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Reconciliation is not a return to the past – it's creating something new together
David A. Robertson is a Swampy Cree novelist and the author of 52 Ways to Reconcile.
It will take longer to get to reconciliation if we don't fully understand what we're attempting to do. That statement might be self-evident, but it is no less relevant. When it comes to reconciliation, in my experience, I am not sure how effective our actions can be if they are actions based on a misnomer. The term reconciliation itself, within the context of this countrywide movement, in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, is most certainly an inaccurate description.
What does reconciliation mean?
It's essential to be clear: I don't want to discount Canadians' work on reconciliation. As with anything relatively new, there is a learning curve. But we have done well, although we can't rest on our laurels. We must forge ahead and look to the future, invested in the path and the length we need to walk it. Because this is a marathon, it is not a sprint. The Grandparents do not say that healing takes one generation; it takes seven.
The dictionary definition indicates reconciliation is the restoration of friendly relations. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people want to have a friendly relationship. I have been around long enough and have been to enough places across Turtle Island to be sure of that.
Is that what we're trying to do? Restore friendly relations? Restoration is returning to something. What do we want to return to?
Here's a quick example of reconciliation: Two people meet, fall in love and everything is great. They move in with each other, have children, and look to the future with love and hope. But then something breaks, and the relationship falters. The couple splits. Years later, after a lot of work and healing themselves individually, they can, in turn, heal their relationship. They return to what they used to be.
That is reconciliation. Here's my question: When was the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people right? It wasn't. Ever. So, there is nothing worth returning to.
On one level of this journey, reconciliation is indeed proper terminology. Thanks to colonialism's historical and continuing effects, there is brokenness within Indigenous communities. The former principal at Jack River School in Kinosao Sipi (Norway House Cree Nation) once told me that you can't heal brokenness with brokenness. She meant that teachers needed to heal from their trauma, direct or passed down, before they could genuinely help the kids. Individually, in our families, and in our communities, we have work to do to heal before we can even think about the breadth of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations.
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But when we get there in seven generations (and keep in mind, with the impacts of colonialism still prevalent across Turtle Island, that clock hasn't quite started ticking yet), we will not be returning to anything.
My father passed away in December, 2019, just a couple of months before the world shut down. At the time of his death, he had been working with a group of knowledge keepers, of Grandparents, on a new term for reconciliation, considering what it really entails, the work we really need to be doing. Their focus was not on returning to anything, but rather, on starting a dialogue.
I found a paper in my dad's stuff entitled Guiding Principles for Working Together to Build Restoration and Reconciliation. The first point is 'Building Relationships through Mutual Respect and Understanding – respect enhances our ability to see, hear, and value others.'
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You sit across from me, we share with one another, we learn about one another, and through that respectful interaction we begin to see through the preconceptions we might have of each other. We see each other as human beings, first and foremost, and through knowledge transfer, we develop empathy, understanding and respect.
That is how you build a good relationship. It's a foundational practice that ensures, going forward, you have something solid to stand on. Together. You and I. Collectively, it doesn't mean that we are returning to anything. What it means is that we are building something for the first time. It means that we are building community.
Do you want to know the dictionary definition of community? It is a group of people with a shared interest living together within a larger society. We don't all have to do the same thing. Not at all. You have your life, and I have mine. But within the context of what we continue to call reconciliation, we do have a shared interest: coming together, working with and for each other, for equitable opportunities where everybody has a chance at success.
Because we recognize that one person's victory is the victory of the community we have built, and that success, the stuff that comes from listening and learning, from empathy and action, will lead us to a better, strong and sustainable future.
Whatever we want to call what we're doing, that's the way forward.
