It is about re-member-ing. And to better understand at a heart level what was done TO the first peoples when the settlers came. We all are called to re-mem-ber that we are one people with diverse ways of being, knowing and enriching each other.
By journeying together in openness, respect, humility, love, truth courage, honesty and wisdom, we can come to a new united people on this land.
Healing must be part of the process of being reconciled, being one.
The colonizer needs to be healed from the shame that exists about what the early colonial ancestors did. Education about the true history of colonial and Indigenous relationships is absolutely necessary, followed by a commitment not to have this treatment repeated.
Many of the First nations Peoples do not even know the truth of their past, because Residential School survivors never spoke of their experience. When the truth is told, there is more of a chance of reconciliation.
The peoples of the 14th and 15th Century, Indigenous and colonizers, were taught by the Doctrine of Discovery, that the first peoples were savages, inferior. They believed it of themselves, and the colonizers were thereby justified in taking the land and resources.
Healing for the Indigenous involves dealing with the anger, sense of loss, frustration, through the various Indigenous ways of healing.
The colonizers also need healing, through education and by ensuring that what was done so cruelly in the 14th century to the present, is never repeated.
