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For a moment, two groups shared each other's world
Barbara Yaffe Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
One of the most useful things a person can do through life is try to put himself or herself in another party's shoes. If everyone did this more often, there might be fewer court battles, maybe even fewer wars.
Those able to do that on the occasion of the Harper government's June 11 apology to native Indians on behalf of all Canadians probably felt good about the formal gesture.
Certainly most aboriginals appreciated the apology, saying it held out hope for a new relationship between their community and other Canadians.
The event, and related media coverage highlighting the folly of residential schools, also enabled non- aboriginals to better understand the pain felt by native people: pain at having children taken from families in an attempt to assimilate them; pain at the sexual, physical and emotional abuse those youngsters suffered.
Native people appeared keen to have the broader community fully understand the injustices they'd suffered. They also wanted the Canadian government to assume full responsibility for what happened.
They spoke on the floor of the House of Commons and at length to journalists who recorded their thoughts and tears. Aboriginals who suffered in residential schools will now be given five years to elaborate on their individual agonies before a truth and reconciliation commission established by the federal government.
This is all good. It's important for Canadians to better understand where native Indians are coming from.
What's not so good is a legitimate expression of disgruntlement conveyed to me last week by Lorna Goldner, a member of Vancouver's Jewish community.
She asked where aboriginals were when native leader David Ahenakew uttered hateful remarks about Jewish people. Indeed, some made comments that suggested they felt more sorry for an elderly man than outraged by his racist rant.
The egregious remarks by Ahenakew, who from 1982 to 1985 was chief of the Assembly of First Nations, were made in 2002 to a gathering of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. They reminded some Jews of the revolting discrimination that had been perpetrated against them by the Nazis. "The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war," Ahenakew said, calling Jews "a disease," and saying he was glad Hitler "fried six million of those guys."
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"Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."
For Jews to hear such words spoken in the current century was both shocking and devastating. It would be the same as a non-aboriginal politician praising residential schools.
Ahenakew's offence was exacerbated when several native leaders outrageously came forward in strong support of his cause.
Roseau River First Nation Chief Terrance Nelson, of Manitoba, wrote a letter to a Manitoba newspaper to express support for Ahenakew. He said a court case would "surely cause natives to hate Jews even more than some of them do now."
Incredibly, the Saskatchewan federation voted to reinstate Ahenakew to its senate, a post he'd resigned following his hateful comments.
At this point Ahenakew is awaiting his next court date, following the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal's decision last January to order a new trial after an initial hate-crimes conviction was quashed.
To be fair, Matthew Coon-Come, speaking for the AFN, and separate spokesmen for the Cree, Metis and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs early on rejected Ahenakew's hate-mongering.
Moreover, leaders of the Jewish and aboriginal communities have been prompted by the Ahenakew debacle to begin consultations that featured a trip to Israel for aboriginal representatives and visits by Jewish leaders to reserves. (The web of hurt is an extensive one; Palestinians strongly objected to the native leaders' trip to Israel.)
Following the government's parliamentary apology to natives, Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, issued a news release: "With yesterday's expression of remorse for the injustice of the past, we look forward to walking this journey with our aboriginal brothers and sisters toward a brighter future."
The statement was a reflection of the fact that representatives of the two communities had, however briefly, shared each other's worlds and been able to put themselves in the other's shoes.
We all need to do that more often.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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