Whenever I've spoken to a group of people or when I wrote my first two books, I've focusd at some point on experiences that I've gone through from birth until later adulthood, including my being a residential school survivor. One reason I do this is from wanting to connect with people more deeply. When I focus on my story, I hope my account can connect with other people's stories and make my main points more visual and relatable.
We all love stories. That's why most of us grew up begging our parents or those who raised us to tell us stories.
Part of my story as an Indigenous man and residential school survivor has been learning to move on from those experiences. We have to move on as settler people and Indigenous People.
Step one to moving on is: Looking at the past for what it is.
We do this no matter how difficult it may seem-even when someone says, "Why do we have to keep looking at the past?" or "Why can't we just move forward?"
Some of the reasons we have to look back at the past are that many people don't have truthful facts about the history of Canada and its relationship with Indigenous People.
In my research, I've written about some of the main stages in Canada's history. When I did, I condensed the timeline going back to 1492 with ten main steps. I concentrated those into six simple stages for time and space constraints. Stage one: 1492, The Doctrine of Discovery; stage two: The Fur Trade; stage three: 1600's to 1900's Diseases; stage four: 1657, The Gradual Civilization Act; stage five: 1876, The Indian Act; stage six: Residential Schools.
Remember that the relationship between settler people and all Indigenous People is built on relationships, and our relationships are based on the fact that we're all Treaty People living together.
Many of us have heard about some of the epidemics in the history of Canada, such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and other diseases that are developed from genes and diet, such as diabetes. I could list all illnesses before settlers arrived and all the conditions between the 1600s and the 1900s.
Indigenous people knew how to understand and deal with any sicknesses and diseases before 1492. Even today, I'm aware of certain herbs and medicines from the ground that help detox the body and deal with having more energy. I also know that many other groups have similar approaches according to their culture and home country.
But when you rush large new groups into a nation this automatically creates problems. It establishes the trend, which I call the domino effect. There was even one disease that was spread on purpose among Indigenous People. Blankets used by those who were sick with smallpox were given to my fellow people.
Then the illness of tuberculosis spread faster than it should have because the residential school buildings provided the perfect conditions for TB to spread. Physical conditions that were damp, cold and had poor ventilation were breeding grounds for the disease.
Fast forwarding to today, other types of diseases spread faster than usual, such as mental illnesses associated with intergenerational trauma. Another condition, such as diabetes, is related to a drastic change in diet over many years. Alcoholism can also be added to this list since alcohol was introduced during the fur trade. This created the domino effect of the spread of diseases.
Indigenous People as a whole, which includes all the different tribal groups from coast to coast, have the highest rates of all diseases that affect all Canadians. Indigenous people also have high rates of all social ills, such as unemployment, incarceration rates, overdoses, and suicide.
Looking at the past is complex, and moving forward is difficult. Yet, it becomes easier when we strive to understand each other more. Moving from apathy to sympathy to empathy to interpathy becomes a little easier. Interpathy is how we communicate as we walk side by side with someone until we can walk by ourselves and reach our full potential-living as Treaty People beside each other.
Parry Stelter is a Stony Plain resident and the Indigenous Representative of the Cultural Roundtable. He's an Alexander First Nation member, part of Treaty Six Territory. He's a Chaplain at the Salvation Army and a doctoral candidate in contextual leadership at Providence University. You can find out more about him at his website http://www.wordofhopeministries.ca
