I want to address the elephant in the room.
Truth and Reconciliation is hard work for everybody, not just a box to check off and say it is done.
You can’t have Reconciliation before Truth.
Land acknowledgements are just a beginning, but they are meaningless without learning more about why they are said.
Saying sorry and throwing money at us means nothing if the negative behaviour doesn’t change.
What negative behaviour, you ask? Well, let me tell you. While the government says over and over that they are committed to Reconciliation, they don’t seem to be able to speak the truth, let alone fix the problems they caused.
Moving in on unceded territories that Indigenous People are desperately trying to save for future generations, with militarized police, assault rifles, and attack dogs doesn’t seem to look much like Reconciliation to me.
Forcing pipelines through Indigenous territories because settlers don’t want them running near their towns and cities doesn’t show me how Reconciliation is working.
Throwing journalists in jail for reporting on these things and destroying their tools of the trade (cameras, etc.) doesn’t really look like an action plan for truth.
The horrific news stories that emerged last summer when ground-penetrating radar revealed what residential school survivors have been telling people for generations: the genocide and attempted erasure of an entire race of people.
People cried, they donated, memorials were set up worldwide to commemorate the thousands of children who never made it home from their living nightmare.
But as the headlines changed to other news stories, these tears dried up, the donations slowed, and it appears that the world has moved on.
Truth: Generations of Indigenous People have been murdered, raped, denied basic human rights, ridiculed, removed from their homes, their lands, caged in, and treated like animals, all to make room for settlers to take over this great land we call Turtle Island.
To this day, Indigenous People are still being murdered at an alarming rate, still being denied basic human rights, and still being run off of what is left of their land at gunpoint.
In Wet’suwet’en territory, on the west coast, Coastal GasLink (CGL) is preparing to tunnel under one of the last places that I know of on the planet where the river provides clean drinking water.
Yes. You can drink the water right out of the river.
Meanwhile in Nunavut they have gasoline in their “treated water.” They are pumping river water to their homes, but this water is not clean, and needs to be boiled.
Divide and conquer is a game the government plays with us; tokenism is how they get away with it.
Ask enough people, and you will get the answer you are looking for. I have said this before; we are not immune to greed. Indigenous People are also human beings with the same shortcomings and faults as other races.
The government created the Indian Act. The Indian Act is a tool used to control Indigenous People. The Indian Act forces Indigenous People to form colonial government systems that conform to colonial laws, which directly conflicts with our own laws and governmental systems.
So, when the government and the big corporations say they have consulted with Indigenous People to continue the rape and pillage of Mother Earth, they are really only consulting themselves.
The Oxford dictionary describes tokenism as:
The practice of placing or promoting individuals from disadvantaged groups (e.g., women, ethnic minorities, disabled people) into high-profile roles in the organization in order to give the impression that the organization practises equal opportunity.
It represents a cynical move by managers to disguise or ignore the structures and procedures that disadvantage women, ethnic minorities, and disabled people.
In this way, whilst the token individuals may benefit personally, their role does nothing to help further the cause of the disadvantaged group to which they belong. In fact, it might have a negative impact because the token individuals become examples for organizational decision-makers to illustrate the meritocratic nature of the organization and to neutralize arguments for change.
These things are not in the past like so many people choose to believe; they are happening today all across Canada and the United States.
By the time settlers got to the west coast, things like making treaties had fallen by the wayside, and they just plain stole the land, while they stole the children to distract the Indigenous People.
Meanwhile, the treaties they did make with us have been broken, denied, and ignored, tied up in red tape. At the same time, they continued to destroy this beautiful place, calling it progress.
If smaller communities like ours are well on their way to learning the truth and implementing positive change, then why can’t the big governments do the same?
Land acknowledgements are a good start, but learning the truth and making positive changes in your thinking, words, and actions is the road to Reconciliation. There are no shortcuts.
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Cory Bilyea is an Indigenous journalist currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River nations, better known as Onkwehonwe, the original people. Cory is a survivor of intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools.
