoughtful conversation with ALL perspectives involved, and start by apologizing for castigating all church members who worked within the Aboriginal world as somehow being colonial intruders, cultural destroyers and what all else those decrees stated or suggested. Once this happens, then the church can rightfully begin the process of truly seeking reconciliation; because, to date the approach that has been taken hasn’t done anything other than ensure the election of a moderator of Aboriginal heritage.

g.w.