reconciliation

Those who came before us

I was recently in Australia, where I presented at Limmud Oz, a Jewish festival of learning. One thing – among many – that struck me about the community was that, on more than one occasion, Limmud sessions or other parlor meetings opened with a public acknowledgment of the elders of the Gadigal people (in Sydney) and the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation (in Melbourne).

Similar acknowledgments are becoming more common in locales across Canada – references to the Métis Nation at events in Winnipeg; the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh in Vancouver; the Wendat, Anishewabe and Massasagua in Toronto; the Algonquin in Ottawa. But I have only heard this done once in a Jewish context – at a Jewish Voices for Peace event in Ottawa.

Ittay Flescher, a Jewish educator at Mount Scopus Memorial College, a day school in Melbourne, has been one of many educators to call for his school assemblies to open with a similar acknowledgment, and feature signs on classroom walls “acknowledging country,” in Australian parlance. His shul, Shira Hadasha, a partnership minyan, also incorporates such a statement in its Prayer for Australia.

Flescher has gone deeper in raising awareness, having introduced a Grade 9 aboriginal studies course. These students were in kindergarten when the government issued its historic 2007 apology for the Stolen Generations policies, whereby aboriginal children were taken from their parents to be raised by whites – Australia’s version of Canada’s terrible Sixties Scoop.

Named Yorta Yorta Beyachad (beyachad means “together” in Hebrew), the course is anchored in a little-known event that bound Australia’s Jewish community in Shepparton to William Cooper of the Yorta Yorta tribe. Having been one of the first to launch an aboriginal civil rights movement, in 1938, Cooper – a person with no status, no voting rights and no formal citizenship, as was the case among aboriginals in Australia at the time – turned his sights to another oppressed people. Appalled by the events of Kristallnacht, Cooper marched to the German consulate in Melbourne to present a petition denouncing “the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany,” an act of protest that stayed virtually hidden until it was discovered by a Melbourne archivist in 2002.

Each year, Flescher takes his students to Yorta Yorta country in partnership with the Australian Jewish social justice organization Stand Up. For three days, they meet with elders, learn traditional dances, discuss issues around identity, and deepen their understanding of aboriginal history. They visit Cummergunja, one of the Catholic missions where aboriginals were forcibly placed in 1889. They even visited Cooper’s grave where they recited Kaddish for the victims of the Shoah. “It was an incredibly moving and humbling experience,” Flescher said.

The Canadian Jewish community is beginning to tackle the issue as well. The CJN reported in May on a Jewish teen cultural exchange to the Nipissing First Nation Reserve. And, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, several Jewish groups, including Ve’ahavta, the Toronto Board of Rabbis, the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism and CIJA, signed a “statement of solidarity and action.” Bernie Farber, former head of Canadian Jewish Congress and now head of Mosaic Institute, has been at the forefront of moves to advance deep and thoughtful discussion about the fate of the First Nations.

These are all encouraging. And, like the dancing of the hands before reciting the Shabbat candle blessing or the kissing of the mezuzah before entering a room, there is something powerful about a ritual-like statement at the beginning of a Jewish gathering to acknowledge who came before us and how we can help repair the wrongs inflicted – even if most of us, or our ancestors, were fleeing our own private horrors when we arrived at the shores of this great country.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. This article was originally published in the CJN.

Truth and reconciliation

Earlier this month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released the summary of its compendious report on the history and legacy of the Indian residential schools system. As the testimony of more than 6,750 witnesses to the commission demonstrated, that dark history, which lasted more than a century, has had catastrophic impacts on individuals and communities across the country.

There has been some controversy over the commission’s use of the term “cultural genocide” to describe the process by which the schools intended to eradicate the vestiges of First Nations culture from the children. However, as the summary document notes, “the central goals of Canada’s aboriginal policy were to eliminate aboriginal governments; ignore aboriginal rights; terminate the treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious and racial entities in Canada.”

There were 3,201 registered deaths of children in residential schools, but estimates are that nearly twice that many died – a proportion, the commission notes, that about equals the fatality rates of Canadian soldiers in the Second World War. Only half of registered deaths cited a cause, most commonly tuberculosis. Pneumonia, influenza, fire and suicide were also too-common causes of death among the children.

Over more than 100 years, an estimated 150,000 children were confined to the constellation of 139 schools, most of which were run by churches acting on behalf of the federal government. There are about 80,000 living survivors.

Traditional clothes were removed and discarded, native languages generally forbidden. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse permeated the schools, as witnesses recounted harrowing experiences at the hands of white authority figures.

Even the ostensible purpose of the schools – education – was usually sublimated to forced labor, in which children were used to run the facilities that incarcerated them.

In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the Canadian government’s role in residential schools, but the commission explicitly urges the country to move from “apology to action.”

There are 94 recommendations in the TRC’s report, including that the government should acknowledge that the state of aboriginal health today is a result of previous government policies. On education, the report urges legislation on aboriginal education that would protect languages and cultures and close the education gap experienced by First Nations peoples. It calls for a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. It asks for a national council for reconciliation to report on reconciliation progress and an annual State of Aboriginal Peoples report to be delivered by the prime minister. A statutory holiday should be created, the report says, to honor survivors, their families and communities, and memorials, community events and museums should be funded.

“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you a path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing,” Judge Murray Sinclair, the commission chair, said in releasing the report.

The commission’s recommendations are a call to action not only for the government but for Canadian citizens. We must ensure that we as individuals and collectively as Canadians take seriously the commission’s findings and that our governments act in ways that respect this history and ameliorate its impacts as much as possible.

Six Jewish organizations – Ve’ahavta, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism, Reform Rabbis of Greater Toronto, the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus and the Toronto Board of Rabbis – issued a statement of solidarity and action acknowledging the residential schools experience and its contemporary consequences.

As Jewish Canadians, we have devoted ourselves to remembering and educating about our own history and it is heartening to see our communal organizations acknowledging and standing up for the experiences of other communities. We, too, can join in the reconciliation process in many ways, beginning with the very small act of signing the solidarity pact, which can be found at statementofsolidarity.com.

The pact’s call to action includes a commitment “to meaningful public education in the Jewish community and beyond, and outreach to indigenous communities to guide us to help improve the quality of life of indigenous peoples.” At press time, its events/initiatives section asked visitors to “stay posted,” but it is up to all of us to make sure that we act in solidarity, not merely voice it.

All Canadians have an interest in making sure our government and society is held accountable for our past and that we do everything possible to ensure a better future for aboriginal Canadians. Because of our own history, Jewish Canadians have perhaps a special role in seeing this process through.

Reconciliation efforts

Ve’ahavta and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) were among the Jewish organizations participating in the ceremonies supporting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an independent commission whose mandate is to acknowledge experiences, impacts and consequences of Indian residential school (IRS) experiences. The TRC promotes awareness and public education, while working to complete an historical record of the 150-year history of the IRS system and its impacts. The TRC also works to encourage and guide a process of reconciliation and renewed relationships with all Canadians.

Ve’ahavta and CIJA presented a public statement of solidarity and action on behalf of six Jewish organizations – Ve’ahavta, CIJA, Canadian Council for Reform Judaism, Reform Rabbis of Greater Toronto, Canadian Rabbinic Caucus and Toronto Board of Rabbis – which formally acknowledges the residential school experiences, impacts and consequences, as well as the inequalities faced by aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) communities today. The statement reads:

“The pursuit of a just society is a fundamental concept at the core of Judaism. We, the signees, are motivated by the Jewish values of compassion, sharing, repairing the world and working towards justice for all. We, therefore, commit to a high level of meaningful action in partnership and solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Canada….

“The shared experiences between Jewish and indigenous communities offer a foundation of mutual understanding and unity. Our common histories include persecution, intimidation, forced assimilation and discrimination. These realities bind our two communities. We believe that our mutual values of family, language, culture, elders, and spiritual and ritual preservation – along with the connections to self-determination, kinship and homeland – bring our voices and communities together….

“Historically, indigenous peoples experienced traumatic social change, institutional violence and prolonged attempts to forcibly assimilate them into the Canadian whole. Today, indigenous peoples face disproportionately lower socio-economic conditions as compared to non-indigenous Canadians. There are dramatic disparities in the areas of education, health and well-being, life expectancy, employment, housing, living conditions, average income and access to social services, and over-representation in the justice and social assistance systems. It is important to bring to light an understanding of the history and legacy of these policies, including the residential school system, in order to achieve a just society….

“We believe that partnership and relationship-building must be based on mutual respect, cooperation and understanding. On both the community and individual level, we commit to develop partnerships as a means of celebrating diversity and learning from our respective cultures, unique heritage and traditional knowledge. Through patient and respectful dialogue, we will build capacity in our community for collective participation in promoting social justice together with indigenous peoples….

“We, the signees, commit ourselves to meaningful public education in the Jewish community and beyond and outreach to indigenous communities to guide us to help improve the quality of life of indigenous peoples. We encourage all Jews to build bridges and explore the similarities that bind all humanity, accepting and rejoicing in the differences that make us unique and in the diversity that enriches us all.”

For more information on the TRC, visit trc.ca. To sign the solidarity statement, visit statementofsolidarity.com.