Reconciliation

What’s “Reconciliation”?

We were saved from the great flood on In-SHUCK-ch Mountain. The survivors gave rise to the tribe. Our land and its bounty sustained us. We waged wars to protect it from others. We took what we needed and gave thanks for it. We cared for the land, and it cared for us.

We were one with the land and with all natural things. It was our spirituality.

We shared freely. We traded and intermarried with our neighbours, creating alliances and enriching our cultures.

This is the way it was, until the sama7 came.  What we had known for countless generations was forcibly set aside. Within several generations the newcomers had reduced us to a dependent people.


Our grandparents’ generation held onto their ways for as long as they could, but the Indian Act and the Catholic Church were unstoppable. 

When British Columbia joined Canada, BC assumed it owned our lands and Canada took control of our affairs. We were shut out from competing in business and industry because without land, we were unable to raise capital.

Our parents’ generation was sent away to residential schools and they lost their language, their identity and without “family”, weren’t prepared to parent their own children.

To survive in this new reality, our parents joined the wage economy. But more and more they depended on government for housing, education and even basic sustenance. Our fathers worked in the logging industry, which peaked in the 1950s. Soon, because of the need to be close to their children, and to follow the wage economy, they moved away. By 1970 our communities were empty.

By the early 1980s, our leaders began to question the way things were.  They brought our people together in general assemblies. We met outdoors, and camped outside because there were no facilities.  We recognized that the isolation, the lack of housing, the poor road conditions, and the absence of jobs meant despair, unless we did something. And so, we did…

In 1990, several years before the BC Treaty Commission was created, we sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada saying that we wished to resolve outstanding matters related to our title. And, we got ready.

 “Reconciliation is not a noun, it’s a verb.” I wish I’d said it, but credit goes to Chris O’Connor, former mayor of Lytton. He spoke his words at a Bright New Day workshop hosted by Lytton First Nation last summer.  He thought reconciliation was a process and that it would be better understood as a verb.

Recent court cases, the need for economic certainty, and the obvious ‘have not’ social conditions that First Nations faced, called for a different approach. This generally describes how governments and aboriginal peoples must come to terms with their shared histories, and create a new path forward. It’s a “government” thing, with no defined role for individuals or collectives.  It was not an issue for the layers of society to confront and to come to terms with. That view is changing now.

My friend Barry Penner, BC’s minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation would agree that achieving reconciliation will not be easy. History must be overcome. We carry baggage that makes us defensive. We don’t trust “government”, and government guards itself.

It reaches even further.  We don’t trust chief and council because their authorities are delegated from the minister of Indian affairs. And, we don’t trust treaty because it’s been negotiated with the “oppressors”.

So, how do we get to that good place? Well, we act. We don’t blame the church, governments, history or alcohol and drugs for disallowing us.  We can begin this at a personal level, and ask our governments to play a role.

Recognizing this, we set ourselves on a road in May 2005 when we declared the In-SHUCK-ch Nation and established the In-SHUCK-ch Nation Interim Government, with a mandate to define, exercise and protect the title and rights of the nation and its citizens. We directed that they implement the nation using our 7-Generations Plan.  It was time.

When Chris O’Connor said that capital “R” reconciliation occurs between governments and that small “r” reconciliation should occur within society – and that reconciliation was an ongoing process, I got it!

It means that reconciliation could not result from the Prime Minister’s apology for Indian Residential Schools. It did not come earlier, when the church expressed regret for its role.  Nor will it miraculously appear on the effective date of treaty.  Those are all good benchmarks, however.  It means good changes are resulting from efforts at all levels.

Let’s recognize that we’ve come a long way since we began to ask what we could do 25 years ago.  The evidence is clear.  We’ve built new communities and new homes.  We’re finally connected to the BC Hydro grid. We will ratify the BC Hydro agreements and put that matter behind us. Our roads are constantly improving. We’ve begun to bring our people home.  And, evidenced by Douglas First Nation’s business arrangements with Cloudworks Energy, we can find ways to support ourselves at home.

No, we’re not quite there, yet.  But, in time, our people will be home, in communities we have built on land that we own. We’ll have real self- government. We’ll have defined our own place within society at all levels, and we’ll be too busy learning from our mistakes and profiting from our successes to worry about what reconciliation means. Thanks, Chris.  Eppa (Gerard Peters)