“We are all one,” said Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, Co-Chair of Vancouver’s Truth and Reconciliation National Event, to 250 people crowded into the Vancouver Baha’i Centre on Friday evening, 13 September.
Chief Joseph was a member of a panel hosted by the Baha’i Community of Canada and Reconciliation Canada, just prior to the start of the sixth in a series of seven national Truth and Reconciliation Commission events.
The panel was organized to mark the release of the Baha’i Community of Canada’s submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to be formally presented to the Commission in the Gestures of Reconciliation session on Friday, 20 September. Chief Larry Grant of the Musqueam First Nation opened the evening discussion with a prayer, words of welcome, and upraised hands and arms — a gesture common to his people, who had welcomed the arrival of the Europeans to the West Coast.
The three panelists were Chief Doug White of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, Dr. Paulette Regan, Director of Research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Chief Robert Joseph. The panel was moderated by Dr. Roshan Danesh.
To read short biographies of the speakers, please click here.
Chief Doug White spoke about the damage and injustice, and the broken families and communities that resulted from the displacement and abuse caused by the 150 years of residential schools in Canada and their legacy. Chief White referred to his own substantial experience as a lawyer and chief negotiating critically important political or legal issues, but said that there is one absolutely essential element beyond those practical matters, and without which there can be no reconciliation in Canada. “Love, altruistic love is necessary,” Chief White emphasized, citing a passage from an article by William Hatcher, which he had been reading.
“Only in this way, and only if individuals reach out and become agents of reconciliation and change, will transformation be genuinely achieved in Canada, and it will require courage,” Chief White noted.
“The Commission represents the most important challenge facing Canadians. It is an opportunity to re-imagine ourselves in this land. To re-imagine who we want to be. Every day, we wake up to the ugliness, the legacy of evil that is still with us, but through individual acts of love this reimagination of ourselves, responding with altruistic love, in this way we can generate true reconciliation.”
“Reconciliation is a framework for living together,” said Dr. Paulette Regan, member of the Commission and author of the book Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling and Reconciliation in Canada. Dr. Regan asked, “How are we to understand the unsettling, uncomfortable feelings of trying to respond to a history of injustice? We must see this as a call to action. Reconciliation is a living framework, requiring action.” [We have to] recognize our shared humanity, and reach out across discomfort and embarrassment to listen with open and humble hearts the stories of Indigenous people.”
Reconciliation requires “fearless engagement,” said Chief Robert Joseph, Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation, and Ambassador for Reconciliation Canada. “The time has come, for there now is a large number of Canadians who do care about Aboriginal peoples.”
“We started from a place of brokenness and separation,” recounted Chief Joseph in describing the challenging and lengthy discussions about the residential schools and the destruction they caused to the culture and life of Canada’s First Nations. “But as we listened to each other, the tone of those discussions started to change. We recognized that there is something in common to all of us. We had lost sight of our common humanity — that is why we hurt each other. This is the time we can reflect on our shared history together and take control of a shared history.”
“There is so much meaning in this word ‘reconciliation’. It is,” according to Chief Robert Joseph “a spiritual reality. Every individual can live reconciliation and act on it.”
“We need to use reconciliation to make this a truly great country. The only way we will lose is if you go away and let this idea die that we are all one… It calls upon our highest consciousness to create a new way forward — to allow every child of every race and creed to have the same opportunities. As you lift other people up you are lifting yourself up.
“For those of us who were broken, we need to restore our dignity. We need others to help us to get the sense that we belong to this human family… We can create a new space that is sacred for all of us.”
Chief Robert Joseph, in thanking the Baha’i Community for organizing the evening, spoke of how he first encountered Baha’is, whose values he finds identical with his own. “Here were Baha’i youth, not merely associating in friendship with Aboriginal youth, but serving Aboriginal people. I had asked myself who were these ‘Baha’is,’ and learned that they believe what I believe. That we are all one. That we all share a common humanity.”