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Anglicans reflect on impact of TRC events (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada)
an article by Marites N. Sison, Anglican Journal
For National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark
MacDonald, participating in the national events of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
(TRC) has been “a strange mixture of Good Friday and
Easter.”
Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald are blessed by an elder at the first TRC national event in Winnipeg in 2010. Photo: Marites N. Sison
click on photo to enlarge
It has been “very painful, very challenging” to
witness how the 150-year legacy of residential
schools has affected former students and their
families, but MacDonald says he has also seen
“resilience, hope and the idea that we have
reached a point from which we can’t turn back.”
What Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, hereditary chief of
the Gwawaenuk First Nation whispered to him in 2010,
at the first TRC national event in Winnipeg, has
been ringing in his ears, says MacDonald: “We’re
going to make it.”
Archbishop Terry Finlay, the primate’s special
representative on residential schools, describes
his experience of having attended these events as
“painful, challenging, truth-revealing, humbling
and unsettling,” but also one that has contributed
to his own spiritual life.
General Synod archivist Nancy Hurn, who has been
to all TRC regional and national events, says she
is feeling “a little bit sad” that these events
are coming to an end, but is hoping that there
will be other opportunities for the Anglican
Church of Canada to share its residential schools-
related materials.
The last of seven TRC national events will be held
in Edmonton, March 27 to 30.
A key component of the 2007 revised Indian
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, part of
the TRC’s mandate is to gather the statements of
former residential school students and others
affected by the schools and to educate Canadians
about the impact of the residential school system.
The TRC’s ultimate goal, “is to lay the groundwork
that will help us to close the divide between
aboriginal people and the rest of Canadians,” TRC
chair Justice Murray Sinclair has repeatedly
stated. From the mid-19th to the 20th century,
churches—including the Anglican Church of Canada—
operated 130 schools for more than 150,000 First
Nations, Métis and Inuit children as part of the
Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy.
“I think the TRC has really given a voice, a face
and a presence to a very, very painful and unjust
period of time in our Canadian history,” said
Finlay.
TRC events have had the effect of “raising
consciousness and healing of all people,
especially the survivors,” says MacDonald. He adds
that there has been a growing understanding among
non-indigenous Canadians that healing needs to
happen not just among former students and their
families but in all of Canada.
MacDonald says he was impressed by church
involvement and participation at events, which
grew “in terms of numbers and quality” at each
event. “We have a long ways to go, but it has been
steady growth.”
(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN
reporter for this article.)
(This article is continued in the discussionboard)
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Finlay says church participation at the local level was mixed, starting slowly in some provinces and taking off quickly in others. “It is a painful story and therefore sometimes we find it hard to accept it and to recognize that perhaps people we knew personally were part of that painful story,” he says. However, “gradually we have become more and more aware of the history and the tremendous journey that we’ve had with our indigenous Anglicans and I think that’s good.”
The full participation of former residential schools staff at the events is something that both MacDonald and Anglican Healing Fund co-ordinator Esther Wesley wish had happened, but they acknowledge that it wouldn’t have been without risks. While some staff joined the events, most stayed within the confines of the churches’ listening area; one or two gave public testimonies to TRC commissioners, but were met with open hostility and weeping by some former students in the audience. “It would have been very good if more staff at the schools had been able to participate, but for various reasons, they felt afraid and intimidated,” says MacDonald. “It would have been very good to get the larger picture.”
The church could facilitate a process “in which we gave proper due to [staff] who worked there and many worked courageously and sacrificially and displayed kindness,” says MacDonald. “Churches are probably the safest place for that kind of dialogue to happen.”
Hurn, meanwhile, would like to see the church’s “frontline archives work” to continue; she was astonished at the impact that the residential schools-related photographs, drawings, memorabilia and documents, which church archivists shared at TRC events, have had on former students and their families. General Synod Archives and the Anglican Healing Fund have shared exhibit space, which has been popular with former students, their families and the general public.
“It’s something I’ve enjoyed so much—that people would take us into their confidence to describe their experience and also share their incredible stories of their time at the schools, some very sad, some very funny,” Hurn says. . ...more.
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