National Truth and Reconciliation Day

The high school I attended was where the rural indigenous teens were bused. Every day they had to get on a bus before 7am for a 40 minute ride to the school. Classes started at 9am but they had to come extra early because the bus driver had another route to attend to closer to the school. They also had to wait at the school as the bus drove the closer kids home and then picked them up around 4pm. This means their school day was roughly 7am to 5pm. In comparison my day was roughly 8am to 4pm.

There was a part of the school that was “theirs”. No one but “the Indian kids”, as we ignorantly called them, went there before school, at lunch, or after school. And I mean NO ONE. The rest of us were either scared, anxious, or so unfamiliar with those kids that it never really occurred to us to go there. Don’t get me wrong, there was never any violence there. No “others” who may have inadvertently wandered into that part of the school were ever harmed or abused in any way. As I recall I walked through one of those halls one day because I had a class there just after lunch and, of course, I wanted to be early. What I saw was a group of kids sitting on the floors talking with their friends and as I came down the hall their conversations stopped and they all looked at me with suspicion. Many of the kids simply sat there with their heads down. I remember standing by the locked classroom door waiting for the teacher and feeling completely out of place and I was invading their space. Eventually, what felt like an eternity and was probably more like five minutes, the teacher came and I was able to escape into the classroom.

The only actual connection I had with any of the indigenous kids was Grade 12 English class. The majority of the classes I attended had the kids sitting in lines of desks. In my Grade 12 English class we were arranged in groups of four – something I had never seen before – and I was assigned to sit next to George. George was a “Mic Mac” boy and he was one of the funniest people I had ever met. At first we were awkward with each other and the other three of us often pretended he was not there. But one day we were discussing the book Death on the Ice by Cassie Brown and George said something, I wish I could remember the exact wording, but something about the stupidity of “you pale face people.” There was something in the way he said it that caused all four of us at the table to burst out in raucous laughter. Given the morbid context of the book it was entirely inappropriate to be laughing and as I recall the teacher was less than pleased.

But from that moment on George was my friend. We would talk before class and joke about school. One day he tapped me on the shoulder while I was sitting next to him and he said, “Hey, look at this.” Then he pulled out his wallet and showed me a government cheque for what looked to me like a huge amount of money. My eyes widened and I said, “What’s that for?” I knew that many adults got Government of Canada cheques as tax returns, pogey, and the like. But kids never got them.

George winked at me and then he pinched and wiggled his cheek. I must have had a look of complete confusion at this gesture because he said, “Because I’m Indian.” Again I was further confused and replied, “So?” He winked again at me and said, “I get paid to go to school.” All I could think to say was, “Wow! You’re so lucky! I wish I got paid to go to school.”

Now, so many years later I reflect on that time and I realize that in my high school there were no classes about the First Nations, and the government paid reservation kids to go to schools so that they would only experience my culture, my literature, my way of thinking. By “my” I mean “settler.” We never read any Indigenous literature, we never learned any Indigenous culture, but we subjected reservation kids to books like Death on the Ice. We were not so far removed from a residential school in that we were trying to educate “them” to be “like us.”

As I have matured and grown I realize how little I know and understand about my role as a settler in this land. I have always taken my place in this land for granted. I was born here. I’m a proud Cape Bretoner – no matter where I live. I recognize that others were on this land before me and before people who looked like me but I will never know the pain people who looked like me imposed on them.

All I can do now is live my life in such a way that I lift up the oppressed, decry those who would ignore their plight, and challenge the powerful to do better, to value equity and humanity. On this first National Truth and Reconciliation Day I challenge myself to be better – a better friend, a better advocate, a better listener, a better ally, a better citizen. All I can do now is grieve at the loss that has been inflicted and not to stay there, in the past, but to be a person who stays in the present moment working toward a world with more truth, a country that does not feel threatened by reconciliation, a culture that values all people.

To any Indigenous people who may read this I offer my own apology for the pain I imposed upon you in the past and please know I am working on my own growth to love more than I think I can love, to do more than I think I can do, and to be more than I think I can be.

Miigwech.