Yesterday I attended an interesting and inspiring public lecture entitled Forced Assimilation of Indigenous Peoples: Is Reconciliation Possible?
The three speakers were visitors from Canada, hosted by Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies in conjunction with the School of Indigenous Studies, University of Western Australia and the Bringing Them Home Committee WA:
- Mr Phil Fontaine, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, Canada
- Ms Charlene Belleau, Residential Schools Unit, Assembly of First Nations, Canada
- Ms Kathleen Mahoney, Chief Legal Advisor to the Assembly of First Nations, Canada
All three visitors spoke of the work they were doing to bring healing and reconciliation to indigenous Canadian communities.
I found Phil Fontaine’s quietly spoken manner to be very impressive – he told the audience of very depressing statistics in the areas of health and justice and poor conditions in indigenous Canadian communities. We learned about the residential school system in Canada that meant that indigenous children were removed from their families (and in some cases were subjected to terrible abuse there). For Phil Fontaine poverty is the main reason for the continued suffering of indigenous people in Canada. And yet he was not bitter and was very positive, saying that indigenous people were beginning to take their rightful place in society and that he looked forward to continued “peace, opportunity, comfort and the right to control one’s own destiny”.
Kathleen Mahoney spoke of the long process indigenous Canadians went through, both in their communities and in the courts, to finally receive a settlement in which the Canadian government has agreed to pay $2.2 billion in compensation to the survivors of residential schools.
Charlene Belleau, the last speaker, was I think the most inspiring of the three. (You can hear her and Kathleen Mahoney speak – they were recently interviewed by Richard Aedy on Radio National. Their segment is about halfway through the recording.) She spoke of programs in her community, Alkali Lake, working towards healing the pain of survivors and building a healthy and sober community.
Charlene talked of the community holding its own enquiry into the experiences of survivors of residential schools. This enquiry was done without waiting for government or church support, and had the aim of allowing survivors to tell their stories, to validate their experiences. This five day enquiry was filmed and televised by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. One of the questions Charlene was asked was about the response of the wider community to this enquiry. Her response brought applause: “We weren’t worried about the response of the wider community, we needed to do this for our community.” (I’m paraphrasing.) She added that she supposed the wider community could have learned something about the experiences of indigenous people from watching the enquiry. I found this very inspiring: the community decided what they needed, and went ahead and did it, despite a lot of obstacles.
I think we all have a lot to learn from each other.
And how often do we talk ourselves out of doing something because we think we’ll fail?