Some Irreconcilable Truths on Truth and Reconciliation Day
This post offers some of my thoughts on the Canadian government mandated "Truth and Reconciliation Day", what it means to be indigenous and what real reconciliation can look like.
Great suffering has been inflicted on the original people’s of Turtle Island in the name of Statist imperialistic, anthropocentric, industrial expansion of Empire. We also live in a time when some First Nation sell outs in so called “Canada” have decided to internalize the sickness of greed and the parasitic relationship with the Earth that is capitalism which was imposed on them by imperialistic colonialism (such as the Huu-ay-aht First Nation tribal council and their C̕awak ʔqin Forestry industrial logging company or the corrupt Pacheedaht tribal council members such as Arliss Daniels promoting clearcutting ancient forests for profit, or Chief Sonny Gagnon of the Aroland First Nation who signed a 20 Million bribe deal allowing government and corporations to carve into the bones of Mother Earth and poison her rivers in the “ring of fire” region in Northern Ontario for lithium mining).
Just look at Vancouver Island where government is profiting from chopping down the last pockets of ancient forest (that they promised to stop cutting years ago) and look at the Boreal Forest where Doug Ford is attempting to bulldoze the ancient forests, lakes and rivers there to carve into the bones of the earth to get at the lithium and cobalt (to build more “sustainable” concrete prisons and electric cars) or look at Alberta where the government there is pillaging the land to build a massive AI data center to perpetuate the war racket, extract data from you and me and turn a forest into a digital control grid nerve center. These things are all being done on indigenous territory and without the approval of some of the elders in those regions (such as Bill Jones on Vancouver Island).
It is also important to recognize that this progression of events (shown in pic below) from imperialistic statists with superiority complexes to a generation of people with blood indigenous to this land being fully indoctrinated into extractivist/capitalist thinking appears to be an expression of the success of the stated goal of the Residential School system. While there are brave forest defenders with indigenous blood (and we should honor their courage and support their noble endeavors) if this day truly is about Truth as well as reconciliation, we must also confront the ugly truth that some with indigenous blood appear to have fallen into lock step with the world eating machine of Modernity, anthropocentric thinking, corporate pillaging and cashing in today (forcing our decedents to pay the price for their greed).
Take a look at the statements made by that indigenous lady in the note above, and try to reconcile that with the reality of the type of clearcut logging she approved.
Those two things cannot be reconciled. Her actions in the present are irreconcilable with the teachings and moral compass of her ancestors.
She (and those like her) may be indigenous by blood to this land, but she appears to no longer embrace lived indigeneity, and rather has become nothing more than a colonial accomplice in pillaging the forests her own ancestors tended and cared for for millennia.
No matter what corrupt government propagandists, corporate think tank spin doctors or bought and paid for tribal council members tell you, you in your heart of hearts know that cutting down forests that took thousands of years to become what they were today can never be done “responsibly” nor “sustainably”. That course of action cannot be reconciled and is not based in truth, it is based in psychopathy, parasitism, materialism and cowardice. Only you can reconcile your actions with your ancestors teachings and the Creator by choosing a different path in the present.
We either protect the few sections of ancient forest that are left, or we choose greed and are effectively spitting in the face of God and our great great grandchildren for a paycheck today.
On this day of “truth” and “reconciliation” I invite all those with indigenous blood that have not been honoring the ways of their ancestors (but have instead been choosing to allow colonization of the mind influence their choices) to choose courage and integrity over greed, we know the choice is not easy given all that is at stake, but we believe in you to make the right choice and will honor your courage in choosing the side of Mother Earth over profits.
“I’ve always found the term “Truth & Reconciliation” dubious; maybe that’s because there isn’t and has never been anything ‘cheerful’ about the relationship between the Canadian government, industry and the Indigenous peoples of Canada and Tuesday September 9th was even more damning proof when not only an Indigenous Elder was taken to court for defending his ancestral territory, but also a logging corporation has created a shell company with an Indigenous name to, in Pacheedaht Elder Bill’s words, “pit Indian against Indian.”
Elder Bill states that, like all people, “there are good Indians and there are bad Indians” and such a dichotomy is even more extreme when the Indian Act— begun in 1876 and continuing today hand-in-hand with so-called Truth and Reconciliation—is involved. (Indeed, one could ask, if we have Truth and Reconciliation, why does Canada still have the Indian Act which is responsible for residential schools and the Indian reservation system?) One of the themes of Elder Bill and my forthcoming book, Listening, Once Again, to Our Great Mother: The Fairy Creek Blockades & the Life of Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones is the process of colonizing consciousness. As Elder Bill explains: first a person is denied, then they are deprived, then they become depraved and finally demented. The legacy of the Indian residential schools with its process of depriving Indigenous children of personhood and culture, the stealing and exploitation of Indigenous land and the squashing of a people who had no fixed borders for millennia onto reservations, manufactured the depravity and dementia in the lives of the corrupted Band Councils. The First Nations Band Councils who partner with colonial industry have reached the state of dementia and, as Elder Bill proclaims, exist 100% in a worldview based on lies.
“Government and industry are using a new tactic,” he continues. “They’re using Indians to combat Indians. Their tactic is not to log it themselves. That’ll be white guys against Indians. They’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s get the Indians up there.’ They’re enticing them into suing me, turn the Indian against Indian, divide and rule.” Colonial corporations like Western Forest Products are deploying the mythology of Truth & Reconciliation along with the convenience of white guilt that serves to hobble analysis that may not only be credible, but also useful because, as Elder Bill says, “white people are afraid they will upset the Indians.” In the context of truth and reconciliation, it’s verging on hate speech to criticize anything First Nations do, even if they are the acts of Band Councils that, in Elder Bill’s words, “have been trained since the Indian Act to accept money from the government and industry”—which are virtually the same thing.“ (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20250923024046/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vigilancemagazine.com%2Fpost%2Findian-against-indian-the-walbran-forest-protection-blockade-and-truth-reconciliation-as-coloni )
There were those that have blood indigenous to this continent that warned of these potentials centuries prior, warning of the corrupting influence of focusing our lives around the acquisition of fiat currency or gold, instead of honoring the gifts the living Earth shares with us all. More on that in the note below:
Therefore, in my honoring this day is about Truth, I offer the following message.
To those that support the clearcutting of ancient forests for profit: If you continue to worship money instead of having reverence for your living Mother Earth you may have to find out one day (when the last ancient forest watershed is cut down and the last river turned into a muddy flood zone and the last salmon habitat crippled) that you cannot eat money. Your current course of action is irreconcilable with the spiritual teachings of your ancestors.
If you want to be like the greedy pale men that arrived on your shores centuries ago and join them in pillaging the earth for profit, than you are sentencing your own grandchildren to an experience that is worse than the residential schools.
If you chop down the ancient forests for profit now, poison the rivers and destroy the salmon habitat you will in effect be forcing them to abandon traditional lifepaths and immigrate into concrete “sustainable” prisons in the city to work for the man.
You may always remain indigenous by blood, but if you choose profits over protecting the ancient forests, rivers and ocean your ancestors stewarded, you no longer walk a path of lived indigeneity, and will have chosen to become what Hanna Maria describes as “Exogenous” in the video clip below:
That is disgraceful and if that is the action you choose I propose that you are forfeiting your role as stewards of the land living in reciprocity as Creator intended and you are no longer indigenous (in the sense of the word expressed by Robin Wall Kimmerer in the image below).
The government tells us that today is a “National Day for Truth and Reconciliation”, and they tell us that it is “a day for Canadians to learn, reflect, and commemorate the tragic history and legacy of the residential school system and the ongoing trauma it caused Indigenous Peoples.” They say “It is a day to honor the survivors, the children who never returned home, and their families, and to commit to the process of reconciliation by understanding and addressing colonialism’s impact on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities”.
Here is the problem with that load of government propaganda and gaslighting though, Colonialism never stopped, Doctrine Of Discovery is still law and the land is still being pillaged “manifest destiny style” in the name of “progress” and “civilizing the land”.
The government and their corporate partners use this “truth and reconciliation” propaganda while weaponizing bought and paid for tribal councils to perpetuate their colonial pillaging. We need to call out this Orwellian gaslighting nonsense for what it is.
The Canadian government has declared that today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It is declared that this day is about shining a light on truth and engaging in reconciliation regarding the government of Canada’s exploitative, parasitic and duplicitous actions that deleteriously impacted Indigenous peoples, in particular the mass murder and mental torture/brainwashing via violent coercion of indigenous children in the so called “residential schools” (actually a euphemistic term designed by government propagandists to describe a sort of concentration camp and torture chamber designed for children, with the intent of erasing an ancient culture from the face of the Earth).
I lived with a residential school survivor and the mass graves filled with child bones are all all over Canada. There are tens of thousands of survivors all over the country, with scars and stories that would scar your heart to hear them.
For more info:
“Where are the Children Buried?”
The (Residential School) Survivors Speak (PDF)
https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Survivors_Speak_English_Web.pdf
Those children were tortured and many murdered in those facilities. This day (here in so called “Canada”) should provide a moment a silence (and perhaps a scream of rage) to give a voice to those that cannot speak for themselves as they were murdered in tax payer funded cultural genocide camps.
With all of that being said, I think it is important for people that have a lighter melanin skin content and who have European ancestral heritage to remember that you have indigenous ancestors too, and those cultures were put through similar means of cultural genocide and torture to what was endured by the indigenous people of Canada.
In 2021, an investigation concluded that about 9,000 children died in Catholic church run Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland between 1922 and 1998.
Where is the truth and reconciliation day for those with Gaelic heritage interested speaking truth about the cultural genocide and murder of Gaelic children that took place under the British State?
That is not expressed to diminish or dismiss the suffering of those in the residential schools in Canada, but rather it is to say that feeling guilty just because you have European lineage does not make any sense. If you ran a residential school, or were a government person helping run them, or were an RCMP that kidnapped the children to drag them there, then you certainly should seek reconciliation and remediation for your actions. If you had nothing to do with those tax payer funded institutionalized forms of torture and genocide and you openly acknowledge it is the innate nature of Statist regimes that create situations like that, you have nothing to feel guilty about (regardless of genetic lineage).
It is also worth highlighting that while there is a lot less rape, physical torture and murdering of children (and burying them in unmarked graves) taking place in today’s tax payer funded government mandated “public schools”, I would argue that the children that go through that system come out of it with as high a likelihood of being lobotomized with regards to spiritual intelligence as those that went through the residential school system.
Today I would like to invite you to embrace the truth that regardless of what skin color you have, or what flag you swear allegiance to, or what religion you subscribe to, deep in your ancient past, you had ancestors that lived in close relationship with the land, reciprocating her gifts, honoring all beings as animate and having a keen understanding of what plants and other beings they shared their homeland with. Those people are your indigenous ancestors. They had a relationship to place, one that involved sacred agreements to give back in reciprocity for the many gifts we receive from the more than human world. We too can begin to develop, nourish and cultivate our own relationship to the place where we live, to the land and the many learned beings we share the land with. That path is the path to becoming indigenous ourselves.
The time has come for us to ask ourselves the question, Have we been tricked by “Civilization”? and where do our true allegiances lie?
Do we swear our allegiance to a flag/nation state/”civilization” or do we swear our allegiance to the Living Earth?
Some people (most of which are of European descent) have chosen to throw the memory of their indigenous ancestors under the proverbial bus, internalizing the dehumanizing narratives inculcated into them through multi-generational propaganda systems imposed onto our modern day lives by statist regimes and remnants of Roman imperialist propaganda still rattling around in religious institutions.
For many of us with European Indigenous Ancestral roots, our ancestors were persecuted by various imperialistic regimes and characterized as “witches”, “savages” or “uncivilized”.
Lyla June explores this lost European indigenous history in an essay published on in The MOON magazine titled “Reclaiming our Indigenous European roots”
The following are some excerpts from that essay:
“They estimate that 8-9 million European women were burned alive, drowned alive, dismembered alive, beaten, raped and otherwise tortured as so-called, “witches.” It is obvious to me now that these women were not witches, but were the Medicine People of Old Europe. They were the women who understood the herbal medicines, the ones who prayed with stones, the ones who passed on sacred chants, the ones who whispered to me that night in the hogan. This all-out warfare on Indigenous European women, not only harmed them, but had a profound effect on the men who loved them. Their husbands, sons, and brothers. Nothing makes a man go mad like watching the women of his family get burned alive. If the men respond to this hatred with hatred, the hatred is passed on. And who can blame them? While peace and love are the correct response to hatred, it is not the easy response by any means.
The Indigenous Cultures of Europe also sustained forced assimilation by the Roman Empire and other hegemonic forces. In fact, it was only a few decades ago that any Welsh child caught speaking Welsh in school would have a block of wood tied to their neck. The words “WN” were there-inscribed, standing for “Welsh not.” This kind of public humiliation will sound very familiar to any Native Americans reading this who attended U.S. Government boarding schools..
..The parallels between the genocide of Indigenous Europeans and Native Americans are astounding. It boggles my mind that more people don’t see how we are the same people, who have undergone the same spiritual assault. The only difference between the Red Story and the White Story is we are in different stages of the process of spiritual warfare. Native Americans are only recently becoming something they are not. They are only recently starting to succumb to the temptations of drugs, alcohol, gambling, self-destruction and the destruction of others. Just as some Native American people have been contorted and twisted by so many centuries of abuse, so too were those survivors of the European genocide. Both are completely forgivable in my eyes..
..Our task is to shake the amnesia. To not be ashamed of our European-ness, but to reclaim our beautiful grandmothers, to reclaim our venerable grandfathers, to reclaim our lost languages, our lost ceremonies, our lost homelands and become one with the Great Sacred Motherland of Europe once again. The European diaspora is spread all throughout the world, searching the planet for something that lives inside. I promise you will hear it when you climb the mountains of Switzerland! Of Scotland! Of Tuscany! Of Hungary! Of Portugal! Of the Great Sacred Motherland of Europe! Just because bad things happened upon her bosom does not mean she is bad.”
- Lyla June
For a more in depth exploration of that topic watch this:
In these pages of Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s most recent book shown in the pics below she offers a vivid glimpse into what might be described as the Gaelic antithesis of the imperialistic “residential schools” and “boarding schools” of Turtle Island.
The knowledge keepers of the Gaels (“Eolaí” in Gaelic) risked their lives to teach the young ones about the wisdom of the ancients that heals, illuminates, empowers and humbles in these “hedge schools” high in the mountain mist. They taught of the combined memory of medicines, conflicts, natural disasters, geology, meteorology, pathways to peaceful resolution and stories that educate the listener about astronomy, mathematics and ecology into rhymed verse in Gaelic.
The penalty for doing this if they were caught by British at the time was to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
In the times before Christ, Ireland was known as a place of advanced learning and young nobles from kingdoms far and wide were sent by their families to study with the Druidic teachers before returning home. This illustrious culture of higher learning was almost totally annihilated by the imperialistic Roman invasion.
The period of the hedge schools followed the relentless destruction of the ancient professional schools of Ireland known as the Bardic Schools of the Brehon/Druidic ways.
Even after the Romans sought to commit cultural and literal genocide, the Druids were wise enough to preserve their knowledge in a small few individuals and pass it onto who would become the Brehon.
The Bardic Schools had existed as renowned institutions instructing in the native tongue the Irish language, literature, history and Brehon Law. They were highly developed and scholarly institutions providing what amounted to a university education in multiple subjects of study up until the middle of the seventeenth century. This long tradition had produced an abundance of poets, physicians, historians and Brehon’s – skills and knowledge which was often found overlapping in individuals.
Thanks to the courageous Eolaí (Gaelic knowledge keepers of the Druidic/Brehon ways) of the hedge schools and the harpists of the Scottish highlands (which preserved the Druidic knowledge “wrapped in the thread of poetry”) we still have pieces of their wisdom to help guide us forward.
Here on Turtle Island (and in Africa and South America), the Catholic church weaponized an edict from the pope called The Doctrine Of Discovery to attempt to indoctrinate multiple generations into white supremacist delusions, written into law, and used to justify the mass murder of indigenous people so that their land could be stolen.
This is the Doctrine Of Discovery in a nutshell:
“Invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue. All Saracens and pagans whatsoever, And other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed… And reduce their persons to perpetual slavery…”
That psychotic edict of the Catholic Church was used as a justification for human trafficking, torture of children, murder of millions all in the name of their Constantine manipulated version of Christianity.
What I have come to observe in many people (both those that have blood that is linked to those that called Turtle Island home long before Europeans arrived and those that have blood linked to the European settlers, or a mix of both is that government sponsored events such as “Truth and Reconciliation Day” this tend to illicit strong feelings of guilt, anger and/or resentment and create a divisive sort of thinking.
Divisiveness and putting ourselves into “us vs them” subgroupings based on genetics is a state of being that benefits the established Oligarchy. Do not fall for their game.
Sinking into resentment focused on a group of people that look different then yourself or sinking into guilt focused on the genetic lineage one was born with constitutes spinning one’s tires while going no-where.
Those are courses of action that are both counter-intuitive to using our unique God given gifts to make this world a better place for those who will call this place homer after we are gone (honoring the 7th generation in our choices).
To my sisters and brothers that have blood linked to Turtle Island’s ancient past that still live in a way that involves reciprocity and reverence for our non-human kin, I say, thank you for your courage, your wisdom, your persistence (in the face of imperialistic statism) and your vision of a way of living that honors the living Earth and sees our fellow non-human kin as wise elders. I am grateful for the seeds of wisdom you have sown in our collective consciousness as a human family and I will do what ever I can to help nourish those seeds to take root and grow to help the seventh generation that will come after we are all gone home.
To those that were born with genetic relatives of a European decent in the land that some now call “Canada” who feel compelled to internalize feelings of guilt (despite the fact that you have never disrespected an indigenous person in your individual lifetime) I invite you to invest your time, energy and thoughts in more constructive, honorable and sacred pursuits. As my wife ( Johrey M. ) said, “Guilt is a wasted state of mind and energy” and if you yourself never chose an action that disrespected a specific demographic of the population, why are you choosing to take on the burden of feeling bad about who you were born as because some murderous and exploitative statists, their thugs (and their minions in religious institutions) that happened to have the same genes as you engaged in atrocities when you could be using that energy to instead honor the land, and reciprocate the many gifts you were given in this life ?
Today is a day about honoring indigeneity and I would invite each and everyone of you to contemplate the Robin Wall Kimmerer quote above. I invite you to imagine an action you can choose this fall that embodies forging a reciprocal relationship with the land you find yourself living on.
Giving back to the land, paying attention to our more than human family in the forest, planting native trees, and teaching children to understand how connected we all are to the ecosystems that support us all, these are some of the ways that we can embark upon the long path that one might describe as “becoming indigenous to place”. Other potential choices that walk such as path involve reaching out and getting to know the people who lived where you live now for many centuries before you did (who chose to, and still choose to live in a way that embodied reverence and reciprocity for the living Earth, as not all did, and not all still do, and also, no culture should be put on a pedestal as perfect) ask them for guidance in your quest to respect and give back to the land, do what you can to lend your own unique gifts to respect traditions that involve a symbiotic connections with the land and regenerative actions that help to heal our relationship with the Earth.
Honoring truth on this day means always remembering that the true face of Statism is murder and theft for profit.
“The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The Individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.”
- Gandhi
It cannot be reformed, it was built on murder, theft and pillaging and continues to be funded by those activities today.
“When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”
- John Alexander Macdonald, 1879 (first Prime Minister of Canada, speaking about the residential schools and what they aimed to use them for).
While sadly, that mission was a success when it comes to people like the corrupt Pacheedaht councilor/chief Arliss Daniels and her fellow profiteers, there are many that choose integrity over cowardice and greed, and we should support them any way we can.
Thankfully, we have Pacheedaht First Nation elders like Bill Jones, others from his nation, and many other courageous people from other First Nations that have not given into greed and still value the teachings of their ancestors to protect the ancient forest integrity for future generations and only harvest what we need for building (not what we want for selling for profit).
Today I honor the courage of men like Bill Jones and his niece at Cougar Camp (the Walbran Ancient Forest Blockade on Vancouver Island) and I speak the truth about those no longer walking a path that honors our Mother Earth, the Creator’s gifts and the 7th generation principle.
On this day I invite each of you to look back into your own deep ancestral past, and connect with your own indigenous ancestors. If you have never sought to learn about them, now is a great time and I offer some suggestions in this post. When you evoke a conscious connection to and awareness of your own ancestors that had a place based reciprocal connection to the land, ask your self what they would think of your choices in the present. Now imagine your 7 year old self, and ask him or her what they think of your current choices in life. If you sense that your ancestors and/or your 7 year old self would not be happy with your current choices, that is where you can best direct your efforts to engage in reconciliation.
Ask yourself how you can reconcile your actions in the present with how your 7 year old self and indigenous ancestors would view these actions, and then take baby steps to bridge the gap. This is something I do everyday (not just on this day when the government tells us to think about “truth” and “reconciliation”). We should contemplate those two things and better yet, we should allow our awareness of them move us into action to become a force for good, a protector of life and a voice for those that cannot protect themselves. This is the path of a true activist and the path to becoming indigenous to place (regardless of genetics).
That path is the path to defend the sacred and become a spiritual warrior.
This is the path we are called to walk now in the name of Truth and the reconciliation of spirit, heart and mind.
Today, I pray that we can all reconcile our current path to more fully align with our stated moral values, the moral compass of each of our indigenous ancestors and our 7 year old selves. Today I pray that we may speak the truth (no matter how painful it may be to face it) and take steps
In closing I will share the following video with you all:
I totally resonate with your words Gavin.
My ancestors are the Sami. But we always used the word Laplander when I was growing up since we’re from Lapland. We emigrated to America because our lands were being colonized. People started settling farther and farther north. We couldn’t heard reindeer across a fenced landscape. Then several of us became farmers out of necessity. But the farm went to the oldest child alone. So the younger kids had to figure out what to do. Hard times. My ancestors ate birch bark bread to survive - not as a fun and unique foraged food but because there was so little food. Because of colonization, my ancestors were in a destitution. They came to America to get free land. There was very little arable land left by the 1920s when they came over. So they became fishermen, which was a skill they had acquired in the old world. But still, they became colonizers in order to survive. That’s why colonization is so pernicious. Colonization create more colonizers.
North American Indigenous people have been colonized too.
I worked in a tribal school run by a wealthy tribe that has a successful casino. I was so excited that I was going to be around all this indigenous wisdom. But the tribe did everything the way the white man does. And they didn’t revere the earth with their lifestyles. (Although they did with their words). They didn’t recycle anything; everything went into the landfill. I realized that because they had so much money they didn’t have to be indigenous. And the money didn’t solve their problems. There were still high rates of suicide, diabetes, and violence. I would ask my students what it means to be Native American. They’d all just give me blank stares and say “I don’t know” - except one who said “it means to pray.” Oh that melted my heart. This student was truly indigenous in mind.
We’re all trying to get back to pachamama - no matter who our ancestors are.
Loved this on many levels. Unfortunately no time to comment beyond saying im looking forward to reading this new book of yours! Maybe create a bundle price for both books you've got published. Id buy them both in a heartbeat.