Gathering Strength" not strong enough

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The two main proponents of the federal government's response to the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples have been traveling the country, explaining the Jan. 7 announcement to chiefs, Aboriginal people and the media.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine and Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart are spreading the word that Gathering Strength - Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan is the first step in a new enlightened direction in dealings between Aboriginal peoples and the federal government.

Both say the Statement of Reconciliation, which contains the government's apology to victims of sexual and physical abuse in Indian residential schools and promises a $350 million healing fund, are important first steps in the development of a new partnership between Aboriginal peoples and government.

But critics say the apology was too narrow and the healing fund is not nearly enough.

Mental health practitioners say $350 million is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to treating the on-going, multi-generational symptoms of what the authors of the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples called "the silent tortures that continue in our communities."

And one Oneida Nation member with a doctorate in psychology says the whole commission report and government response process is a sham.

Roland Chrisjohn gave up his practice in psychology and now works as a researcher in health and education issues for the Treaty 7 chiefs. He wrote a paper dealing with residential schools for the royal commission that was rejected as too extreme.

"I'm a psychologist by training and for years I worked at a suicide prevention clinic in Toronto," Chrisjohn said. "After years of dealing with depressed people I found the best thing I could do for my people was to open up my wallet and tell them to take what they needed. I was getting paid all this money to look after these people because that was cheaper than actually doing something about the real problem. If you're an Aboriginal person in Canada and you're depressed, there's nothing wrong with you. The economic and cultural oppression you feel is real. You're perfectly all right. You have a reason to feel depressed"

Chrisjohn disagreed with the royal commission report and he has serious reservations about the government response.

"There are cables attached to Gathering Strength, not just strings - cables!" he said. "One of the first things I notice is the word manipulation: When the minister talks about lost lands and lost cultures, it's easy to miss the reality that the lands and culture weren't lost - they were stolen. When the government puts up $350 million for healing and therapy and we accept it, it's easy to miss the most important point. We need to say 'Wait a second. We're not sick. We were poisoned.' That raises a whole series of questions that don't get asked or answered if we buy into the idea that we have a problem."

While he grants that Aboriginal leaders are right to say that Gathering Strength is an important first step, Chrisjohn doesn't want the government document to go unchallenged on its basic viewpoint which, he said, is more of the same old paternalism and cultural insensitivity.

"Gathering Strength speaks in honey words while delivering a sting," he said. "Once again we are demonized as suffering from dependency and being in need of professional help with a pathology. . . as if it was our fault!" he said.

Chrisjohn wrote a response to the government plan which he entitled A Page Turned All Too Quickly. In that paper he suggests the government is giving a very limited, and limiting, recognition to the federal policies which created residential schools so that it can skip over a shameful past without fully dealing with it.

"Marilyn Buffalo [president of the Native Women's Association of Canada] is right. It's not an apology," Chrisjohn said. "Nowhere in the Statement of Reconciliation does the government admit it was the intetion of the federal policies to assimilate. Gathering Strength is an attempt to turn that page before anyone can read it."

He sees many examples of the cultural bias and paternalism which the government admitted was wrong and promised to end in the Statement of Reconciliation.

"In 1952 Canada signed the United Nations convention against genocide," he said. "The residential schools were not a mistake. They were deliberate policy. Canada signed the convention. They knew what they were doing. There are ways of committing genocide without killing people."

Everywhere in the report, he said, are assumptions that Canada's standards are the right standards. That's more paternalism and evidence of on-going assumptions of cultural superiority, he said.

Chrisjohn and other mental health professionals are worried about the implementation of the healing fund.

"Consultants even now are gathering in a feeding frenzy to transfer the fund into their own pockets using the desperation of Aboriginal people as the conduit," Chrisjohn said. "There's not that many Indian psychologists, not that many Indian social workers, and the others haven't been nice to us at all. We're just a funnel. The idea that psychologists and social workers are above the ideology of the mainstream is wrong."

Mohawk psychologist Rod McCormick, an assistant professor of counselling psychology at the University of British Columbia, believes traditional values must be at the core of any effective healing strategy.

"We need to look at our own way of natural healing and give it the credit it deserves," McCormick said. "In my research, I interviewed 50 people who had gone through their own healing journeys. What worked was not seeing a psychologist. It was reconnecting with the natural world, with our own culture."

The psychology professor doesn't believe the $350 million healing fund is enough to do the job.

"My feeling is it's a symbolic gesture. It falls far short of what was recommended in RCAP and that leves me feeling disappointed. The process that created the problem was not symbolic, it was quite systemic and the solution needs to be systemic as well," he said. "If we're relying on the government to fix it, $350 million isn't going to do it. There are a lot of resources that we as First Nations people have to facilitate our own healing. Our traditional ceremonies, our connection with our own cultural identity need to be given the credibility they deserve."

This is a job that will take time to complete and a sound approach should be worked out before the task is even begun, he said.

"The government has a habit of throwing money at hot-spots without knowing what actually works. If I can put forward a case for research, I'd say first we have to find out what works. We have to focus on a solution. I think we've done enough looking at the problems."

Psychologist Linda Hill has been involved in the fight for compensation for deaf students in British Columbia who were also exposed to a residential school system. She said her experiences lead her to believe that $350 million is not enough money to undo the immense harm that the residential school system has done to Aboriginal people in Canada.

"It costs $5,000 to $10,000 for one Life Skills course," she said. "How far would $350 million go."

"There are interesting parallels between residential schools for deaf children and other residential schools," Hill said. "In both situations, the children were devalued. The purpose of the schools was to make them into something else. They were set up to overcome either deafness or Indianness."

Hill said it's common knowledge within the profession that the trauma experienced within such institutions as residential schools has "ripple effects." Family members and even neighbors of victims can be exposed directly or indirectly to the harm done to the actual victims. Entire communities can be affected.

McCormick and Chrisjohn agree, saying the mult-generational effect of the scools has damaged far more people than those people to whom the government has apologized.

Native Women's Association of Canada President Marilyn Buffalo was quick to remind the government of that fact after the Jan. 7 announcement.

"The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the Assembly of First Nations chiefs recommended a public inquiry into the residential schools with a particular emphasis on the multi-generational effects on Aboriginal families and communities," Buffalo said. "We do not know the extent of the damage or the costs that will be involved in repairing it. Unless the monies identified are to be used for that process of defining the problem and the cost of repairing it, it creates the danger of a band-aid solution."

Gerald Morin, president of the Metis National Council, said he was satisfied with the Statement of Reconciliation but concerned that the apology, and many other parts of the government's response, fell far short of the royal commission's recommendations.

"The apology isn't as strong as the one the Mulroney government gave to Japanese Canadians who were interned during the Second World War. It's just directed at residential schools," he said. "It's really very narrow. The experience of Aboriginal people in residential schools is really just one very small aspect of our dealings with Canada."