Residential school survivor Vivian Ketchum says she believes it will take more time before meaningful reconciliation occurs.Shannon VanRaes/The Globe and Mail
About four years ago, Winnipeg activist Vivian Ketchum started a postcard campaign that asked Canadians to tell her what reconciliation with Indigenous peoples meant to them.
The residential school survivor said she received several hundred postcards, but one in particular from an 80-year-old non-Indigenous woman stood out. The woman had written that her parents had told her Indigenous people were “bad.”
“She felt guilty, and she said to me, ‘I’m just starting to wake up to what reconciliation is, who Indigenous people are,’” Ms. Ketchum said.
“She’s trying to undo what she was taught, and at 80 years old. And I thought, what an inspiration that is.”
But for the most part, Ms. Ketchum said, she believes it will take more time before meaningful reconciliation occurs. She wears a jean jacket with an upside-down Canadian flag on the back signifying the “distress” between Indigenous peoples and Canada.
She doesn’t think she will remove it soon.
Ms. Ketchum wears a beaded orange shirt pin and an upside-down Canadian flag on the back on her jacket to signify the 'distress' between Indigenous peoples and Canada.Shannon VanRaes/The Globe and Mail
It has been 10 years since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its final report, which details the horrors of the residential school system. The commission also published 94 calls to action, 40 per cent of which have either stalled or not started, according to the non-profit Indigenous Watchdog.
One that has been realized is the creation of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federal holiday that takes place on Sept. 30. It is meant to honour survivors and those who never returned home, as well as their families and communities.
It is also Orange Shirt Day, which is an Indigenous-led movement that highlights the impact of the residential school system, and honours students lost in it.
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For over a century, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families to attend the schools, which were predominantly run by the federal government and churches. The institutions were meant to assimilate Indigenous children, who were subjected to widespread physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Since the commission report, however, more Canadians are becoming aware of residential schools and the need for reconciliation, a new poll suggests.
Sixty-seven per cent of Canadians now say they are at least somewhat familiar with the history of the schools, according to the survey from the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with other groups.
Four years ago, in 2021, 60 per cent said they were.
The survey of 5,391 adults was conducted between May 1 and June 16, mostly online. There is no margin of error for online surveys.
That increase so many years after the commission’s report suggests that the Canadian public is not forgetting, said Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute.
A majority of respondents – 56 per cent of Indigenous people and 54 per cent of non-Indigenous – describe the relations between the two groups as positive.
“Canadians are seeing relations more positively and are more optimistic about the prospects for reconciliation,” he said. That does not mean everyone thinks every problem is solved, he added, but that Canadians are working on it.
Marie Wilson, a former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said there is “urgency to everything we do” as the people involved in this work, particularly the survivors of residential schools, are aging and dying.
It will be important, she added, to watch the efforts of the National Council for Reconciliation, which established its board members earlier this year. It is an independent organization that will release an annual report on Canada’s progress toward reconciliation.
The Environics Institute survey also asked about the role of governments in advancing reconciliation. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents say they feel governments have not gone far enough, 29 per cent say they have done enough, and 22 per cent believe governments have gone too far.
Younger Canadians were more likely to say governments need to do more than their older counterparts. Twenty-five-year-old Chief Tréchelle Bun, of Birdtail Sioux Dakota Nation, said she finds that encouraging.
“I hope that we all continue running toward truth or reconciliation and see it as a lifelong journey and a commitment.”
For Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty, Canada is in a new space with reconciliation – one more focused on action.
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Ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Ms. Gull-Masty, a former grand chief and the daughter of a residential school survivor, was asked to speak to her Liberal caucus colleagues. She asked them to raise their hand if they had a child in their lives above the age of 3.
“I told them, ‘no matter where this child would be born in Canada, if they were Indigenous, they would have been placed in a residential school, because we know survivors that were that young, that started school at that age,’” she said.
Colleagues, she said, told her they had never thought of it in that context.
Ms. Wilson, who is non-Indigenous, said that anyone in an influential position has a role to play in reconciliation. The people who run institutions such as banks, schools or hospitals are largely non-Indigenous, she said, and they can decide to do things differently − citing school curriculum changes as an example.
“How do we use the resources that we have, whether they are human or financial or time or capacity or access? How do we use that to good intention?” she said. “How do we hold our elected leaders to account?”
All of these questions involve non-Indigenous people, she said.
Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation Chief Jeff Copenace said their relationship with the nearest town has improved. But in his community, which is about 325 kilometres east of Winnipeg, problems persist.
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“On the ground in First Nations, I hate to say it, but my experience is that things have gotten worse,” he said, though he added that other First Nations may see it differently.
His community has been in a state of emergency since 2014 largely because of high youth suicide rates.
Mr. Copenace said he is concerned about the direction of the federal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney. His community is also “battling” both industry and the provincial government, he said, who are moving at a rapid pace to dig up the gold on their territory “without our consent.”
“We’re in a state of emergency, and it’s impossible for us to come to the table,” he said. “To me, that’s not reconciliation.”
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Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand, a day school survivor, said the federal government has unfinished business when it comes to Métis who attended them.
But creating economic strength and building education possibilities for a better life is also the responsibility of Indigenous peoples, he said.
“It’s a two-way street. Because if you expect a one-way street, then you become dependent on that one-way street and if you become a dependent state then nothing will ever change.”
Nunavut Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell, an Inuk who is a residential school survivor, said she sees an improvement on reconciliation, but there is still more to do to educate people about Inuit.
Over all, the poll suggests that 62 per cent of Canadians are optimistic about the future for meaningful reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. Twenty-five per cent say they are pessimistic.
As well, 66 per cent of Indigenous people express optimism, while 26 per cent say they are pessimistic.
Ms. Wilson is optimistic. At a recent educational event, she said a newcomer to Canada shared that they were learning about Indigenous people because their children were teaching them.