Easter Musings

In spite of all the Alleluias this Easter season, do you sometimes find your faith tested and your heart heavy?  Daily we hear in the media another item added to a universal litany of woes:  terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium, insufficient responsible action being taken on the urgent environmental and social challenges facing the world, inhumane conditions on Aboriginal reserves, helpless immigrants fleeing war and certain death in their countries, concerns about Canada’s assisted suicide decision and the list continues.

As a teenager in the ‘60s with its flower children, opposition to the Vietnam War and valiant efforts of the Peace Corps etc., I truly believed that our generation could make the world a place where peace, love, equality and justice would reign.  I have often lamented about the sad state of our common home today and its failure to realize our lofty dreams.

Now, fifty years later, with persistence in centering prayer, contemplative living and a growing shift in consciousness, I find myself better able to come to terms with the world as it is. I strive to work for peace in my own sphere of life and to not lose heart.  My enhanced view of the world allows me to see seeds of hope being sown in our dear world at the same time as we come face to face with global violence and conflict.  The clash of armies and cultures will eventually lead to laying down arms and seeking peace.

In my Easter musings, I have been inspired by the age old message of the Pascal Mystery.  Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection are a model for seeing the troubled state of the world with fresh eyes. Recall Jesus’ words to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and then to enter his glory?” (Luke 24.26)

Following the November terrorist attacks in Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois urged his people, “May no one allow himself to be defeated by panic and hatred”.  In a similar vein, the words of St. Pope John Paul II encourage us:  “Do not abandon yourselves to despair.  We are Easter people and halleluiah is our song”.

Yes, deep in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome some day.

Jean Moylan, CSJ

The Reason You Walk: A Book Review

The title of the book comes from an Anishinaabe travelling song used to close their gatherings in the Lake of the Woods country. It is sung from the perspective of the Creator singing to you:

“I have created you and therefore you walk, I am your motivation, I am that spark inside you call love, which animates you and allows you to live by Anishinaabe values, I am the destination at the end of your life that you are walking toward.”                        

Wab Kinew’s memoir is a tribute to his father and the effect residential life had on three generations; his grandfather, father and himself. It is also a story of reconciliation. Kinew begins his memoir with descriptions of his father’s early life. He was a happy youngster living at home with his family and relatives until that day when a man in a black robe came to the reservation to take him away to St. Mary’s Indian Residential School outside Kenora Ontario. Only after 60 years, from the vantage of old age did Wab Kinew’s father, Ndede, open up to his son about the abuse he suffered and the experience he had watching his young Indian friend being killed by a group of men, of his being raped and humiliated and being made to kneel at his father’s funeral when Indian custom dictated that he stand. These are very personal stories and knowing them makes the latter part of Ndede’s life all the more remarkable. The residential schools were a social experiment with the aim of “taking the Indian” out of the child which we now recognize as “Cultural Genocide”.

One of the worst legacies of the residentials schools was “the emotional, physical, and familial gulf confronting survivors who never learned how to parent their children.” Ndede overcame the pitfalls, surviving alcoholism, racism, a failed marriage and finally returning to his Indian roots. He was a traditional chief who married a non-Indian, Wab’s mother. In his memoir Wab relates his own struggle in his youth. He was a former rapper, immersed in alcoholism, drugs and spent time in jail. Then, finally taking responsibility for his life just as his father had, he became an academic, a hereditary chief, a journalist and a father. He worked for the CBC and has become an urban activist and has recently announced he is seeking a political life

When Ndede was diagnosed with cancer Wab left his work at the CBC to be with his father during the last months of his life. His sister also returned from Europe putting her doctoral studies on hold. During this time father and son worked on an Internet App for the Anishinaabe language. The bonding that took place between these two men is a heartwarming story. Both men worked at the university promoting courses in Indian Studies. When Ndede died there was a funeral service on the reserve and a memorial service in Winnipeg. It was attended by many dignitaries including Archbishop James Weisgerber who had been a friend, as well as many politicians, the premier, cabinet ministers, university colleagues, students, First Nations elders, and two former national chiefs. Forgiveness became Ndede’s way of finding peace. He had met Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and was present at Kateri’s canonization in 2012 .

Both Wab and his father were Sundancers. This Indian Spiritual Ceremony had been outlawed in the USA in 1895 and in Canada in 1904. It did continue in secret and is now being recognized as a legitimate religious ceremony. Wab’s description of his own piercing on the last day of the four day ritual was fascinating to read. The memoir ends almost as a meditation on the meaning of life.

“To be hurt, yet forgive, to do wrong, but forgive yourself, to depart from this world
leaving only love. This is the reason you walk”.

This is a must read book that will help us to understand the way forward. Kinew wants us to realize that there are three groups at the conference table in Canada. The Federal, Provincial and First Nations Governments.                                                  

Guest blogger Janet Brisson

Book Review The Reason You Walk: Wab Kinew, Penquin Canada, 2015.

The Sphinx Has Gone

The Sphinx has gone. The Greek image of frozen snow, ice and sand, standing four feet high leered out over the iron girders of the breakwater.  Its base formed from ice and snow built up behind the breakwater. The lashing waves kept rolling in eroding the structure from underneath.  Frozen chunks were breaking off disappearing and floating about driven by the persistent thrust of the waves.

The Sphinx lingered on. From the window I had a side view of her sculpted face, plaintive and sad. Unseeing eyes reminded me of the old Greek myths of sirens luring sailors at sea. Meanwhile waves rolled relentlessly in land spooling white ocean sprays yards high.

One morning she was gone, not a trace of her frozen image. Instead, a flotilla of white-bellied ducks appeared romping in the tossing waves. Bobbing, floating, diving and shaking their heads as they re-appeared a few yards away. It was wonderful to view their maneuvering like a floating pantomime free for anyone to watch as they moved down the lake.

Spring is just awakening from the frozen sober days of winter. I can feel the chill in the air and even the allure of one of those spectacular sunsets over Lake Huron. Still, spring has a certain hesitancy of …Not Yet…

This is but a moment in time. I have witnessed the Sphinx, the Ducks and the clashing thrust of the relentless waves crashing into shore. I too must go. I have caught an image of the changing of the seasons, the passing grandeur of time.

Eileen Foran, CSJ
Derrynane – March 2016

Federal budget a step toward Indigenous reconciliation

The Trudeau government's budgetary promise to Canada’s Indigenous communities is as encouraging as it is overdue   “I commit to you that the Government of Canada will walk with you on a path of true reconciliation, in partnership and friendship.” So vowed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he donned the traditional headdress accompanying honorary membership in the Tsuut’ina Nation earlier this month. The ceremony, held near Calgary, Alberta, involved over 100 Treaty Chiefs from across Canada. Trudeau was also awarded the name Gumistiyi, “The One Who Keeps Trying.” As evidenced by the government’s inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women, as well as last week’s budget, which directs billions in new funding toward indigenous communities, Trudeau is indeed trying to signal a new federal relationship with Canada’s indigenous citizens. As the prime minister claimed, there was no relationship “more important to me and to Canada” than the one involving “First Nations, the Métis Nation, and the Inuit.” In the budget released last Tuesday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, $8.4 billion has been earmarked over the next five years, in phases, for infrastructure, health and education initiatives. Declaring the new investment “historic,” Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde claimed the new funding will be a “very significant step” in improving the quality of life “for our people.” The new spending is unparalleled, pledging $3.4 billion more than the moribund 2005 Kelowna Accord, which was endorsed by Paul Martin but eschewed by Stephen Harper. This budgetary promise to Canada’s indigenous communities is as encouraging as it is overdue. As a CBC investigation released last fall revealed, many of Canada’s First Nations still experience appalling health, housing, and sanitation services, mirroring in some cases the desperate conditions of the most impoverished nations in the global south (conditions of special concern for MP Carolyn Bennett, herself a physician and now Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs). Two-thirds of all Canada’s First Nations communities, for example, have been under a drinking water advisory during the past decade, with the Neskantaga First Nation of Ontario suffering under a “boil water” order for 20 years. Imagine having to boil your city tap water for 20 days, let alone 20 years, and you get a droplet of what our indigenous brothers and sisters have to endure each day. For years. And as UN human rights observers, government reports, and media investigations have repeatedly observed, First Nations housing across the nation is deplorable, with severe shortages, overcrowding, and ramshackle homes the norm rather than the exception. In the devastating case of the northern Ontario Cree community of Attawapiskat, for example, the Cree leadership was forced to declare a state of emergency five years ago. With dozens of families living in non-insulated tents and makeshift sheds, sans heat or water, and many more living in condemned buildings, conditions are death-dealing. The average temperature for January in Attawapiskat is -27C. While indigenous leaders such as Chief Bellegarde have welcomed the increased resources heralded in the new budget, others, such as Cindy Blackstock, President of the First Nation Child and Family Caring Society, have been less enthusiastic. She notes that $634.8 million pledged to child welfare is spread out over five years, when there is urgent need now for help. Moreover, she notes, the largest portion is slated for the fall of 2019, after the next federal election. For Timothy Leduc, a scholar whose research touches on indigenous world views and climate change, such critiques reflect a sense that Canada needs to move eventually to a federal budget that “totally revisions” the status quo. Leduc, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of the forthcoming book, A Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond, notes there is a “deep historic discord” between Canada’s historical resource-based economy and Indigenous lifeways entailing profound connections to the land. We are in a time, he avers, “when fast and broad changes are needed; changes that have cultural depth and practical implications for all.” As Leduc’s work suggests, the healing of relations and the fostering of friendship among indigenous persons, the Canadian government, and the entire multicultural skein of Canada, will involve deep shifts in our reigning social, economic, cultural and ecological patterns. This healing will require that all of us, not just the prime minister, “keep trying.” By: Stephen Bede Scharper  republished with his permission.  Stephen Bede Scharper is an associate professor of environment at the University of Toronto. His column appears monthly.

A Welcome Anomaly in Aboriginal Justice

On March 24, 2016, the Globe and Mail reported that “outspoken” Justice Melvyn Green broke from “sentencing traditions that have contributed to widespread incarceration of aboriginal Canadians” by sentencing a 40 year old aboriginal man to 30 months of probation  in place of an expected two to five year prison sentence. The Federal prosecution service is appealing this sentence. Justice Green noted the dismal life experience of the man whose father had been raised in an orphanage, whose mother had spent ten years in a residential school, and whose parents were both abusive alcoholics. The accused man had grown up in a housing project in Toronto, “suffered from racism, was bullied, drank and used and sold drugs”. Yet this man had been on bail for 27 months since his arrest in 2013, had remained crime and drug free, obtained a high school diploma, attended college, and held down a job. He is in a stable, long term marriage and an excellent father to his young son.   Justice Green’s decision reflects Trudeau’s directive to increase the use of restorative justice and reduce imprisonment among aboriginals.  The article in the Globe and Mail noted Justice Green’s advocacy for the “moral imperative of restraint, i.e., justice dispensed without revenge. In 2013 Justice Green’s article in a criminal lawyers’ newsletter stated that crime laws passed by Steven Harper’s government had “cast a dark shadow on the sentencing principles of proportionality and restraint”. 

An article in the February 29, 2016 issue of Maclean’s magazine by Nancy Macdonald paints an ugly picture of how Canada’s justice system mistreats Indigenous people.  In the last decade, admissions of white adults to Canadian prisons declined while incarceration rates for indigenous people surged, e.g., a 112 percent increase for aboriginal women. Although Indigenous people constitute four per cent of our population, provincial and territorial correctional facilities have occupancy rates of 36 per cent aboriginal women and 25 per cent aboriginal men. The Maclean’s article is well worth consideration.  It describes the ongoing effects of residential schools on aboriginal populations, the short shift accorded aboriginal clients by “duty counsel”, and the failure of courts to follow principals outlined by the Supreme Court in R. v. Gladue which were to be used in sentencing aboriginals.  The increasing use of dangerous offender designation, particularly among aboriginal persons, has increased trapping those affected in lengthy imprisonment; in Saskatchewan, 80 per cent of inmates are aboriginal.  Aboriginal offenders are far less likely to be housed in minimum-security facilities and to be place in segregation.  The Maclean’s article states that “Ottawa, which, for a decade, has been ignoring calls to reform biased correctional admission test, bail, and other laws disproportionately impacting Indigenous offenders.  Instead, it appears to be incarcerating as many Indigenous people as possible, for as long as legally possible, with far-reaching consequences for Indigenous families.”  This effect is not due to a crime spree but “because of the impact of social factors, government policy, and mandatory minimum sentences”.

There is no simple solution to the aberration of lopsided justice for aboriginal people in Canada. Rather the historical and current factors in aboriginal populations and changes in how aboriginal people are treated in our justice system must all be addressed. Radical change begins with examination of our own attitudes, biases, and actions. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a great beginning; implementing its recommendations needed to bring about justice for Indigenous Canadians.

Pat McKeon, CSJ