What is the Blanket Exercise?

I frequently ask myself, how could I have lived almost all of my life in Canada and never became acquainted with neighboring First Nation people or their struggles? A few years ago, I was blessed with a visit to a good friend in the Yukon and came to know some wonderful women, respected elders of their people. They were very warm and I was welcomed into the fold as if I was family, not the non-indigenous stranger that I really was. I am still deeply touched by their total acceptance and kindness. Since that time I have come to learn more about the First Nation people in this country, and I have wept. We need to have our eyes opened to the injustices and struggles of our dear First Nation neighbors.

One way I/we can contribute to building awareness in others is through an historical re-enactment known as the Blanket Exercise. The Blanket Exercise is an experiential learning tool that helps participants understand how the arrival of European settlers impacted the Indigenous people who had lived here long before these colonists arrived. It traces the history of the relationship between them, exploring how and why their relationship was damaged over the years.

The Blanket Exercise is a teaching tool designed to help both Indigenous and non-indigenous groups gain a more truthful knowledge of our early Canadian history (i.e. the history of the relationship between the Indigenous People in Canada and the European settlers). 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 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. This allows all participants (whether indigenous or non-indigenous) to know the reality and the impact of the injustices experienced by native peoples. A discussion session follows.

Awareness of this untold part of our history can hopefully lead to constructive action that will help us build alliances and create the trust necessary to repair this broken relationship. Those of us who are Non-Indigenous can contribute to the ongoing work of reconciliation by establishing and maintaining respectful relationships with our First Nation neighbours. First we must learn how to reconcile our privileges, our education, our judgment and our unfair stereotypes with the harsh reality experienced by Aboriginal peoples. Reconciliation also calls for personal, group, community and political ACTION. Broadening our own awareness and changing the way we educate our children is an important step toward healing our broken relationships. We hope that The Blanket Exercise event can help in a small way to bring this about.

Dara Hartman, CSJ Associate
Karen Rawlings, CSJ Associate

Note: In light of the Truth and Reconciliation Report that came out from the Royal Commission recently, the Blanket Exercise, created by Kairos, http://www.kairoscanada.org/product-category/blanket-exercise has been offered in many cities and towns for anyone who wishes to experience the more accurate historical story of the relationship between the Indigenous People in Canada and European settlers in a creative and experiential learning format. Look for one in your area.

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

A City on a Hill Cannot Be Hid

The February 22^nd Rally to End Poverty sponsored by London’s Multi-Faith Social Action Coalition was as great as any purpose-filled rally, complete with jazz band, singers, speakers and buckets of energy and good will throughout Wolf Performance Hall. The coalition was supported by the Mayor’s Advisory Panel on Poverty working on the complex issue of ending poverty in London.

Musical numbers were interspersed with leaders and representatives of many faith groups in London giving short presentations outlining the complexity of the current situation of poverty and urging all the faithful to stay the course in finding ways to alleviate the harsh conditions in which the poor live out their lives.

The old English tune, “The Streets of London,” accompanied by guitar and banjo related the sights and signs of poverty and oppression right before our eyes that we fail to see. This was juxtaposed to Sonja Gustafson’s upbeat rendition, “We Can Build a Beautiful City”.

Steven Stape of Temple Israel pointed out that although London’s efforts to address poverty reach back several decades, “we must reeducate ourselves to gain momentum and move forward”. To illustrate this forward thrust, a wave of enthusiasm swept the theatre as two members of the Scallywags urged the crowd in song “to dream a little larger, walk a little further and sing a little louder if we want to change the world”. In addition, Dr. Wael Haddara of the Muslim community pointed out, “We must create societal ways that will work in order to eradicate poverty”.

Sue Wilson, a Sister of St. Joseph, built on Dr. Haddara’s statement by alluding to the systemic change that must occur “to bring about the sort of justice that is doable and will eradicate poverty”. Such justice would mean a living wage for workers and a guaranteed livable income for all so that there can be a roof overhead, food on the table and education for all.  To reach this attainable goal requires, “a strong social consensus that makes justice the criterion by which city council make its decisions”.

As if to join forces and endorse the belief and desire for strong social consensus, the audience joyfully joined Sarah Gustafson and the entire musical ensemble for a rousing rendition of “Lean on Me”. It witnessed to a resolve to go forward together and enlist our faith communities to raise our voices in a strong social consensus to remove poverty by bringing justice for all to the streets of London.  It was a powerful ending to a memorable rally.

Jean Moylan, CSJ

94 Concrete Steps Rooted in Prayer

Over the past several months, many of us have followed the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The work of the Commission focused on the impact of Residential Schools but the members of the Commission soon saw, in the stories they heard, the far reaching implications of the government mandated law that brought Residential Schools into being and the genocidal intent of such a decision. The Commission’s final report represented five years of work and resulted in 94 recommendations. 

The TRC report put forward specific recommendations to redress the legacy of Residential Schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation. The TRC report contains 94 calls to action. These are grouped under several key areas such as Child Welfare, Language and Culture, Education, Health and Justice. The final massive report is probably more than most of us will read. However, as Canadians we should become familiar with its recommendations.

As Sisters of St. Joseph, reconciliation is at the heart of all that we are and all that we do. Sister Joan Atkinson, csj stated,” I wanted to find a way for others to see the depth and breadth of the work of the Commissioner, Justice Sinclair and his many colleagues and for us to pray for the reconciliation needed for all of us in Canada to move forward and heal the wounded history between us and our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.” Sister Joan wove the recommendations that flow from the TRC report into specific prayers which reflect the individual calls to action.

We share her reflective work with you so that you may join us in taking the TRC final recommendations to heart and prayer. Our task as Canadians is to create the communal will to implement them. The Truth has been told; we now need to take the 94 concrete steps forward towards reconciliation.

PRAYERS OF PETITION PDF Booklet 

Nancy Wales CSJ