This year, I write my Thanksgiving reflection dressed in an orange shirt – not to match the fall decor I have added to my home, but in an effort to acknowledge our country’s first official National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
My Thanksgiving decorations, warm autumn meals, and the cozy ambience in our home arouse wonderful memories of my childhood. I recall many Thanksgiving dinners at which I was surrounded by loved ones from three generations sitting around my grandparents’ dining room table. The aromas and tastes of our traditional Thanksgiving meals, visions of a table decorated just so, sounds of laughter, stories, and the clinking of silverware to china plates continue to fill my mind’s eye and heart. Collective memories of years of Thanksgivings have melded into the single image that has become my personal definition of this holiday. I continue to recreate what I can and add to our own traditions each year as I contribute to my children’s memory collage.
I shudder to think of this, but what types of memories would I have if I had been taken away from my family? What if the smells, the tastes, the comforts, and the history of the events I remember had been replaced by life in an institution filled with strangers who spoke a language I didn’t understand? My history would have been fragmented and filled with doubt, fear, and insecurity. My current image of my childhood would simply not exist, and I am almost certain that I would not be thankful – at least not in the same idealistic way – at Thanksgiving, at all.
This is a tremendously sobering thought and one that needs to be confronted. When I was in school, history lessons on Thanksgiving included accounts of harmonious relations between Indigenous people and colonists. Indigenous people were often depicted as welcoming and as teaching the settlers how to hunt, fish, and grow crops. In the stories of shared harvest meals, Europeans were portrayed as grateful to their new neighbours. There may have been some truth to certain aspects of these stories, at least for some of the people; however, we are learning more and more that many pages in our history books have been virtually sterilized – or contaminated – through omission.
Why, when we learned of tragedies in other countries, did our Canadian history studies avoid our own honest and painful truths? Why did we never hear of children being taken away from their families and herded in trucks like cattle to residential schools, right here in our own country? Why did I never hear of children like Phyllis Jack Webstab? She started school the same year I started school myself, and while I was filling my memory bank with the images described above, she had the clothes her grandmother purchased for her (including her precious orange shirt) stripped away from her by school staff. Why did I not learn that, like Phyllis, many more children were robbed of their homes, their clothes, their language, and their culture?
Why, in the resources and textbooks I used to teach my students, was I never encouraged to dig deeper into the realities that took place behind closed doors in these institutions? Why were people in my own Church involved in the abuse? Why did I accept this “history” as it was written on paper, when truth was written on the faces and lives of so many people living in our communities?
The answers to these questions will likely never come; however, that we as a country now ask them is a step in the right direction. We need to listen, to uncover the truth, to apologize, and to build relationships with those who have been hurt by our government, our Church, and our own ignorance of it all, for it is only when relationships exist that reconciliation can occur.
This Thanksgiving, my comfort likewise prompts discomfort, and this is necessary. While I will continue to appreciate my blessings and add to my children’s memories, I am likewise grateful for the chance to seek a knowledge of others and their respective truths.
Wearing an orange shirt doesn’t change the past, but it reminds me to seek a better future, to read between the lines, and to encourage my children and students to do the same. For this opportunity and for those who have shared their stories, I give thanks.