Sept 30th - Canada National Truth & Reconciliation day
When you land in Vancouver Island and leave the parking area to hit the Grant McConachie highway, you pass a big sign "Welcome to traditional Musqueam territory". Not welcome to Canada or welcome to Vancouver but Welcome to traditional Musqueam territory.
When you prepare your vacation and you consult the Vancouver website (and many other websites), you see statements like
"The City of Vancouver acknowledges that it is situated on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations."
Our guide at the whale watching tour literally welcomed us with a statement "First of all I want to welcome you and thank the First Nations xxx where we recognize we are on their traditional lands and ..."
And this is the entrance hall of the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, where I was very disappointed to hear that the entire indigenous department has been closed for indefinite time
Frankly, we sighed at that moment. It all felt exaggerated and claustrophobic. As an outsider it felt at that moment like Canada is in a massive muscle cramp, not daring to breathe or move any more scared to do something wrong.
Yesterday on September 30th, Canada celebrates it's National Truth & Reconciliation Day. It coincides with Orange Shirt day which symbolises the losses the First Nation Children have suffered and endured in the Indian Residential Schools.
Canada has executed cultural genocide on the aboriginal people and this was known already for a few decades but the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves in recent years around Residential schools have caused a shock wave through the country and further. And now Canada must come at terms with its own dark history and the consciousness of the harm their own government system and the Catholic church have caused. It needs truth & reconciliation...humility and listening to the Native survivors and recognition of their intergenerational trauma.
During my exchange the first nations were mostly invisible, reactions from some people I knew overly negative ("they claim their land 110% back" "they get free government houses and let them deteriorate" "they are alcoholics") , to me they were all "indians" and I loved museum displays".
Words changed in the coming years...they were not one big blub of "Indians" but distinctive First Nations, road signs along reserves became multilingual with native languages and more and more we saw First Nations opening their own cultural centres, interpretive signs and touristic infrastructure. We are greeted by aboriginal guides in their own language, after which they explain their struggle to relearn their own language and to keep it alive, to rediscover their own trades , ... I notice by surprise that a First Nation can execute some rights to close down a popular BC Provincial Park for over a month at short notice to execute their traditions. And even more to my surprise, the reactions on social media were more positive than sour. I see my social media feed filling with orange signs on Sept 30th. ...
It is very interesting to observe the changes and see the process Canada is going through. And not saying Canada is perfect now and doing enough when I read it only accomplished 9 of the 70 or 80+ recommendations of its own truth & reconciliation report of 2015.
While I might have experienced some of the reactions now overcautious, maybe this is what is needed. It's a process that will take time. Maybe I'm first shocked that a well-known qualitative government shuts down its known aboriginal displays, but maybe it is not appropriate to show stolen art or to display other nations from an outsider colonist perspective. Maybe the only appropriate way is the first nations bring their own story? I don't know. It is a fact that they have to find a way to face its history and find a way to live together in the future.
It triggered the thought for myself that we Europeans aren't even facing the elephants in our room, about our colonization histories, the traces and roots of racism in our societies. We don't have the empathy and listening ongoing as is happening in Canada. While generalizing, Canada has gone through such a shock, making it lose its own arrogance, while Europe isn't facing its own actions yet.
Wouldn't it be an idea to make a huge in your face banner near the royal galleries in Oostende, stating that these heritage buildings built by Leopold II had part of its finances in plundering Congo and that we recognize the intergenerational trauma that generated? Could we give autonomy over part of the Africa Museum in Tervuren to the African diaspora, rather than having Europeans expose Africa through our eyes. And the atrocities in Congo should be way way way more in your face there than they've currently done. Just some ideas as I think we can be much more explicit in our truth and reconciliation too, but I fear we are not ready for that yet.
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Comments
My last trip to Europe and the museum did make me feel different then I have in years past. Why is there a huge collection of Egyptian artifacts in the Louvre - that's not Egypt... Or Muesems in London - where so much of it all is stolen. At what point do we give things back to their rightful owners - whether its land or artifacts.
Jenn