No Reconciliation Without Truth

The Catherine White Holman Wellness Centre stands with Indigenous people on this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Today is also Orange Shirt Day, established to recognize the specific impact of Canada’s genocidal colonialism on Indigenous children and their families. Today, we want to say clearly that there can be no reconciliation without first telling the truth.

The truth is, countless Indigenous children were stolen from their families, and never returned from residential schools. Those who did return were marked indelibly by the abuse they suffered there. That impact is intergenerational, and ongoing.

Just days ago, on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory, masked white nationalists mocked the graves of Indigenous children. They hung a banner reading “Got bones?” over the highway.

The government of Canada recognized the Indian Residential School system as an act of genocide in 2022, but they have not criminalized residential school denialism. Their silence actively emboldens genocide denialism.

Denialism is not a political opinion, it deserves no Charter protection, and, according to Genocide Watch, denial is the tenth and final stage of genocide. It is “a continuation of a genocide, because it is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.”

We lift our hands up to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation’s response to the government of Alberta’s attack on Two-Spirit and Trans people, especially children. On the 150th anniversary of Treaty 6, Chief Dale Steinhauer invoked the medicine chest clause of Treaty 6 to establish a safe haven for gender-affirming care on its reserve lands. They extend that protection to anyone who needs care on their territories, including settlers. We take our lead from their actions.

This September 30, we stand with the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation. We call on parliament to address this insidious form of hate speech and to take the risk posed by ideologically motivated violent extremism seriously. We call on the RCMP and local authorities to apply the protection of the law to queer, trans, and Indigenous people by investigating and prosecuting white supremacist intimidation on Indigenous territories, and residential school denialists everywhere. We call on legislators to address overt expressions of anti-trans hate by the same groups.

We amplify Indigenous voices who tell us it is too soon to reconcile, because there can be no reconciliation until we settlers accept the truth — which includes sober recognition of our participation in colonial genocide which is ongoing. We amplify Indigenous calls for a decolonization which necessarily includes the payment of reparations, the transfer of governance, and the return of land.

Orange shirts are not a substitute for action.