The Apology

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. -Buckminster Fuller

And there is even less in a nest of snapping turtle eggs. I saw several nests on my way home from Sarah's yesterday. The one closest to the smallish turtle resting on the dirt road was full of scattered shards of white shell. The others were covered in loose dirt. The turtle waggled her head and I continued on my way, thinking about the enormous turtle we had seen years ago at our shore. Out of fear our next door neighbour shot that venerable creature. It was over two feet in diameter. This descendant of hers was only the size of a man's palm. Thank heavens these turtles live in a lake whose environment is healthy and nurturing, and that most of their human neighbours value and protect them. Thank heavens that only one nest had been ravaged by a predator, likely a natural one.

Yesterday I watched Canada's apology to the first Nations, Inuit and Metis people. Thank heavens the Conservatives finally agreed to allow responses. It became what it should have been ... an historic beginning to a new era in the relations between the people wronged so long ago and the rest of Canada.

Sarah had asked me over. She wanted to judge the sincerity for herself. I am not sure anyone can judge sincerity based on prepared speeches, and my own feeling was that this was a political necessity and an opportunity for Harper and his party to look good. But I am glad he did it properly, because he was apologizing on behalf of all of us.

I was gladdened, impressed, surprised, interested, disappointed, and touched.

* glad to see Stephane Dion take responsibility on behalf of his party.

* impressed that Harper thanked Jack Layton for not giving up on him and pleasantly surprised when he admitted that Layton had pressed the matter every week for a year and a half.

* interested in the intelligence of the Bloc's apology but disappointed that it deteriorated into a political speech against the Conservatives.

* glad that Layton spoke specifically about the harm done to these survivors and to the generations that followed them, and about what must be done to remedy their situation. He was also the one who asked us to imagine a village in which there were no children between the ages of 6 and 16.

But it was the responses of the leaders of the peoples who suffered in those residential schools which touched my heart. Some spoke with humour. Many spoke extemporaneously. They all spoke from the heart. I guess for me it was the final speaker, the woman who represented the association of women, who spoke most directly to me.

She was a warm woman, and a wise one. She didn't harangue, but she made it very clear that seven generations of her people have been badly damaged by laws that tore apart the very fabric of her culture by destroying the traditional matriarchal system.

She spoke about how ripping children away from their mothers and their influence in those very important years and keeping them away from the women who carried within themselves the bond with the earth, had created young people who were lost.

And there were seven generations of these lost children, children who could not parent, children who could not know how to protect their own children from the same kinds of harm they had suffered.

And she didn't let our political leaders relax complacently now that the apologies had been given. She reminded them with a smile that this was only the beginning.

We never had a legitimate right to force assimilation on these people. We took advantage of our superior strength to commit that crime against them, and then we turned a blind eye to the other abuses that occurred within those residential school walls far from the protection of families.

Yesterday our political leaders said what needed to be said, and we Canadians were reminded that we have an obligation to protect and nurture children ... all children. Parenting and political stewardship are similar. Both are about nurturing, not about wielding power over other beings. They are about allowing caterpillars to become butterflies and leathery eggs to become turtles. They are about keeping the places in which they live healthy so that they can grow strong and beautiful.