The Residential Schools: were they schools?

 

"Residential schools (in Canada) did not arise from a well-meant initiative run amok. Even the most basic research reveals the destructive intent at the foundation of their design and implementation. They were not schools. They were institutions akin to the re-education centres of the Cultural Revolution in China and its current re-programming camps where ethnic Uyghurs are detained."

    - Michelle Good in "Truth Telling"

This truth needs to be repeated insistently until reconciliation moves beyond hand-wringing words - to action - specifically the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada issued 94 Calls to Action, several of which are directed specifically to the Catholic Church. Here are the key ones that apply to the Catholic Church:

1. Call to Action 58: The TRC calls upon the Pope to issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.

- Pope Francis came to Canada in the summer of 2022 and gave an apology. Some feel that it was just an apology for what "some" Catholics did historically, not an apology for what the Catholic Church did in facilitating and promoting colonial hegemony. Still, it was a well-intentioned start that was accepted by some Indigenous leaders.

2. Call to Action 59: This call asks church parties to the Settlement Agreement to develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their congregations learn about their church's role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.

- There has been no effective action on this whatsoever. At the very least there could be an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement before Sunday mass in every parish church in every diocese in Canada. 

3. Call to Action 60: The TRC calls upon leaders of the church parties to the Settlement Agreement and all other faiths, in collaboration with Indigenous spiritual leaders, Survivors, schools of theology, seminaries, and other religious training centers, to develop and teach curriculum for all student clergy, and all clergy and staff who work in Aboriginal communities, on the need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the roles of the church parties in that system.

- Very few priests and deacons would appear to have even heard of the Doctrine of Discovery, even young priests fresh out of seminary. Catholic priests are largely ignorant of Indigenous spirituality, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the roles of the church parties in that system. On the contrary, much of what we hear is more defensive in nature or, at best, verbal hand-wringing devoid of acknowledging actual historical facts with present-day repercussions.

4. Call to Action 61: This call asks church parties to the Settlement Agreement, in collaboration with Survivors and representatives of Aboriginal organizations, to establish permanent funding to Aboriginal people for community-controlled healing and reconciliation projects.

- There has been some movement here in many dioceses, dependent upon donations to the Indigenous Reconciliation Fund. Most Catholics in the pew view their donations to this fund as charity, or in the same category as funds needed to pay victims of clergy sexual abuse.

These Calls to Action aim to address the historical injustices, and promote healing and reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Indigenous communities in Canada. It's time for a lot more concrete and effective action in response to the calls of the TRC made way back on the 15th December 2015.

April 22: Canada COVID-19: Deaths per day and Days to double total deaths

Date source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

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Data Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

Refugees and Veterans

Image credit: www.macleans.ca

As must be the case with many of you reading this, my father and grandfathers fought in the two world wars of the twentieth century. They, and our family, were fortunate that they survived, although my wife has an uncle in her ancestry who lost his life when his ship sank in a naval engagement, and my dad came out of the war minus one lung. Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand were not under direct attack or threat in the same way as were the countries of Europe and Britain. Their armies were fighting not so much for their own motherland as helping defend and liberate their allies and for the values and principles of world liberty and freedom from tyranny.

I find it disappointing, therefore, when I read so often in the social media that people are advancing an anti-refugee position by bemoaning how "our government" can find money to assist refugees but cannot properly assist "our vets". Please, let's keep the two issues separate. By all means, let us lobby for a better deal for our war veterans, but not on the backs of the most vulnerable. This is disingenuous and an insult to the very ones who died in the wars, who died for something far nobler than keeping "our country" free from refugees.

Raw Sewage in Canadian Rivers

So, here is my question: Are there or are there not provincial or federal laws or regulations prohibiting the release of  commercial and industrial waste and, especially, raw sewage into the rivers of Canada or, at least, the rivers and aquifers of Ontario?

If not, why not? If yes, how are they enforced?

I ask after being shocked to read the following article in Global News:

From https://globalnews.ca/news/6215303/oneida-london-safe-water/

Oneida Nation of the Thames tap water different than neighbouring non-Indigenous communities

Particularly disturbing are the following three paragraphs:

"18 years of water quality testing across Oneida First Nation sometimes shows striking levels of dangerous pathogens such as E. coli flowing from residential taps. Upstream, the nearby city of London dumps millions of litres of raw sewage into the Thames River that serves as the community’s water source…"

"The Thames River, which replenishes Oneida’s aquifer, is a dumping ground for waste, raw sewage and pollution. To avoid basement flooding during heavy rains, London’s wastewater system dumps rainwater and raw sewage into the river. In 2018, 266 million litres of raw sewage was released and flowed downstream through several First Nations communities, including Oneida.

"So far this year, more than 5.7 million litres of London’s raw, untreated sewage — including commercial and industrial waste — has been dumped into the river, according to city data.

London didn’t start notifying Oneida of sewage dumps until mid-2018, say Oneida leaders, including Chief Hill. Even then, Oneida is only notified after the dump has occurred, sometimes hours or days later."

Here, again, is my question: Are there or are there not provincial or federal laws or regulations prohibiting the release of  commercial and industrial waste and, especially, raw sewage into the rivers of Canada or, at least, the rivers and aquifers of Ontario?

If not, why not? If yes, how are they enforced?

I realise that the question is rhetorical. Doing just 2 minutes of searching on the Internet I found that:

• raw sewage overflowed into southern Ontario waterways 1,327 times in the 12 months ending March, 2018;
• the city of Toronto releases more than 1-billion litres of raw sewage into Lake Ontario in a single day;
• when excessive stormwater has nowhere to escape, it funnels into sewers causing them to overflow and spill untreated contents into lakes or rivers;
• there are provincial regulations but they are full of loopholes circumventing enforcement.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-enviro-report-1.4903327

I have been following a Facebook group focusing on drinking water and other water availability issues in South Africa. They regularly bemoan the fact that, due to aging infrastructure, neglect and poor accountability, raw sewage is spilling into some of the dams sourced for drinking water. I have been feeling lucky to be living in Canada - a First World country after all. How presumptuous and arrogant of me.

Learning the Land: Walking the talk of Indigenous Land acknowledgements

Indigenous activists have drawn attention to threatened waterways, neglected Residential School cemeteries and other social issues by walking across Land. Here a group of settlers on an Indigenous Land acknowledgment pilgrimage. Laurence Brisson/The Concordian, Author provided

Matthew Robert Anderson, Concordia University
University, religious, sports and other gatherings often begin with an Indigenous Land acknowledgement. For instance, this article was written in Montréal, or Tiohtiá:ke, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations.
Land acknowledgements recognize what for some Canadians is an uncomfortable truth. These are formal statements that recognize “the unique and enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories.”
On Land where territorial treaties were negotiated, the acknowledgement may use the term “traditional Lands,” and go on to specify the treaty and its number (Treaty 4, for example, includes much of southern Saskatchewan.) Land is so important that Gregory Younging — scholar, editor and author of the copyeditor’s book Indigenous Style — insisted Land be capitalized.
But when governmental and business meetings are far less likely to include acknowledgements of Indigenous Land titles, or when artistic and educational events move from initial statements to silence about their political and economic ramifications, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that such recognition is simply lip service.
What do groups mean when they say they recognize Indigenous presence, resilience and Land? And how can settler groups begin to walk the talk?
In 21 Things You Should Know About the Indian Act, author and president of Indigenous Corporate Training Bob Joseph urges Canadians to physically get out and get to know local First Nations. Ways to do this include attending Indigenous cultural or sports events or using Indigenous businesses.
As a settler academic who grew up on Treaty 4 territory, I have benefited from years of Indigenous guidance in ally-building in journey/pilgrimage studies, biblical studies and Land access. Following these learnings, I believe it is time for those of us who are not Indigenous to let our bodies learn about acknowledgement, sometimes by literally walking the talk.
Properly prepared “walking acknowledgements” are one way for those of us who are non-Indigenous to demonstrate that we mean what we say about unceded and traditional territories.

Location, location, location

It is by walking across Land that Indigenous activists have drawn attention and acknowledgement to waterways threatened by overuse or pollution, residential school cemeteries that have been neglected or abandoned, issues of justice for northern communities and, with displays of vamps (moccasin tops), Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Margaret Kovach, Linda Tuhiwai Smith and other Indigenous academics consistently use the physical language of “grounding” and “place” to explain how one learns within Indigenous knowledge systems. They argue that Indigenous ways of knowing require the bodily recognition of one’s relationship to Creation and to others.
One of the first and most influential of Indigenous scholars addressing western research methods and Indigenous cultures, Māori professor of Indigenous education Tuhiwai Smith points out that it is always specific Land that gives meaning to Indigenous stories, ceremonies and history. Kovach adds that “self-location anchors knowledge within experiences.”

Understanding relationships to Land

This month, I led 11 students, faculty and friends on a 26-kilometre walk from Kahnawà:ke to the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University, in Montréal, as a Territorial Acknowledgement for our Theology in the City conference. Walking helped us put our bodies where our mouths are. Those who have undertaken walking Land acknowledgements say it has both educated them and moved them away from political inaction and neutrality.

A pilgrim walk to help participants understand the true meaning of Indigenous Land acknowledgements took place last weekend in Montréal. Matthew Robert Anderson, Author provided

Showing up uninvited or unannounced is not acknowledgement. It risks being another colonial act. But with Indigenous guidance, we can physically get to know the Lands and people we are acknowledging.
These experiences help settler North Americans experience the locality and relationships that underlie most Indigenous understandings of Land. Getting to know the Land helps us learn its history — including its histories of colonization and of Indigenous resurgence.
Beginning in 2014, with the guidance and permission of the Mohawk Cultural Centre of Kahnawà:ke, and the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawà:ke Longhouse, professor of theology Sara Terreault and I have led groups of students from Concordia University on four annual pilgrimages.
We walked about 32 kilometres between Old Montréal, where the first French colonists built their churches and homes, and Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory. Some of our students had visited Kahnawà:ke before; some grew up in adjacent communities. Consistently, they reported in their project evaluations that walking the St. Lawrence Seaway, built in part on bulldozed Mohawk homes, and physically experiencing the contested border areas, and the First Nation, brought them new understandings of colonialism, economic injustice and histories of both oppression and resurgence.
Atsenhaién:ton Kenneth Deer, the secretary of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawà:ke and a working group member of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, assisted us on our walk and said:

“By walking from Concordia to Kahnawà:ke or from Kahnawà:ke to Montréal you can see how close we are but a world apart.”

U.S. anthropologist Chip Colwell notes that despite the risk of token gestures, repeating Land acknowledgements offers us a chance “to confront the past while laying the groundwork for building a shared future.”
Walking through such statements helps us remember that they are both real and political, and based on Indigenous assertions of title to real places.
Acknowledgements spur us to recognize not only Land, but also commitments made in the treaties, in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action.
Walking all, or some part of, our Land acknowledgements gets settlers out of their silos. It can help groups experience first-hand the Land, the relationships and the Indigenous Peoples of which the Land acknowledgements speak.
But walking Land acknowledgements are only first steps toward education and consciousness-raising. They are part of the process of non-Indigenous people becoming allies through Indigenous pedagogies. Only when Land acknowledgements are fully lived out — that is, when they deepen into meaningful economic, political and cultural change, will we really be walking in the true direction of reconciliation.
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Matthew Robert Anderson, Affiliate Professor, Theological Studies, Loyola College for Diversity & Sustainability; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Nottingham UK, Concordia University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

History will judge us

In 2019 Canadians voted overwhelmingly for profits and economic growth over the sustainability of the environment, in defiance of the evidence of science and climate change, and the marching of our children. History and our grandchildren will judge us.

The Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels; and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. This requires countries to cut emissions by 45% by 2030, end fossil fuel subsidies and ban new coal plants after 2020. Most of our parties talk about "reducing" carbon emissions but do not set goals to cut emissions by 45% by 2030.

The Conservative Party climate plan has been almost universally panned by experts for failing to have any reasonable chance of achieving the weak 2030 emissions targets the Harper government set. It is as good as no plan, which is a plan to fail.

Although better than the Cons, the Liberal climate plan is to reduce our emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. This falls way short and is a plan to fail.

The NDP talk about achieving targets in line with scientific consensus. This definitely sounds better than the Liberals but they support new fossil fuel projects which will make achieving the goal impossible.

The Green Party has the most aggressive plan which clearly heeds the UN’s call for rapid and transformative changes to Canadian society. The plan has faced criticisms for being unrealistic in scope and speed, but there is broad consensus that it would exceed emissions targets if implemented.

If you still don't understand, ask 16 year old Greta Thurman to explain. She gets it.

Elections and the Spirit of Egotism or the Spirit of Sacrifice

Originally posted on the blog for St. Vincent de Paul Newmarket


Jesus told the pharisees: “You know the saying, ‘Red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow, red sky in the morning means bad weather today.’ You are good at reading the signs of the weather in the sky, but you can’t read the obvious signs of the times!” (Matthew 16:2-3)

Bl. Frederick Ozanam beautifully illustrated what it means to  read the signs of the times in this following extract from a letter  that he wrote to a friend in 1838. Listen to these words bearing in mind that the 2nd French Revolution occurred in 1830 and the 3rd revolt happened in 1848, the same year that the Communist Manifesto was published.

Barricades at Rue Soufflot on 24 June 1848 - Vernet

The question which divides people in our day is no longer a question of political forms, it is a social question—that of deciding whether the spirit of egotism or the spirit of sacrifice is to carry the day; whether society is to be a huge traffic for the benefit of the strongest, or the consecration of each for the benefit of all, and above all for the protection of the weak. There are many who already have too much, and who wish to possess still more; there are a greater number who have not enough, and who want to seize it if it is not given to them. Between these two classes of people a struggle is imminent, and it threatens to be terrible—on one side the power of gold, on the other the power of despair. It is between these two opposing armies that we must precipitate ourselves.

Talking to us about this quotation at our recent "Recharge the Batteries" event, Fr Roy commented that this letter was prophetic. Indeed it was, coming ten years before the "third" revolution and the publication of the Communist Manifesto.

Blessed Ozanam saw Christ in the poor and the weak, but he did not see them through rose-tinted eye glasses. He saw very clearly that the same spirit of egotism that was evident in the rich and powerful aristocracy as well as the middle class bourgeoisie, was also powerfully at work in the desperation of the impoverished working classes. As he saw it, the only thing that could possibly make a difference would be if Catholics and other Christians of France in his time could set aside their own spirit of egotism and replace it with a spirit of sacrifice in faithfulness to the teachings and call of Jesus Christ, "Come, follow me."

We are at a time when overwhelming and increasing numbers of environmental scientists are telling us that our planet is fast approaching a tipping point. In his encyclical, Laudato Si', Pope Francis tells us, "There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world. Our lack of response to these tragedies involving our brothers and sisters points to the loss of that sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded." (LS #25)

Blessed Ozanam's words are no less prophetic and applicable to our times today where political parties in campaigns for the coming election are appealing to our spirit of egotism to persuade us to vote for them - some more so than others, and most offering no more than lip service to the environmental crisis as merely one issue among many others. Between the opposing powers of gold and despair, Ozanam says we have to 'precipitate' ourselves. I do not know the original French word and do not even speak French, but this use of 'precipitate' in the English translation suggests urgently throwing oneself headlong into a situation without taking sufficient time to consider the consequences, much like a parent might rush into a burning house to rescue a child.

As Vincentians, which spirit do we want to drive us? The spirit of egotism or that of sacrifice? I must confess that I feel nervous and ambivalent about 'precipitating' myself into the gap between the rich and powerful on the one hand, and the poor and desperate on the other. Perhaps that is the difference between saints and the rest of us, but let us take inspiration from our founder and model, nevertheless. The very existence of our Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a direct consequence of precipitous action that Frederick Ozanam took in 1833. The same question posed by Blessed Ozanam in 1838 faces us as Christians and Vincentians going into voting booths in 2019: that of deciding whether the spirit of egotism or the spirit of sacrifice is to carry the day, for the benefit of the strongest, or for the benefit of all, and above all for the protection of the weak?

Keeping perspective during elections

Maintaining a historical perspective can help us sift through the noise.

My shame as a Christian

Christians For Trump

As a Christian, I am ashamed to say that Christians, in their Pro-Life support for Donald Trump, are complicit in the Anti-Life deaths of thousands of civilians killed in coalition airstrikes since the conflict in Yemen began in 2014, not to mention MILLIONS suffering from shortages of food and medical care in a country (the poorest in the world) pushed by war to the brink of famine. The U.S. and Canada are both making many millions of dollars from sale of arms to Saudi Arabia. A shame on us if we remain silent in the face of this preventable human suffering made worse by our greedy trade. Canada is not innocent either.

Dismay as Trump vetoes bill to end US support for war in Yemen