Communities need to strengthen ties for reconciliation

By Lethbridge Herald on February 21, 2023.

Editor:

As a survivor of the residential schools I spent nine years in St. Paul’s Anglican Church and four years in St. Mary’s Residential School on the Blood Indian Reserve. 

It’s important for survivors stories and experiences be acknowledged. In 1883 Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald addressed the House of Commons: “When the school is on the reserve the child lives with parents who are savages; he/she is surrounded by savages and though they can read and write his habits, training, and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. That Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from parental influence put them in training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and mode of thought of white men.“

But shaming and pointing out wrongdoing is not the purpose of Truth and Reconciliation. 

I live in Lethbridge beside the Blood Indian Reserve, the largest reserve in Canada in size and population. 

I am a member of the Blood Tribe and reside in Lethbridge.

For the past 10 plus years, I have been working for homeless/addicted residents of Lethbridge. There is a high number of Indigenous members from the reserve living on the streets of Lethbridge. 

The numbers are rising and the overdoses and fatalities are increasing daily. These are challenging times the city is going through and the Blood Reserve has been adversely affected by the opioid crisis. 

Now more than ever the communities need to strengthen ties for a united front. To work as one in the quest for “Truth and Reconciliation” to continue. 

Reconciliation requires that a new vision, based on a commitment to mutual respect, be developed. 

It requires an understanding that the most harmful impacts of residential schools have been the loss of pride and self-respect of Aboriginal people, and the lack of respect that non-Aboriginal people have been raised to have for their Aboriginal neighbours. Reconciliation is not an Aboriginal problem; it is a Canadian one.

 Reconciliation will take some time. Alvin Mills

Lethbridge