Establishing respectful relations with Indigenous communities requires genuine commitment to change
Today is Orange Shirt Day, which calls on us to acknowledge the experience of residential school survivors and initiate genuine steps to address, through reconciliation, the lasting harm caused by these institutions.
Why should this matter to you?
The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada details how, for over a century, our government created policies and institutions designed to ”cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada.”
A central element of this strategy was the creation of residential schools. Speaking in the House of Commons in May 1883, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald said the schools were necessary “to take the Indian out of the child.” He justified this view as follows:
When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.
Canada forcibly separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families. They were ripped from their homes, stripped of their names, and denied access to their culture, language and traditions. The last residential school did not close until 1996 — just 24 years ago.
Children in residential schools often suffered severe abuse: physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual. Many did not survive their ordeal, and those who did were traumatized, leaving a legacy of suffering and upheaval that to this day has affected their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Sadly, I have seen firsthand the tragic consequences of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people. My extended Stó:lō family on my father’s side is from the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. For years my father hid his Indigenous heritage because he saw and feared the prejudice and discrimination that “Indians” were subjected to. Members of my family are residential school survivors, and they and their children still struggle with the impact of that dark period.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes the operation of residential schools as cultural genocide, and rightly so. Canada’s horrific treatment of Indigenous people was expressly intended to eradicate Indigenous culture. As Prime Minister Macdonald said at that time:
Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.
While the residential school system failed in its attempts to cause Indigenous people “to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities,” it did fracture the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.
This is why reconciliation is necessary — and this is why it should matter to each of us. Reconciliation is about healing this fractured relationship. Orange Shirt Day was created to remind us of our fundamental obligation as Canadians to participate meaningfully in the reconciliation process which includes, in the words of the Commission, “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country.”
As a lawyer, I am acutely aware of this obligation and I am committed to meeting it. I have been with the national law firm McCarthy Tétrault since 1981, first as an articling student, then as a litigation associate and partner, and now as Legal and Strategic Advisor, Indigenous Initiatives: a first-of-its-kind role in the Canadian legal profession. I am also chair of the firm’s Reconciliation Committee.
In my view, practising reconciliation requires each of us to listen, learn and lead.
We must listen to Indigenous people tell their stories in their own words, learn about the treatment of Indigenous people in Canada and Canada’s efforts at cultural genocide, and lead, as individuals and organizations, by doing what we can to advance reconciliation.
At our firm, we are doing our best to listen, learn and lead. This includes making cultural competency training available to all of our people to foster awareness, understanding and respect; developing a multiyear “Reconciliation Action Plan” for the firm; and creating a Reconciliation Committee to take tangible actions within the firm and in the Indigenous community.
Establishing and maintaining respectful relationships with Indigenous people and communities is not something that can be achieved overnight. It requires determined leadership, a genuine commitment to change, and an investment of time and resources.
If Orange Shirt Day also matters to you, please consider listening, learning and leading – not only today, but every day.
