Thank you Natalia for your care in this.  

 

This report that you mentioned is the report by Kevin Annett and the
Independent Commission that broke the dam on the public blockade of
information.     That report is the Foundation for the official government
and First Nation's Commission that Mike and I worked with and who produced
the report.   There will more reports from this "Truth and Reconciliation
Commission" as the information grows.   I hope the work that Mike and I did
on the future of the relationship between Canada and the First Nations will
also finally come out.   

 

It's been a long time that I've spent learning about Canada and her
relationship with the First Nations.    Early on I thought Canada had done
better than America and maybe she did but the US had more local tribal
control of the government schools earlier than Canada.   I was stunned to
understand the late dates on the schools in Canada.     

 

In 1980 when I went to Canada naively coming from the release of our
religion by the Congressional Freedom of Religion Act of 1978 and the first
open Sun Dances at Green Grass and Rosebud reservations, I had a much more
"genteel" belief about what had happened to Indian People in Canada.      As
I traveled to Canada that summer I very quickly realized that the
non-Indian's lack of information and assumptions about culture, substance
abuse and native potential was inaccurate.     I was used to the books of
Rupert Ross and had assumed that native people had access to all of the
wonderful services and culture that made Canada and the Canadian Arts
Council so admired by those of us down South.  The medical plan, the
welfare, etc.      I was unprepared for the chauvinism and paternalism that
I encountered and I very quickly had to shut my mouth since I was traveling
on peanuts and could see my support network dissolve and my being abandoned
in a foreign country with little resources of my own at the time.   I also
had a pregnant wife traveling with me.    

 

There are still amazing things in Canada and amazing people.   The lectures,
the people on this list.    My colleagues and friends and my writing
partner.     Nunavut, the First Nation's Network,  tremendous people I've
met in my work and through the Indian Telegraph.    The incredible beauty
and the rugged honesty now showing its face in these reports.    Wonderful
musicians and singers from all over the world.   A general civility and
loyalty to each other and to Canada.  The Massey Lectures, the schools, etc.
but then there is this other side, just as there is to the US.     

 

Forgiveness and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome requires respect given and
the willingness to change.   It also requires equality and the recognition
of how much each side has taken from the other in the important things like
discoveries, models, systems, families, etc.   Those things that cannot be
recovered as simple property and that constitute one's identity as a real
person.      It's not about deserving what you have or who you are but about
the self destruction that comes from a person's inability to handle their
own prejudices, envy, jealousy, venality to the point where they cannot give
their own selves permission to be a real human being.      One loses for
themselves what they cannot give to another, unless they are "damaged."

 

REH 

 

From: futurework-boun...@lists.uwaterloo.ca
[mailto:futurework-boun...@lists.uwaterloo.ca] On Behalf Of D & N
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 2:37 PM
To: futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Re: [Futurework] They came for the Children and other ecological
hubris

 

Ray,

I thought I had a copy, but it turns out my thick blue binder is called:

Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust

and it's penned by The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada. 

Cover to cover first hand reports; letters that are so painful you can
barely control your stomach. The ignorance and cruelty of the abusers, and
the positions of trust and authority they held is so completely shocking
that I cannot see anyone who either went through this hell or read through
this report able to trust government, church or educational systems again.
Well, they were all just badly raised abusers, but it will still take a few
more generations of weeding out, and we're only talking about those exposed
to sentient and empathetic educational and social environments.

Natalia

On 30/05/2013 10:31 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/opinion/ecology-lessons-from-the-cold-war.
html?hp

 

If you read the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with its
conclusions about the tenets of cultural warfare and the innocence of the
ignorant general population then you will see that Charles Elton must have
been or been influenced by First Nations philosophies and religion since the
preservation of the eco-system and diversity is called the "Way of Right
Relationship" and is the old traditional method of agricultural technology
and spirituality of the First Nation's Peoples before the Canadian schools
destroyed the processes.    What I find interesting is that the general
population is either incapable of reading or they just don't want to know
about this since it has stirred no conversation and no response from
anywhere except an occasional congratulations on being a part of the
project. 

 

Thanks to Ed who has been there, but doesn't it matter otherwise and merit
some kind of comment? 

 

REH






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