What is Reconciliation Without Truth?

My orange shirt will stay at home this year.

This past Friday, office workers, school children, and everyone in between was seen donning orange shirts across BC. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation falls on Monday, September 30th and coincides with Orange Shirt Day. The orange shirt campaign was launched by Phyllis Webstad of BC’s Cariboo region. It symbolizes the orange shirt that was taken from her when she entered residential school as a girl. The Orange Shirt Society:

Commemorat[es] the residential school experience, witnessing and honouring the healing journey of the Survivors and their families. EVERY CHILD MATTERS.

“Every child matters” has become a rallying cry, plastered anywhere and everywhere, both with sincerity and an intent to virtue signal. Similarly, the purpose of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is meant to remember those who never came home from residential school and their families. These two commemorative days, their meanings, and their symbols have fluidly mixed together and seem to be enjoining a solemn day such as Remembrance Day, with its traditions and symbolism shared by all.

This post is meant to be a self-reflection about this new holiday and its meaning, as I find myself more uncomfortable with its celebration. There was a time when I would have gone to events, worn the orange shirt, and enacted any required rituals. I even organized an event myself. This was pre-2021, the year that I would say interest, kindness, and openness became an insufficient sign of respect for First Nations, to be replaced by a carefully rehearsed and doctrinaire set of beliefs. Deviation from these beliefs has been met increasingly with scorn and societal rejection. I remember clearly the day that the news broke with the announcement by Rosanne Casimir, Chief of Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc (TteS). I discussed it with my neighbour at work, wondering if it implied that children had actually been killed or that they had died of disease, or both. We all knew that conditions had not been good; poor food and shared living space led to higher mortality from serious childhood disease in the early part of the 20th century. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has documented much abuse as well, although there are many who doubt the veracity of some testimony due to the allure of compensation for former students.

That day however another colleague stopped by my desk to comment on the announcement, stating that it was proof of a genocide. I asked whether she meant a cultural genocide, but she insisted that there had been a genocide in the true meaning of the term. At the time I really just thought she was mistaken, that she didn’t understand that this term was more appropriately used for the Holocaust or Rwanda ethnic cleansing. Since then, however, the use of this term, which was never properly justified in a factual way, has proliferated, and blind agreement with it is now expected.

It has become inappropriate for anyone, particularly people of Europeans descent, but even Indigenous Canadians, to question this. Any differing opinions about this aspect of Canada’s history have become invalid. The only valid opinion seemingly is that which accords with a very specific narrative emanating from Indigenous political organizations, the media, advocacy organizations, non-profits and government agencies, some private companies, and many Indigenous communities.

The consequences of not reiterating the approved narrative can be dire. A very rare dissenting voice, Aaron Gunn, was cut out of the BC Liberals leadership race in part because of his view that a genocide did not occur. Teachers must parrot the same nonsensical trope, on pain of dismissal if they don’t. Frances Widdowson, former professor at Mount Royal University, was fired for having a more critical perspective about the TteS find in Kamloops, BC.

It’s become unclear what can be said on the subject. Simply stating a more nuanced opinion on the matter, at this distance down the rabbit hole, appears to be verboten. Famously, the federal NDP are even seeking to criminalize “condoning, justifying or downplaying” the residential school system, in order to protect former students and their families. It’s surely more harmful to Indigenous people to be allowed only one perspective on the issue, for their young people to be told that their country had genocidal intentions towards them. And so, as we get closer to this national holiday created for the purpose of collectively acknowledging historical truths, as a country we are completely unable to have an honest conversation.

I don’t believe that this dogmatic, overt control over the narrative is actually what most Indigenous people are seeking. We are all individuals with our own perspectives. Many students did experience abuse in those schools, but there were many others who, while they surely experienced the hardship of being away from their families, did not experience physical or sexual abuse. The book by Bev Sellars for example, They Called Me Number One, about her and her family members’ experiences at residential school near Williams Lake, tells a more nuanced story about the pain of leaving home and the reality of living away from your language and culture. Sellars personally did not experience any abuse though.

This part of Canada’s history is complex. That many children lived away from their families, often with no choice, must have created much sadness for students and families. And abuse, it goes without saying, must be addressed, which was the purpose of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. However, in schools and in society, we are being forced to accept a dogma, with no room for questions. There is only one perspective to be had, which, while containing some truth, does not address the extent or complexity of it. Reconciliation implies that we come to understand, but not that we do so without asking hard questions, nor by abandoning critical thinking. By putting aside our individual thought and reason, no real reconciliation can be possible.

I don’t know when, or if, I will be able to wear the orange shirt again. I suspect it might be once I feel I have a choice in the matter, and once we are allowed to think for ourselves to discover the truth together.