Survival

Come on in and enjoy a respite from the cold.  I have some spaghetti for you, made with some nice healthy ground turkey and lots of onion and garlic.  Quite tasty.  And I'd like to tell you a story.

So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is in Saskatchewan.  And at the First Nations University of Canada.  Which is where I work.  So I've spent some time listening to the stories being told to the commission. I'd love to say that what I heard was a beautiful thing of healing and coming to terms with the evils of genocide but that just wasn't the case.

I listened to an older man, probably one of the last generation to be put into residential schools.  He talked of the hate he felt, the damage he'd done.  He spoke of the guilt and pain he felt for knowing that his own hatred flowed into the world and that people in that very crowd, people he never knew, were damaged by his sons and daughters because of the hate he showed them.  He talked of how he was still damaged, still causing damage, still not quite a human because of the evil he was subjected to and accepted as a part of living.  I would love to be able to show you the true depth of his pain and suffering but it is his story, his life, and I doubt I could do it justice.

But here is the power of the First Nations culture.  I looked into the faces around me.  I watched the reactions of the people listening.  The faces were not filled with pity, nor were they filled with judgment.  Instead it was a mixture of understanding and determination.  A kind of power of witnessing the degradation of a person, of a culture, and not seeing it as something that needed vengeance, instead something that required understanding.  A kind of communal gathering of spirit and will to take part in the draining out of the infected and diseased parts of a culture and gain the knowledge required to fix it.

And then, as the lunch began, and the commission and sharing circles broke up, so did the massive clouds of pain and hurt.  Instead a community formed.  There was laughter, there was hugging and joking.  There was love.  That man who told his story sat among strangers and listened to their jokes, laughed and was a part of the whole.  And that is the beginning of true healing.