Surrendering Power to Reverence
And there’s more, of course: “Native students were not allowed to speak in their Native languages. They were only allowed to speak English regardless of their fluency and would face punishment if they didn’t. The discipline enforced at these boarding schools was severe. . . . Additionally, Native students were neglected and faced many forms of abuse, including physical, sexual, cultural, and spiritual. They were beaten, coerced into performing heavy labor. Their daily regimen consisted of several hours of marching and . . .
Fasten your seat belts: “. . . recreational time consisted of watching disturbing movies such as Cowboys and Indians.”
And then there’s all those, uh, unmarked graves. The Indigenous Foundation points out that medical attention was scarce and infectious diseases sometimes ravaged a school and, guess what? Kids died. Lots of them died. And: “Parents were rarely informed of their children’s deaths.”
Just sit with that for a moment.
The dehumanization present here is virtually total. And it’s the work of government plus religion, opening up a question that, I fear, the pope did not address: Who are we that we could do this?
Can we begin answering this question? I can’t speak for Canada here, but the United States has spent most of its existence spiritually encaged by what I might call the “critical race theory mandate.” Don’t look at it, don’t talk about it, don’t acknowledge it. Don’t make yourself (or me) uncomfortable. But, OK, if you insist, sorry about that. Sorry for slavery as well. Sorry for the looming Armageddon.
As Politico noted, regarding the pope’s visit to Canada, “many he came to comfort say he failed to offer a concrete way forward. Aside from a vague pledge to conduct a ‘serious investigation into the facts of what took place,’ many observers were left wondering what happens next. What concrete actions will the pope take to improve the lives of survivors?”
I would expand this question. Beyond reparations, what, oh God, can we learn? Can we sit in a circle with the wounded survivors and learn from them? It is, after all, the indigenous cultures of the planet that, among so much else, have begun bequeathing to the dominant culture such social sanities as Restorative Justice: turning our focus from punishment to healing, from separation to wholeness.
“All things are interrelated,” notes Rupert Ross at the end of his book, "Returning to the Teachings" (quoting from the book The Sacred Tree). “Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.”
Can we learn this politically? Can we stop being conquerors? Can we surrender power to reverence?
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(Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, “Courage Grows Strong at the Wound,” is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.)
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