What white settlers should have said

There are valuable lessons to be learned once we get past our superiority complex

BEVERLY SHEPARD

Like most Canadians, I was shocked — if not surprised — to learn of the discovery of a huge number of graves of children who had attended the residential school in Kamloops, B.C. I was deeply saddened. I was ashamed. I knew that the residential schools were wrongly conceived and, on the whole, heartlessly conducted, but this devastating news brought that knowledge into clear focus. All the words that have been said, the grief that has been expressed, the promises that have been made about the matter since that first news have only heightened my shock, sadness and shame.

From the start, I’ve felt I needed to speak up, to cry out, to protest the inequities and injustices that are still in existence, but I’ve struggled to put words together. Why? Writing usually comes easily to me: it’s what I do. Why has it been so difficult to write about these things when I have readily written about other matters I decried?

I think it is because my lack of understanding goes so deep. It’s not just residential schools I can’t comprehend. It’s the whole attitude of so many “white” people (“settlers,” “Europeans,” whatever we’re termed) toward the original people of this land.

At the beginning it wasn’t too bad, it seems. White people arrived on the east coast of the country and were met peacefully by the people who lived here, welcomed with interest, and assisted in many ways. Those who came settled quietly and non-violently, and some didn’t really settle at all. Less than 300 years later, native people supported the British in the war of 1812-1814 because they feared the invasiveness of Americans and believed the British treated them fairly and with co-operation and respect. Treaties were made and agreed to and honoured.

Then things began to change. The first residential school was opened in 1831. Here is where my comprehension fails completely. Back in Europe, the Industrial Revolution was filling the air with pollution, turning the streets black, destroying forests and farmland, and killing people with toxins, dangerous machinery and poverty. In (what is now) Canada, there dwelt people who had lived in harmony with the land for 15,000 years, who understood the interdependence of all of nature, who respected other beings that shared the land with them. And the white government and churches thought they should change that? Regarded it as wrong and in need of fixing? Decided that the deeply spiritual attitudes that had maintained a vital and nurturing relationship with the natural world for millennia needed to be suppressed, destroyed, replaced with the “white man’s religion?” How blind. How foolish. How tragic.

When I was a child, I wanted to be an Indian (the accepted term at the time). I did not know then the truth about what had been done and continued to be done to Indian lives and culture, but what I did know, or thought I knew, about Indians inspired and delighted me. Indians could walk through a forest soundlessly, so that the wildlife was not frightened away! They communicated with wild creatures! They knew all about plants and how to use them and care for them! I wanted to be like that. I had no idea of the environmental crisis that would develop as I entered and proceeded through adulthood, but I felt at some deep level — I believed — that this connection to the land and all its denizens was not just desirable, but essential.

I still believe that, and of course I’m not alone. On CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” June 5, Bob McDonald interviewed several Indigenous scientists who had wise advice, based in both conventional science and Indigenous wisdom, on sustainability and conservation of diversity. Their culture informed their research with dazzling results.

Where would we be now if settlers had, from the beginning of contact with the inhabitants of this land, abjured racist slurs, attacks and oppression — which continue today — and instead met them with the esteem and regard they deserved? Here is what should have happened. Settlers should have said to the Indigenous people: how do you do it? How do you get along with nature so well? What sort of beliefs do you hold that cause you to respect and care for our world? Please: help us to do better here in the “New World.” Teach us how to cherish and value all life. Teach us how to care for our Earth.

Teach us to walk soundlessly through the forest.