Have you ever had the feeling in some interactions that you were not getting “the truth, the whole truth”? This has been the case in the re-telling of our Canadian history, and many are now awakening to the fact of how the truth can “make us free” .
Because there are many “blanks” in Canadian history of the relationship with the Indigenous people of the land, the Blanket Exercise has been devised by KAIROS http://www.kairoscanada.org/dignity-rights/indigenous-rights/blanket-exercise as a teaching tool for both Indigenous and non-indigenous groups to become aware of the more accurate knowledge of our early Canadian history.
In this interactive workshop, the participants take on the roles of the Indigenous peoples, and some Europeans. The narrator guides the group through the story, as the roles are mimed. The participants walk around on the blankets, which represent the land.
It becomes obvious as the story unravels, that the once friendly and collaborative relationship between the Indigenous and non-indigenous people gradually erodes as the land is taken from the indigenous peoples through broken treaties and laws made by the Europeans. This is visibly illustrated by the blankets being folded smaller, the participants leaving the blankets because they have been isolated from each other through the Residential school system, or have died off due to the hazardous health conditions to which they were intentionally exposed.
It is a story we would like to put UNDER a blanket, but it is through this very story, once experienced, that there are seeds of possibility planted for real truth and reconciliation to take place.
The participants, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, experience, at a very deep level, the reality of the injustices and the impact of that experience usually leads to constructive action.
The TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf of last June made its several recommendations to the Federal Government. This broken relationship will not be swept under a blanket. On the contrary, it is by the use of blankets that new life has the potential to emerge as we become empowered to be more knowledgeable and free to be change-makers for a unified and reconciled country.
Kathleen Lichti, CSJ and Priscilla Solomon, CSJ