The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Searching for Reconciliation: A Commissioner Reflects

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Nine years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission handed down their 94 calls to action, commissioner Marie Wilson reflects on the Commission and how far Canada has come. The Agenda welcomes her to the studio to discuss her new book, "North of Nowhere."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nine years after Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission handed down their 94 calls to action, what progress has been made? Marie Wilson reflects on her role on the Commission and how far Canada has come in her new book, North of Nowhere, Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner. And Marie Wilson joins us now in studio. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to be here. Thank you.

All right. I want to start off by reading a passage from your book about what the commission set out to do. It reads, we set out to research and document the complete history of more than a century of so-called Indian residential schools to educate the general public about the true history of this country and to inspire ongoing reconciliation between and among Indigenous peoples and all Canadians. In other words, our job was to dig up almost 150 years of scattered, hidden history to find ways to drill it into the heads and hearts of people who generally knew nothing about it and to convince everyone along the way that things could and should be different

from now on. More honest, more respectful, more inclusive, more loving, more Canadian. Now Marie, you were one of three commissioners alongside Justice Murray Sinclair and Chief Wilton Littlechild. Given this challenging undertaking, people probably might be surprised to learn

that this is not an appointed role. You applied for this. Why? Well, the issue I already knew about, you know, I was a journalist for most of my professional career and I had worked and lived and reported in a part of Canada that had the highest per capita number of residential school survivors of anywhere in the country. Even though people were not talking about it a lot at that time, you could see all around you the struggles and some of the challenges that flowed from how people felt about each other and how they felt about themselves. I grew up in a family home where my husband himself was a

residential school survivor. And I was raised in one of the Christian churches that ran residential schools even though I didn't know about it as a child growing up. And I came from a non-Indigenous background so I thought this is work that Canada needs to tackle. I have skills as a journalist, I have insights to the residential school story, and I have a perspective that is to the broadest reaches of all of Canada. I should offer that. I'll offer those skills and see what happens.

I want to pick up on your identity. You are the sole non-Indigenous Commissioner of the three. What did you hope to bring to the table alongside your co-commissioners? Well, it's one of the things that we said throughout the commission, and I repeated in various ways in my book as well, is that, you know, the story of residential schools,

which we've come to know in this country as having been a really problematic policy framework, a cruel framework in many, many ways and a very disruptive one to the well-being of individuals and families and communities, that those were not things that were set in motion by Indigenous people for themselves. They were set in place by laws that Canadian legislators passed, mostly men at the time, and policies that were put in place and adopted and implemented by four of the largest national church institutions in the country.

And so if those things were created and they created harms, why should it be up to Indigenous people on their own to try to figure their way out of that and move beyond that and heal from that. I really felt an onus of shared responsibility and that even though I had nothing to do with any of that historically, I do have responsibilities in the present day and I have responsibilities for what comes next as I feel we all do. And so I wanted that perspective to be there that we own that that we own the history and that we own the accountability for that and that we own responsibility for going forward in a good way.

In that excerpt that I had read earlier you wrote that you were looking at a hundred and fifty years of history all across this country. How did you know where to begin? Well, it was interesting. I mean you have to picture there was no guidebook for this Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Indeed there was no precedent for a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a so-called Western developed country. This was the first. It was the first in the world ever to be looking at harms that were specifically against children. And it was the first to

look at harms that happened in the context of state-sponsored legal decisions, not in the context of military warfare, and not in a short term, but over the timeframe of more than a century. So your question is right, it was huge, and sort of where do we go? So one of the things that's really important for all Canadians to understand, remember if they once knew, but certainly not forget, is that this Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not a government-sponsored policy.

It was an obligation put on the government and the churches by the courts as a result of a massive class action court case. And what that court case said is that, among other things, there will be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission so that those 80,000 at the time living survivors of those schools who are not going to have their day in court, because it's an out-of-court settlement, will have a forum where they can come forward and speak

their truth of what their experiences were and provide the evidence of their own life experiences as children. And so they gave us signposts as to how to do that in our mandate. We didn't make up how are we going to go about this and the mandate told us certain things that we had to do. And one of the things they told us we had to do is to hold and support an unspecified number of community events but also very specifically seven national events. It didn't say where, it didn't describe the nature of them, but it said seven national events. So we, I mean the first

thing it's important to say is that we worked with a Survivors Advisory Committee and they were representative of all the regions of Canada in the broadest sense. There were, well I won't repeat that, they were from all over the country and so they didn't all have exactly the same residential school experiences but they had all lived through residential schools. They were really vital in guiding us on things like, where will we hold these national events? Where would we have the greatest potential of drawing both survivors to attend, but also media to pay attention, non-Indigenous people to learn, for us to gather in a way that would be inclusive,

but that would help us serve our core mandate job of educating the country and inspiring ongoing reconciliation. So once they told us where, that became kind of the roadmap that we followed. Well I want to get a little better picture of the how, because not given much of a, you know, you have a mandate, not much of a blueprint blueprint you're really kind of figuring this out as you go seven thousand people over six and a half years that's a lot of stories how did you manage that tell me a little bit about you know maybe a particular event how did that all come together yeah you know there's that old thing How did that all come together? You know there's that old thing from a movie from a decade or so ago, but if you build it they will come.

We put a lot of attention into what will be the kinds of space that we create to convene gatherings. And one of the principles that we worked with is that we would, because Indigenous peoples are very diverse throughout Canada not just are their First Nations and Inuit and Métis but within each of those categories great diversity so one of our principles is that wherever we're going we will work in advance with a cultural advisory committee to tell us the right way to conduct ourselves in that region the right protocols the right people to help us plan. So that was the first thing is to make sure that we had community engagement and support and that we were guided by them not showing up and telling them here's what we're going to do. The second thing is that we

used protocols that were from that area to set a tone of respect and to do some of the work of honoring those things that our laws in Canada had not only tried to destroy but had ruled illegal. A lot of spiritual ceremonies, drumming, potlatches, sweat law, just things like that that are that are spiritual traditions of indigenous peoples. So we tried to do things in a way that said let's let's work from what is still there what has not been destroyed and try to create an opportunity for educating the community itself and the younger generation as

well as wider members of community who would come together. And then what we tried to do, because you know you say 7,000 that's a lot of people, what's really extraordinary is they all came voluntarily. Because the nature of our TRC, we had no incentive, there was no financial incentive. Other parts of the settlement agreement dealt with some money pieces but not the TRC. Ours was really about educating. Educating the country, gathering and documenting and preserving for posterity. And then educating the country and inspiring reconciliation as I've said. So we tried to create activities that would touch on each of those core areas of our work and plan around that. As if it was a big, think of it as a huge TV production, all the same ideas, who all

needs to be there, when, who are our guests, what's the sequence, all of that. You had mentioned your husband, Stephen, residential school survivor. I want to understand a little bit, how tricky was it to balance your role as a commissioner, but also a supportive partner of a survivor? Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I'll tell you is that before I ever became a commissioner, we had big conversations in our home about it, including whether or not he should be considered as one of the commissioners. And we talked about it in the pros and cons. And should we both apply?

Will we cancel each other out? Should one apply? Should the other apply? And so on. And in the end, what he said to me is he said, I think you should apply because I'm not sure I could bear it. That was his own self-assessment. And it's relevant to your question

because he was fully supportive of me from the very beginning and remains fully supportive of me as I continue to talk about it. But it was challenging to be away from home you know huge amounts of time you know 75 to 90 percent of the time we were on the road somewhere or other and I couldn't Sort of call home and debrief the day the way you would you know, honey I had a hell of a day at the office you know you you couldn't allow yourself to do that because I Didn't know what of what I had heard an experience would trigger him. So it was really

It was it was it was a difficult element of it and at times Really lonely for me. I want to contrast that because you also write about, you know, you write about immeasurable pain in this book but also times of joy. Having a surprise party for co-commissioner chief Wilton Littlechild. I remember the story of you guys laughing so much that you were worried he, you know, better safe to get off the road and tell this story. So there was, with pain, there was also moments of joy.

Can you tell us why was it so important to find time for levity and laughter? And it's not like it was a strategic plan. I think it would be fair to say for the three of us, for Willie and Marie and me, we all have kind of a natural good sense of humor and a sense of easy teasing about ourselves. And it just came out as we came to know each other, because we did not know each other well when we began. And then we realized partly it was being true to our own natures, but it was also we realized the importance of lifting ourselves up, you know, when so much of what we were doing was challenging. And we built that in, not laughter so much as levity, into the way we planned our events as well, so that whether it was a talent show or a cultural presentation or a performance or a film or a dance or whatever,

something at the end of the days to lift not just ourselves up but all of us up. And we also witnessed that, I have to tell you, in ways that were so surprising for me initially but really inspirational. Children, the children I'll call them, though they were elders when they presented in front of us. They would talk about the kinds of pranks they had got up to at residential school or the way that they had taken care of each other or just funny little things that they remembered that had happened. And it was it was always touching to hear it too, because you realize it was children trying

to find their own survival skills and cling to them. And they incorporated a lot of that as well in telling their own stories, laughing at themselves. And there are some accounts of that in the book that I won't go into that I hope will make people laugh out loud, because they sure did make the rooms laugh out loud when we heard them. I want to talk to you a little bit about your identity as a Canadian specifically. How did leading this Commission affect your own identity?

How did it challenge you? How did it change in terms of the way that you see yourself as a Canadian and how others see themselves as Canadians? You know I had I would say the benefit the wealth of a big of a big life before I ever did the commission. You know I had the incredible experience of studying in another country, of working in yet another country on another continent, being in in cross-cultural situations where everything about the system, the language, the faith traditions, the school systems, the people themselves, were completely

different from me. And that was always such an eye-opening and enriching experience for me. So I've for a long time already seen myself more of a citizen of the world than anything, because you see the wealth of all that's around us. In terms of how I saw Canada though, what the experience did is it allowed me, because I know what our big reputation is in the world. I've benefited from our big reputation in the world. Oh Canada, you know it's everyone's desire to go. And so it should be. I'm not poo-pooing that. I'm just saying you bring though a more honest set of eyes to our country's history and you realize you know we have way more than just a

brag sheet. We have also a list of not just huge failings, but really, really questionable practices that even though we like to say we're not a colonial country, we have been a highly colonial country. And there has been damage done, and we're only just now looking in an honest mirror and seeing that about ourselves. And I saw it far more clearly and in ways that shook me, but made me realize, okay, what's my place in all that? Well, I want to ask as well, you write that you are a woman of faith. How did you reconcile with the role of the church and residential schools? Well, I am able to separate out faith and spiritual practice. And by the way, I'm not a person who's hunkered down to one tradition only.

I've been invited into all kinds of faith expressions, both within this country and in other countries. And they have always been really rich experiences for me. I've treasured them. But I do understand the distinction between spiritual teachings and institutional behavior. There is a distinction and I didn't think about that as a young person growing up. I didn't even understand church as an institution. I had no idea what the institutions, either our governments or our churches, were doing. And I try to be very honest about that in my descriptions of it in the early parts of the commission.

Because I grew up with all the same ignorance as everybody else did. But I'll tell you one story that I do talk about in the book. And it was one of the survivors, actually, that brought me some insight into that contradiction, that struggle, that inner struggle. And I remember them saying one day, this was a person who was very grounded in their traditional culture, embraced it. But they were also still a practicing Christian and gave the Church a lot of credit for helping them with their healing.

And they said, I don't hate the church. It's the people who did these things to us. And what they said was, what they did to us was so bad it even turned God into a victim. And I thought, you know, that's a sophisticated way of looking at it that takes you away from a place of hatred and I want to hate everybody who's from this or that belief to a place of you know we we have failed in measurable ways and if we have to separate that from what we are supposed to be doing and how we are actually conducting ourselves. We have less than a minute,

and I have one more question to ask you. You and your fellow commissioners made 94 calls to action at the end of your commission, nine years later. Can you give us a progress report on how we're doing? I cannot, because I live in the far north still in Yellowknife, and I don't have a crystal ball to see what's happening all over the country. but I can tell you that I know of a lot of good things that are happening in pockets all over the country and I am

extremely impatient to see the creation of the National Council for Reconciliation as a mechanism that will be able to answer that question so that we will all know where are we getting better where are we getting worse what do we need to feel encouraged by what do we really need to hunker down and put more attention and resource into I long for that but what I do know is this with certainty we are inching forward it's all way too slow for me but I know that there are a lot of good people years till talking to me about it nine years later. I've been all over the country talking about it for these full nine years. People have not stopped the

conversation and as long as people are still willing to learn and ask themselves where do I fit into all of this and there's great hope and lots of kids now unlike when I was a child are learning about this in school and are going to be differently informed citizens than my generation ever was and I have great hope in that starting with my own children and grandchildren. I'm gonna slip in one more question I want to ask you know on the day of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation September 30th established three years ago do you think this helps move that needle that we're talking about on reconciliation? Or does it allow people to be performative or complacent?

Is there more that can be done with this? So I would say yes, yes, and yes to that. It does help move the needle and it can be performative. Should it be a national day of service? It definitely should be a national day of reverence and calling to attention and remembering. And not just remembering at the level of, oh yeah, my head, but deep remembering. And then from there saying, why is this important and what do we need to do to make sure that the next generation of our children not having to

constantly be apologizing for the way our governments of today have continued to act. I want first of all not just indigenous people to show up for National Day. I don't want people just to wear an orange shirt and there that box is ticked. I want people to... I actually care less about whether or not people wear an orange shirt as to whether they do something that is in the spirit of reconciliation. That people intentionally gather together, not as one group, you know, sort of observing the other, but as new communities forming, new communities of action that can work together to address fundamental and systemic issues in our country.

And I really want to believe that we don't become rote about, that we don't slide back into the amnesia of the past. We don't allow ourselves to do that, you know, for the soldiers and the veterans of this country. And I don't want us to do that for the children who struggled and suffered in schools who did not choose to enlist for that and some of whom never returned. I want to make sure that we keep the markers of that memory alive and that we keep the actions of a better way of expressing human rights in this country because indigenous rights are human rights That we create a far better track record for ourselves on a daily going forward basis

Mary Wilson, thank you so much Thank you so much for the work that you do and and joining us in studio today And I hope many people will read the book and maybe make it part of their annual reminder. It would be wonderful