Pellerin: The Day of Truth and Reconciliation will have more power when we can all celebrate it

.

Today is the second National Truth and Reconciliation Day. It is not that it is national, or that it is still doing much to advance reconciliation. For that, we must all work a little harder to be strong allies of indigenous peoples, friends of the truth, and partners in making the future better than the past for all.

.

Establishing this day is the response of the federal government to the “Call to Action” 80 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionwhich presented its final report in 2015. It took six years to establish the first of those days, and now, a year later, not even half the country observes it.

.

It would be a gross understatement to say that we don’t feel much urgency in this file, in stark contrast to the speed with which the exact same federal government proclaimed a legal holiday for the death of Queen Elizabeth II. We don’t always have to act in a matter of days. But between that and six years…

Legal holidays don’t exist just to give us three-day weekends. They are a sign that a particular society cares so much about the importance of something that it forces employers to give their employees a paid day off so they have time to observe it.

.

If everyone who agrees that the need for reconciliation at the government and business level is urgent were to take the time to write an email to their elected representative to that effect, it would be useful to set aside a day to mark it. When enough of us speak up, governments listen.

You can tell how much people care about something that they are willing to sacrifice for it. Closing workplaces and giving employees paid vacations cost some people money. I guess they don’t want to do it unless it’s really important to them. Like celebrating a 19th century queen every spring, or something “civic” in early August. One would think of a day to honor the memory of tens of thousands of children who were abused, raped and murdered in boarding schools that were designed with the specific purpose of “killing the Indian in the child”, and whose deaths were not even registered and whose bodies were thrown into unmarked graves, it might be worth a little effort.

.

I know that it is difficult for individuals to know what to do to advance reconciliation. We were not there. We didn’t do any of those things and if we had been there we would have opposed cultural genocide. But we’re here now, and we all have a moral obligation to do what we can to help fix it.

The simplest first step is to take the time to learn what was done to the indigenous people in Canada. There are many resources available, including an excellent free online course on Indigenous Canada offered by the University of Alberta.

Imagine what it would do to you to have your babies ripped from your arms by agents of the state, taken away to be “civilized” and never returned. Or how life would fare if you had been raised by parents who had been repeatedly raped in those schools. If you had grown up in families with empty chairs and unanswered questions.

.

Then think about how you would feel if, after having lived with such multi-generational pain and trauma, you were confronted every day by a majority society that can barely get up the courage to take one day out of the year to reflect on what is going on. can do to help you heal. Or worse, openly denying the need to do anything to help you, insisting that it’s your problem if some people use substances to relieve your pain.

On September 30, at the very least, we should take a break from our usual busy lives and think about what we can do to help. The work is complex and will take generations. We all have a moral duty to start. Now.

brigitte pellerin is a writer from Ottawa.