It takes more than time
When we are unsure about the future consequences of a certain action or inaction we resort to the old saying, “Time will tell.” Actually time doesn’t tell much, it’s pretty much a passive thing. A truer statement might be that “time marches on”. Another adage is, “Time stands still for no man.” While that’s true, it doesn’t speed up for anyone either.
Yet another saying, “Time heals all wounds”, isn’t true, but it pacifies some people. Physical wounds indeed usually take time to heal but while man may provide the cure, it’s God who provides the healing.
So too with emotional healing, time simply measures the passage of days, months and years but without man providing the cure and God providing the healing, emotional wounds can fester forever.
That’s why the current approach by many people to the wounding of First Nations people over the past century and a half is totally unproductive. On the First Nations activist side, re-opening the residential school debate and finding new ways of attaching blame to successive generations of former Europeans isn’t very productive. Similarly, people, regardless of background, who want to forget it all aren’t solving a lot of problems either. On the “white” side of the question, the continued and ongoing agonizing and soul searching and blame attaching isn’t helpful. Let’s get a couple of things straight. I didn’t put anybody in residential schools. Neither did my father or grandfathers. They were all born in Scotland and had absolutely nothing to do with Canadian governance back in those days.
The second thing we need to get straightened out is that, given conditions for many First Nations people in the mid to late 1800s, the government of the day felt they had to do something to help First Nations people. And further understand, that sending children off to boarding school was a well accepted and somewhat successful practice in England. For us to second guess the governments of the day is unfair and unproductive. To study the policies and learn from them is a good thing.
The simple passage of time will never solve the emotional hurts of the past unless man provides the cure and God provides the healing.
First Nations need to stop blaming the “whites” and everyone, First Nations and whites, need to learn from the mistakes of the past and move on with better policies and programs. There have been enough apologies already. Another adage comes into play here, “Actions speak louder than words.” So, given that everybody is sorry that bad things happened, and given that we know things need to change, what needs to happen before too much more time slips away?
We all need to understand that the reserve system is unfixable. If in fact FN people want to have self- government as individual “nations” across the country known as Canada then they have to become much more municipal in governance, generating taxes and setting by laws. Individuals need to get title to their homes. Home ownership is a very important step towards beating back poverty. Our home is often our biggest investment and our most important possession from a physical and emotional point of view.
Economic opportunity for many FN communities could revolve around local food production. We now have the technology to grow many kinds of vegetable based foods within a community, regardless of how remote the community may be. Greenhouse technology is a must for remote communities to be enabled to grow their own food. Domestic animal based food production isn’t practical in many remote communities because hay and grain can’t be grown there, but vegetables will grow anywhere you have a greenhouse, water and sunshine. The wild animal harvest is still an option in many remote communities.
Getting back to time, it was proposed back in the 1960s by Prime Minister Trudeau and Indian Affairs minister Jean Chretien that the so-called Indian Act be dissolved. The FN leaders objected. If they had agreed, it would be interesting to see how that “cure” might have succeeded to bring about positive change and healing. Instead, a law that was brought in in the 1800s and was to be abolished in the 1970s, but wasn’t, is still inflicting fresh wounds today.
Until man provides the cure, God may not be able to do the healing.