Paul: Hello. Bonjour. Tansi. My name is Paul Seaman. I'm a partner at Gowling WLG, and the National Leader of our Indigenous law practice group, and I'll be hosting today's webinar and our panel discussion, Reconciliation and Decolonization: Shifting Culture in Large Communities. Before I continue with a welcome, and a brief round of introductions, I'd like to start today by acknowledging that I'm hosting this session on the Coast Salish Territory. Specifically, on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territory in what's now known as the City of Vancouver in British Columbia. As we gather in this virtual space today I ask that everyone join me by acknowledging and reflecting on the fact that the ground beneath our feet, all of us wherever we happen to be, is territory that has been owned by and home to Indigenous People since time immemorial. A special welcome to my colleagues from across the country at Gowling WLG who have joined us today for this discussion and to our clients and our other friends of the firm who are also joining us virtually today.
We have an interesting program in the next hour. Two housekeeping notes before we begin. First, I wanted to mention that a slide providing simultaneous English to French translation is available. Second, particularly for the lawyers in attendance, this session qualifies for Continuing Professional Education credits and the details on claiming credits will be shared at the end of today's session. So with that I'd like to introduce our panel of esteemed speakers, who have graciously accepted my invitation to share their insights today on the important theme of this discussion, pursuing and achieving reconciliation and decolonization within large communities and institutions. Our format today is straightforward. Each of our panelists will provide some of their insights on this topic, drawing on their own personal and professional experiences and journeys, and time permitting I'll facilitate some follow up questions and some further discussion.
Our first panelist is Kory Wilson. Kory is Kwakwakaʼwakw and the Executive Director of Indigenous Initiatives and Partnerships for British Columbia Institute of Technology. She is also Chair of the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics Indigenous Affinity Group. Kory has over 20 years of experience in the area of post-secondary education, community development and she's also a trained lawyer. She serves on many boards, from Pearson College, the BC Women's Foundation, the Downie Wenjack Fund and Future Skills Canada to the BC First Nations Justice Council. Kory is a sought after speaker and strategist on advancing and truth telling about the past and moving towards reconciliation. With a deep commitment to education, both formal and informal, Kory knows that innovative and creative solutions are essential to move reconciliation into reconcili-action. Education and access to knowledge are keys to moving everyone forward. As I know Kory likes to say, when people know better they do better.
Our second panelist is Dr. Alika Lafontaine. Alika was born and raised in Treaty 4 Territory in Southern Saskatchewan. He is an award winning Metis physician and the first Indigenous President elect of the CMA, the Canadian Medical Association. A frequent lecturer on the issues of how bias, discrimination and racism affect patient care. Dr. Lafontaine has co-led the Indigenous Health Alliance, which is a health transformation project involving 150 First Nations and several national health organizations from 2013 to 2017. In 2020 Alika co-founded Safe Space Networks. That's an online platform designed to help marginalized patients navigate health care systems, to build trust and to reduce patient harm.
Our third panelist is Father Peter Bisson. Peter is a Catholic Priest who is a member of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits. Originally from New Brunswick, Peter now works in Ottawa as the Assistant to the Jesuit Provincial for Justice, Ecology and Indigenous Relations. In this role Peter supports the social justice work of the Jesuits in Canada and advises the leader, known currently as the Provincial of the Jesuits in Canada, in these matters. A good part of Peter's work goes towards issues of reconciliation and decolonization. From 2012 to 2018 Peter served as the Provincial of the Jesuits in the English speaking parts of Canada and represented the Jesuits at meetings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the Signatories to the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. So with that, I would propose to pass it to Kory to offer her insights and remarks.
Kory: Great. Thank you, Paul. Thank you everyone. I'm coming to you today from Musqueam Territory, which is the territory that UBC is on. For those of you that know Vancouver I'm very grateful to have been at UBC. I attended UBC law school and I've been living on their territory since then for over 20 years. So I'm very grateful to be here today. I'm Kwakwakaʼwakw from Northern Vancouver Island. The photo you see behind me is a picture of my Reserve, looking West. Quadra Island as part of the Kwakwakaʼwakw Nation and so we say Gilakas'la. So thank you for having me and thanks for having this discussion. I think this is a really important discussion.
The reality in Canada is that we do need institutional change. We do need change in our public spaces, our public institutions, private as well of course. So some of the messages I really want to get across is the reality is that every single one of us has a role to play in reconciliation. Often people will tell me, well what does that mean? What am I supposed to do? I'm in the Academy, so perhaps I shouldn't say it as I do, but the reality is that we got bogged down a lot of times in the Academy in the post-secondary system about what words mean. For me, reconciliation is anything that closes the gap. Anything that increases and improves the lives of Indigenous People. Help us become full participants in the Canadian society, that's reconciliation, and any action that moves us towards that is Indigenization. So we need to get away from definitions and confining words but getting more into actions. Part of doing that is knowing the truth. Truth absolutely has to be the foundation on everything that we do. I actually just gave a talk earlier today and one of the conversations came up is, we talk about the truth all the time in terms of what happened during the Second World War. We need to do the same for Indigenous People. Every single Canadian needs to be brought up knowing the truth of the genocide that happened in Canada. That's not to make them feel guilty. That's not to make them feel bad. But it's to make us start on the foundation of truth. The reality is, and when we look at making change institutionally or in public spaces, one of the fundamental truths that we have to acknowledge is that there is systemic and institutional bias and racism in our institutions. It doesn't matter what institution, whether we're talking about the law, whether we're talking about post-secondary, health care systems, we must accept that that exists. People will say, I've never experienced it. I don't believe or they cast some kind of doubt. How else do you explain the fact that Indigenous People are at the negative end of every social economic indicator? That's it not because we're less equipped, we're more criminally inclined, worst parents or just have naturally worse health. Something is happening in our institutions. We don't graduate at the same rate as non-Indigenous People. We're overrepresented. What is it? 55% of the women incarcerated are Indigenous. Over 65% of the kids in care in British Columbia are Indigenous. So we have to recognize that there is institutional and systemic bias. Part of that, of course, is also recognizing that we all have work to do.
We all have a role in reconciliation and people will say, what does that role look like? How do I do that? One of the fundamental things, I think if you can do three things for us, one is to recognize the difference between equality and equity. Understand that equity is what we want to pursue, not equality. We also need to reflect on our privilege and we all have privilege. Sometimes people counter that by saying but I grew up poor. I'm from these disadvantage groups so I don't have privilege. The fact that we're all on this call, in Canada, in a country that is currently not at war, that is not in different states and situations that other countries are, recognizes that we have a level of privilege in Canada. But we as individuals needs to recognize the privilege that we have, as well as the bias that we all have. We all have biases and we all must address and understand and be aware of those biases, if we are going to make these types of changes that we need. I often also hear, being in the post-secondary system, it's the education system's fault. Well, we can say that. There is changes and systemic change that has to happen in this system, but again, it is a system. We enter kids in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten. We put them out at the end in Grade 12 and we hope some of them go to post-secondary. The same as we hope some of them go to law school, and we put them out 3 years later in law school, and then we put them in to articling. We have to really look at what it is that we're teaching. What is that we're doing. How do we look at the systems and ensure that everybody that's graduating in British Columbia, Canada, anybody that's going to post-secondary system is getting an education that will actually lead to change? Will actually lead to a country that's better and inclusive.
We know that diversity is a reality but inclusion is a choice. So we have to consciously make these efforts and we need to make these efforts as individuals. As I said, learning the equity, privilege and bias that you have, as well as in your family and then in community. The goal really is to make sure that we all, so how are we going to make this change? Is that if we do that as families, as communities, in the workspaces that we occupy. If we think about how do we make the places and spaces that we all occupy better, more inclusive, that's how we're going to make the change in society. Because everybody has a role in reconciliation. It can't be the work of Indigenous People only to advance reconciliation. Canada will be a better country, a stronger country, not only socially and economically but will be a better country full-stop if all voices are heard and inclusion becomes a choice that we all make. People say, I don't know how to do this. I don't know what to do. You just have to start. You have to start somewhere. Every single one of us has a phone, I'm quite certain, and on that phone is Google. So you can start doing Google. It's been Indigenous History Month, this month. We just had, of course, Indigenous Day. There's all kinds of lists out there of books, of podcasts, of movies, of things that you could do to increase your own awareness. As Paul said earlier with the land acknowledgement, figure out whose land you are. Just start there. Whose land are you on? Google. Learn about the people whose ancestors were here long before your arrival. Learn about the land where your university was. Where you went to school. It's about figuring out ways to increase your own awareness as well as every time you enter a room or space, look around. If everybody looks like you then there's a problem. Right? We haven't achieved parity yet, this country, for women so it's going to take a while to get that for Indigenous women and for other under-represented groups, but it's going to take all of us to do that and all of us must commit to doing that. I know there's some people that say, and the myths and racism that's out there as well, they get enough. When is enough going to be enough for Indigenous People? The fact is, again, that's a myth that Indigenous People get all these benefits and these free things. Again, if we did we wouldn't be at the negative end of every social economic indicator. I'm sure Alika can talk about the horrible health statistics that we have. As Indigenous People we are at the negative end of every social economic indicator in land that has been ours since time immemorial. Canada will be stronger, you will be stronger, your company will be stronger, your practice will be stronger if Indigenous People are at the more positive end, comparable end, to non-Indigenous people. It will be good for all of us if that's the case. I know you told me 8 minutes so I could keep going but.
Paul: No, that's excellent, Kory. Thank you for those remarks and those insights. I did want to ask one question before I pass the mic to Alika. You touched early on in your comments on the idea of everyone having a role to play in reconciliation, I think were your words. I guess that I would add that education is on its own. It seems like a really complex topic and what I mean by that is sort of given the structure of academic institutions themselves, and how they intersect with government and individual educators, individual students, and given such a complex landscape and having to operate in that kind of complex landscape, how does that affect someone finding what their proper role is in reconciliation? What do you think of that?
Kory: I think first off you have to recognize that intersection between, whether it's the K to 12 system or the post-secondary system, and the interaction with government, with various programs, with the needs of a country and we are educating the people that we want to lead the country. Right? So the reality is we have to pay attention to what's being taught, break down some of the systems and the barriers that keep Indigenous People from achieving at the same rates of non-Indigenous people, whether in K to 12 and in post-secondary. But it's also about the content. What kind of people are we graduating? How can we change the system? Even if we look at law schools. When I was in law school there was no requirement to learn anything about Indigenous People at all, and I'm from British Columbia, where we know the different situation around land and land title and ceded and unceded and whatnot. So it's important that the education system reflects the reality but also that we're teaching competencies that everybody needs to be successful. One thing that's happened with COVID is it's shown the interconnectedness, not only between and amongst us within Canada, but Canada within the rest of the world. We don't make enough PPE ourselves. We don't make vaccines. So we are interconnected so there is a responsibility for an education system, from pre-K, the K to 16 system often I call it. So from year 1 to year 16 if you include the 4 years of post-secondary, to not only reflect the truth, the realities, the true history of Canada, but also gives students the skills to ensure that they are capable of looking through lenses that perhaps are not their own, and that they understand that we are all interconnected. When you extend it then to the workforce and to the needs of a society and to government is we have to be reflective of that as well. There's no sense creating programs and services in institutions that aren't going to not just lead to jobs but aren't going to actually make change. I know Alika talks about this. There's some very key issues that Indigenous People face. Is our education system addressing and providing solutions to those key issues? And if the research is not going to lead to that change or affect those issues, should we pursue that path? Or are we looking at things because we know there's not a ton of time, there's not enough money, so we need to leverage and work together and maximize our resources, together as groups. It's not just up to the post-secondary system alone. It's up to all of us to ensure that the interconnectedness is respected and valued and elevated and amplified.
Paul: Thank you so much for that answer, Kory. It's maybe a good segue to pass the virtual mic to Dr. Lafontaine.
Alika: Thanks, Paul, and just a note to any of the participants, I only have hospital administrators call me Doctor now. That was a great segue from Kory, just leading into some of the things that I wanted to touch on. I come to you from Treaty 8. I'm up here in Grand Prairie, Alberta, about 4 hours North of Edmonton. It's the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa, Crees and Dene and also the only place in Canada that there's Metis settlements. A really rich Indigenous cultures up here. I identify as a Metis physician but my mom's Pacific Islander as well and so … . Tansi. Good morning. Bonjour. I'm going to do something that doctor's do all the time which is present a bit of a slide deck. We like to organize our thoughts this way. But I thought I'd take a step back and maybe just go over some of the ways that we think. I give this presentation regularly to physicians across the country. I'll be coming into be Canadian Medical Association President, so representing Canada's 90,000 plus doctors over the next year, come August. I think one of the things that has become very clear in moving forward with some of these discussions, and actually transforming our country into that next step where we can achieve that next level, for everybody in the country. So no one gets left behind. I'm starting to think through a bit about what reconciliation means in the context of bias and something that I refer to as mental models. This may be something you guys have seen before.
If you look at society it's kind of this. It's supposed to be like this, this lush green space you have. Our social fabric which is language cultures, ethnicities, our rich histories, the way that we interact with each other socially and in our relationships. That and our economic system which isn't just stock markets but also the way that we value things. We value trust and competency and integrity, etcetera, but then also we price things in exchange value. From all these things grow these trees. This is just an example of some things. There's justice. There's health. There's education. There's social support. There's lots of different things. We're currently in an environment where it feels like it's kind of turned into a desert. Like our social fabric feels likes it's frayed or falling apart. Our economic system is obviously crashing into recession right now. As a result a lot of our systems have stopped being these lush beautiful trees and started to lose their leaves and feel like their dying. I can say that, especially in health care, there's a general sense that our health care system is on life support or collapsing and at times it actually feels like maybe things are on fire. So it's in this context that we often talk about reconciliation and how we move to that next step. Because it's not only about putting out the fire but also how do revive this world, this environment in our systems that we work in and the systems that you work in.
I took a minute last night just to create a word map of the last 10 public statements made by the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and a couple of our other national organizations. These are the words that pop up. You've probably been hearing this in the news. I've said it in the news when I've been on CTV. Our current President, Katharine Smart, has been talking about the collapse of the health care system. Things are pretty dire. So the question is, is what we can do? My own personal opinion is reconciliation is one of the ways out of this. I'm going to go through an exercise here with you guys right now. It's going to be a bit interactive. Hopefully some of you have the chat function. But I'm going to ask you to look at the paragraph I'm going to throw up here in just a minute. I want you to read through the paragraph and count how many F's are in there and we're going to use this just to illustrate kind of this concept of bias and what a mental model is. So there's no trick. Just read through the paragraph. I'll put it up in a second. I'll give you 3 seconds. So here it is here. Going to give you 3 seconds. One, two and three. I want you to jump into chat and if you saw three F's I'd like you just to tap the letter 3 in there. Thank you. If you saw 4 F's, put in the number 4, and if you saw more than F's put in the number of F's that you saw. We got things fast and furious. One person saw zero. Sorry. I probably didn't put it up on the screen long enough for you. Alright. So these are the numbers of F's that are actually in here. So there's actually 6. Finished files are the result of years of scientific study - there's 5 - combined with the experience of years. Now you can see from the chat that lot's of people saw the same thing. So there must be underlying reason behind that. If you take this and you start to get a normalized distribution by getting more and more participants, this is where you actually end up migrating to. I presented this to groups of 30 and groups of 3,000 and I will say, as things get larger, you tend to move towards these averages. So about half of the people, and you can go through the chat and see if this is true or not, tend to see about 3 F's. About a quarter see 4 F's and about a quarter see 4 or more F's. So whenever you have a shared experience and shared outcome there's probably a shared mental model that underlines this.
So what's the shared mental model in this case? The first is that when we read paragraphs we often read for content. So I know as lawyers, and people who work in the legal field, you're probably looking for what does the paragraph actually mean. So even though I gave you a specific tack, you still try and find meaning in what you're trying to do. The second is that you skim when rushed for time. Everybody does this. You prioritize larger words because they communicate meaning. You probably skipped over the of's. The last part is we tend to read aloud in our heads. So the sounds of F in 'scientific' sound very different than the sounds of 'of' when we're reading it to ourselves. Now whenever you have a mental model that's shared, there's also people that don't share this mental model and there are a couple of groups that this actually doesn't work on at all. The first is those who don't speak English as a first second language, particularly those who don't think in English when they're thinking through things. The second group, for whatever reason, is people who haven't been formerly schooled through grade 4. I'm not sure what it is. Learning grade 3, going into grade 4, but for whatever reason if you dropped out of the school system before grade 4 this tends not to work on you. It doesn't work on grade 3's either.
I'm going to have you go through one more exercise. Just going to have you read three triangles, just left to right. I'm going to throw that up and just give you 3 seconds here. One, two and three. I'll give you four for that person who only saw zero and I'm going to have you read them one more time. So I want you to put into chat yes if you did not see what was in the triangles. I'll just give you a second for that. So put in a y or put in yes if you did not see what was in the triangles. So this is super interesting because I literally told you what the trick was. Immediately before tricking you again. This is what mental models actually are. Is they're shared beliefs that we pick up. They can come from shared experiences, influences. They're often rooted in our personal identity. They influence our unconscious and conscious behaviour. They really drive our behaviour. When we come into a situation and you think to yourself, I've seen this before. This is what I can expect next, etcetera. As an anesthesiologist, I walk into a room, I'm immediately looking at people's veins. I can't help myself. I look around the room and I think to myself, you're going to be a hard IV start. You're going to be an easy IV start. I assess people's airways because that's what we do. I can tell whether or not someone looks critically ill or whether or not they look healthy. That's just the way that my mind works because of what I do day to day. The other part of mental models is that you actually don't have to have them be true. They don't have to be logical. They don't have to be adaptive. They don't have to be realistic. The people who hold the mental models think that they are logical. Think that they are adaptative and think that they're realistic, but the reality is the don't need to be. The final part is that with mental models, if you change those, that's actually how you change behaviour.
So we often talk about unconscious bias and discrimination and all these things are automatic. All of those things are actually rooted within some sort of mental model. Now, this is a great quote. Some of you have probably read Atomic Habits. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. I would argue that you actually fall to the level of whatever mental models predominate within your social structure. So what are the mental models that we believe about Indigenous People? If you look at the very bottom here and that's colonialism. That was a mental model that was created and promoted for the key endpoint of discriminating against a specific group of people to remove their rights to land and resources. At the end of the day this is really where bias discrimination and racism have their true harm. So bias is when we apply distortions. We all do it. You saw in the F and triangle exercises that this happens. When you project bias onto another person based on their gender, their race, their age, their social economic status, etcetera, that's what's a discrimination. Once you discriminate, plus you take something away or you prevent something from being given to someone, that's when it becomes an "ism". So the difference between discrimination and racism is when you do something that harms the person. If just in your head you have this discriminatory thought, but it doesn't actually create that harm or that loss of opportunity, I don't think it truly reaches the level of racism. Then racism, obviously, is when you discriminate based on race and you kind of take that opportunity away. Colonialism is what we talked about before.
There's a lot of different reasons why we change mental models. I think that's why we have discussions like this, is we actually are trying to change the way that we think. Our underlying belief systems about the world around us. In health care we use a practice called reflective learning, which is really going through how you learn about things and then reflecting whether or not that's actually taking you to the truth, or taking you to the impact that you want. I may believe when you walk into an office that you look like a diabetic but if I don't have labs to back that up, if I don't have other behaviours that back that up, if I don't have objective things like someone's blood sugar, it's really worthless me using the bias because I'm not putting you down the path you need to go down. Emotional awareness is another way that we manage mental models, and then finally cultural shifts. Almost done here. This is a mental model that I share for system changes, the Kubler-Ross Change Curve. I don't know if you guys have come across this before. It's often taught in NBA classes. But it's taking the stages of grief and it's putting through how people react to change. So at your very beginning is your status quo. You have something that triggers rethinking of the status quo. It's usually because of maladaptation. So something that you believed in the past that seemed to work doesn't work anymore. We saw this repeatedly with COVID. Our efficiency within the system, and constantly riding that line of not having enough, got completely blown up because now the demand was higher. If you had that crisis that then leads to denial, which is kind of intuitive knee-jerk reaction to whether or not something's true, that's where our mental models kind of live in this. If you can push through that people start to resist the change, after being motivated to change, and that resistance is really based on how things change. How things change related to how we get paid, how we work, who we work with, who we report to, stuff like that. Then you get to the expiration and commitment then you can achieve this new status quo on kind of the far right side. The really valuable part of where you can impact stuff within changing mental models, and in my opinion is, reconciliation. Really focusing on these four parts. If you can really define where your status quo is right now, you can define these crises that are constantly triggering you to rethink whether or not change happens. If you can unpack your mental models within denial, and you can understand how your work life is going to change as a result of those changes due to reconciliation or whatever thing that's going to be a solution to you maladaptation, you can really end up making big changes in your system and eventually getting to your new status quo. But what often happens is we either just completely focus on the status quo, we completely focus on the crisis or we go to this far right and we say, once we commit everything we'll be fine. But we don't put in the hard time and effort that it takes to get through our denial and our resistance.
Just at the end, I like to end with this quote. This is from Ted Quewezance, who's a Past-Chief in Keeseekoose First Nation. He says,
"Our stories are so out of norm and removed from others' experiences that those others have a hard time believing that these things could happen. They believe these experiences are extremes. This is our status quo. For this of us that live this reality, the status quo is no longer an option for us, our children or our communities."
So just like doctors, I think one of the reasons doctors and lawyers get on so well is we both see people in the lowest parts of their lives and we hear stories that, honestly, are the wildest things you could ever imagine. The extremes that you see when people experience racialization and other of these challenges, they aren't one-offs. This is the lived experience of what a lot of people go through. So I thank Paul for bringing us together.
Paul:Thanks so much, Alika. I did have a follow up question for you as well. Maybe picking up on this last point of lived experiences. We, of course, all rely on and interact with the health care system to some extent or another. How have you found your personal experience with the health care system as an Indigenous Person? How has that informed your current professional roles, as both a physician and now as a formal leader?
Alika: Yeah, I think a lot of us go into the professions because we see our families are in need of that type of professional expertise or advice. I know growing up my mom always said to us we need a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, like somebody to get into these different fields. That way we can get some insider help on how things go about. I've experienced racialization with my own family, bringing them in for care. I mean I'm very careful with how I present my children when they need help because I'm very worried that they will kind of get put off to the side and not get seen. I've experienced with my brother but I'll actually share an experience I don't think I told you about before, Paul, but that was my daughter going in with an asthma attack. So I knew the way that our emergency room worked. I found out who was working that night. I was kind of driving in. I was having my hand on her chest because she was like almost in status where she couldn't breathe at all. Kids when they reach that point where they're almost in that critical point where they can't breathe, they have something called staccato breathing, so every word they have to take in a breath. That's how my daughter was talking at the time. We end up getting there and I'm thinking to myself, I know how this doctor works. I know he's going to take one look at us and he's going to say to himself, they're just overreacting. So I actually borrowed a key card from one of my friends, and I know a lot of people can't do this sort of thing, but I borrowed a key card. Let myself in. I kind of just stood there with my daughter because I knew he'd come say hi, because we were friends. He said hi. He heard my daughter respond and then it triggered with him, oh no. This is something very, very serious, and ended up going inside. She was admitted to the hospital for 5 days and eventually got through what she was getting through. People on average don't realize that that's how you have to manage your way through the system. If I had told them what the problem was before they had their time to do their own assessment, I knew their mental model which was they're wrong and I'm going to resist what they told me to do until the bitter end, and that would have caused great harm for my kid. I think as lawyers you can see this happen to your clients. You can see this happen to each other when you go through the structures. I know those of us who experience racialization, or sexism, or any of the other "isms", we know the ways that we need to talk and the ways that we need to act in order to get what we need out of the system. Should that exist? It should not. Full stop. But I think as we're changing the system we have to appreciate that things are as they are and people need what they need. I often say to folks, reconciliation, if people weren't harmed in the process of going through these systems, honestly none of us would care. We wouldn't have people marching in the street about having certain lives matter, if those lives actually mattered when they went through the systems that they did. I hope that when you think through reconciliation, it's not just about helping people with different perspectives, but it's also making sure that we take care of those people that are put in our charge. I think when we talk about reconciliation, and health care in particular, it's making sure that someone can come in, just have an excellent experience, and not have people be hostile to them. Have them receive all the different options that they're entitled to and kind of shepherd them through, just like anyone else. I think what Kory said about reconciliation, equity and equality is really, really important here. That's the end state. The end state is not having things look a certain way or other things. It's having people actual experience day to day that difference to feel like that they're not being oppressed or discriminated anymore. I think we can get there.
Paul: Thanks, Alika, and maybe this is a good time to pass the virtual mic to Peter next. Peter, please go ahead.
Paul: Thanks, Paul. Alika and Kory, it's great to be with you and with everybody else on Zoom. I'd like to acknowledge first that I'm here on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe Territory, otherwise known as Ottawa. So from the late 1980s in our relations with Indigenous People, the Jesuits in Canada have been travelling on a trajectory from indignation to partnership, I think. So the Jesuits first had to get over our uncritical and naïve view of ourselves. Then we had to learn to say we're responsible and we're sorry. Then we learned to say we need your help. Before I describe this often painful but always fruitful journey, I'd like to explain a little bit of context. Paul said something to you in his introduction about my leadership roles, while the TRC was working, and I just want to add that the Jesuits were not party to the IRSSA because we had an earlier agreement about our residential school. Nevertheless, TRC Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, invited us to participate in the meetings in addition to the main Catholic representatives, which is a temporary organization called the Corporation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential School Settlement. People just say Catholic Entities. The Jesuits had one residential school in Spanish in Ontario. St. Peter's Claver School for Boys, which later became known as Garnier College High School. It closed in 1959. Today we continue to work as pastors in Indigenous parishes in the region. Manitoulin Island, North Shore Georgian Bay and Thunder Bay. Most of the Indigenous People who we worked with in ministry are alumni of that school and of a neighbouring residential school for girls that was run by a group of nuns. We also participate in Kateri Native Ministry in Ottawa and support two Indigenous focus middle schools in Regina and Winnipeg, Mother Theresa Middle School in Regina and Gonzaga Middle School in Winnipeg. So now I'd like to get into a little bit of our Jesuit journey.
On my very first day as Provincial, religious leader from the Jesuits, in May, 2012, I went to a TRC event in Toronto. There, survivors gave public and private testimony to their experience of residential schools, to the lingering effects of that experience. I'd been advised that the Catholic Church would not be very present at the gathering so it was important that I go and that I be seen as a priest. So I should up in the clergy suit. I quickly realized that I'd made a terrible mistake. Instead of being a symbol of welcome, reconciliation and peace, I was a trigger. A trigger for traumatic memories. I tried to dress down by taking off my jacket, rolling up my sleeves, removing the white tab from my clergy shirt, but I could still see a negative impact on people's faces. I felt ashamed and uncomfortable to be a priest and I had to struggle against the temptation to stay with other church people. I realize though that it was good for me as a church leader to experience these feelings. I was also surprised that despite the pain that I was triggering in Indigenous People at the gathering, no one was rude to me. Everyone was polite and some were even welcoming. This melted my heart. The courage to endure my minor discomfort and shame came from an earlier transformation in the Jesuits. In the last 80s and early 90s we began to hear complaints about sexual abuse in our residential school and in the Indigenous parishes where we worked. At first we didn't want to believe them. The way we wouldn't listen, people sued us. We reacted defensively and we used the law as a weapon. We were indignant. We lost a lot of money. After a while, however, we began to realize that we were treating old friends like enemies. We began to listen a little bit more seriously and after noticing consistent patterns, and learning other data, we started to recognize that most of the allegations were probably true. We then started to take responsibility for the harmful actions and to offer help to the victims if they wanted. While this change of attitude didn't come overnight, it meant we were no longer putting ourselves, our legacy, our assets first, and were starting to put the victims first. We replaced our defensive risk management approach with a victim centered pastoral one, or at least we tried to. At this point I think we were starting to move from indignation towards reconciliation. Change in mental model.
Over time we also noticed that people in the communities where we worked were not asking us to leave. Indeed, after we learned to say we're responsible and we're sorry, our relations even seemed to improve. We passed through the narrow door of truth and on the other side we found, to our surprise, new relations. One commentator on reconciliation has observed the truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable. It's true. But the freedom on the other side of the misery isn't simply freedom from appropriate guilt and shame. Rather it's the freedom to be with the people you harmed, if they accept you there, and the freedom to move forward together as possible allies or partners. We learned that once painful truths were spoken sincerely, and heard seriously, then we were welcomed in new ways. But in ways that were no longer mainly on our terms. The new freedom was a decentering experience.
In 2015 the Jesuits in the English speaking parts of Canada organized a large spiritual discussion exercise to try to figure out how God was calling us forward. This brought together Jesuits and others who were leaders in our ministries from across the country. The top priority that emerged was spirituality, which is no surprise. The second priority that emerged, however, was a surprise. It was Indigenous relations. Not Indigenous ministry but Indigenous relations. This meant a commitment to seek right relations with Indigenous People and possibly partnerships in all that we do. Whether it was school, higher education, social justice NGOs, parishes, etcetera. The commitment was built around the insight that Jesuits in Canada are best sells when we are in right relations with Indigenous People. The end of this gathering, an Indigenous Elder said, at last I feel recognized. At last I feel like a friend. We'd been working together for 40 years and she'd felt patronized by us for that long. I believe that this collective commitment to partnership, and the decentering that that partnership required of us, launched us into a process of decolonization. Our experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been similar. Whenever the three Commissioners met with the parties to the IRSSA they always treated the church leaders with great respect, even when they challenged us. They could have treated us in an adversarial way, as though they were the plaintiffs and we were defendants in court. Instead, they treated us like we were potential partners. In the long work of reconciliation and partnership building, it took us a long time to recognize this invitation, especially in the Catholic Church. Church leaders are used to being on the preaching and teaching side of the power dynamic and we like being seen as good people, nice people. It's hard for us to be on the other side. It was only when the churches, including the Jesuits, stopped listening in a defensive and patronizing way that we were able to recognize the TRCs implicit invitation to partnership and to the decentering that this required of us.
The Jesuits are still on a trajectory of reconciliation and decolonization and I hope that Pope Francis's visit and apology next month will deepen our trajectory and strengthen the general Catholic one, as that's the main context in which we work, and we look forward to the energies that his apology may release. I'll stop there, Paul.
Paul: Thank you so much, Peter, and I've got a follow up question for you as well, and it's more general in nature about the Jesuit movement, which was of course founded some centuries ago. My question is have you found, especially in your time as Provincial, are there aspects of such a well established organization, presumably well entrenched rules and governance in place that makes it particularly challenging in that context to pursue reconciliation or decolonization efforts?
Paul: Yeah, there are a few. It's not so much in our rules and governance, which have a lot of room for flexibility and creativity and adaptation, I would say it's more our identity. So basically in Canada the Jesuits, like other religious orders in the church, had a big role in nation building but what we have not recognized until the last few years, is that this nation building also meant nation destroying for Indigenous Peoples. The big challenge really is the change in our narrative. The change in our perception of ourselves. That has been scarier than the lawsuits and the financial losses. It's the change in our identity. We're not as nice as we thought we were. There are advantages though. Right now the majority of Jesuits in the world, are in the global South or almost, we're almost in that direction. Many Jesuits in the global South of course come from formally colonized nations. So there's a lot of post-colonial thinking going on in the Jesuit world. For example, where I live here in Ottawa, we're 9 Jesuits in the house. 5 are from Africa and with the Francophone ones we regularly talk about the current impacts of French colonialism, of current French colonialism in West Africa. So that's part of our everyday conversation. So the negative side is our history and our reputation and our view of ourselves. The positive side is the number of Jesuits who are working on various aspects of post-colonial life and thought.
Paul: Thanks, Peter. That's a fabulous answer and thanks for your reflection. I've got another question that I'd like to sort of direct to the panel maybe at large. Touching a little bit on some of the things you've just touched on yourself, Peter, which is the idea of really well established institutions, whether they're dedicated to worship, health care, education, the areas in which each of you have decades of experience, each of them in their own unique ways have been complicit and at times essential parts of colonization, as you say Peter, nation building or conversely, depending on perspective, nation destroying and there have been significant histories built of harmful action towards Indigenous communities. So a large part today you're speaking to an audience that's connected to the legal community, or the legal sector, and that community or that sector, that group of people has it's own unique, in your words Peter, maybe identity and history of harmful action towards Indigenous communities. Could I ask if any of you, and maybe I would start with Kory, how do each of you think it's possible for legal institutions to engage meaningfully in the whole process of truth, reconciliation and decolonization?
Kory: Well I think definitely one of the primary places is legal institution. It's the laws that got us into that. It's a law that still requires me to carry a card in my wallet that says I am a Status Indian. It's a law that requires me to have to go into a different health care system or a different authority that adjudicates my health care in British Columbia. I'm separate and apart because of certain sections in the Constitution and because of an Indian Act that controls my life from cradle to grave. So, again, it goes back to the truth where everybody has to recognize the role that law has played and continues to play in the oppression and the control of Indigenous People. Yes, there has been great advancements. Yes, we've done alternative sentencing, Gladue, so advances in self-government agreements and various things like that. We see Indigenous ways of knowing and being making changes in family law. Making changes in some criminal processes and things like that, but we have to acknowledge and recognize the role that law has played. Again, going to that truth and then recognizing how can we do things differently in law, and when we're looking at opposition to Indigenous People, or we're looking at what the Supreme Court Canada says, or how we enact what the duty to consult and accommodate means. It's thinking differently and recognizing that we are in this situation because of the laws and the way Canada interacted with Indigenous People, pre-Confederation and post-Confederation. And again, there's an Indian Act, that controls my life from cradle to grave and I have to carry a card in my wallet. I could get rid of that card. Throw it away. Never tell anybody I'm Indigenous. But the Government of Canada will not allow me to give up that identity. I will always be on their roll. Of course, if I was born before 1982, in terms of marriage or whatever I would have been taken off their roll. So it's recognizing, but more than recognizing that, it's recognizing the power that you have to make a difference. Or to do something in a different way. If you don't know how to do it, it's seeking out and as Peter said, having those discussion around colonization with the global South. In the case of lawyers, having those discussions with your partners, with your friends, about whatever particular bar your in, how can we do this differently? What are the positives and the things that are well within my area of control? And actually actioning on that and working towards that. You can go all the way back to thinking about how do you recruit for articling students? How do you do those types of things? It's rethinking the ways that we do those things, and changing things systemically, and having the courage. You can't have the safe spaces anymore. We need bold and courageous uncomfortable conversations and we must do better, and we can do better, but we have to all intentionally do better.
Paul: Thanks, Kory. Alika, or Peter, do you have something you wanted to add?
Paul: Alika, you go ahead.
Alika: Yeah, thanks, Peter. This is a great conversation. You know what this has me thinking about is a couple of comments that were brought up by Peter and Kory. I think when we're confronted with the bad things that we've been involved in, our initial reaction is resistance and denial. It is just a human response. I think when you work really, really hard for somebody, whether you're a lawyer who spent hundreds of hours on a case or a doctor who's been on call for the last 36 hours, when you're confronted with things that you've done that have harmed the people around, it's hard not to take it personally because you're working so hard. It really cuts to the core of how you identify who you are. I imagine, Father Peter, when you went through that experience. You've dedicated your life to Christ and trying to create good in the world and now you're being told that you've inherited this inheritance of creating harm for the very people that you actually do literally care about. That identity piece, I think I can't underline that enough. It's something we all have to work through. The hardest part with dealing with a physician who has created harm in a patient situation is them realizing that they did a bad thing but they're not inherently a bad person. That's not to say that everybody's not a bad person. They can't be that person they can. But it's just recognizing and giving that space that we can still respect each other as we kind of muddle our way through, trying to figure out how to resolve things. Justice Murray Sinclair has said at a few conferences that I've attended where he spoke, reconciliation only works if you stay in the same room. We often focus lots about the interaction but what are all the reasons why we run out of the room? Because we get uncomfortable. Because we don't want to deal with hostility. Because we don't know how to deal with our own feelings of inadequacy or guilt or shame or all these other things. It's systemic problems but they're individual solutions. When we talk about just a systemic problem with say something that's not racialized but something like patient centered care. That's a systemic problem but my choice of whether or not to provide you really great care is up to me. I can change this moment every time that I interact with somebody. I'd have everybody that's paying attention this, just remember that. This is a systemic problem but we all can individually choose to stand in that room, be with our own personal emotions and work through those things so we can start to see each other again.
Paul: Peter, you had something you wanted to add? Please do.
Peter: The key for us, well for me anyway and for other Jesuits, it really has been relationship and friendship. That's created the safe space where we can have the painful conversations. It wasn't so safe at the beginning, but it's become safe, but it's more than a safe space. It becomes empowering after a while. So that means being in a relationship but also staying in relationship. Yes, the systemic aspects are huge but it's the relationships that sustain, at least for us, the way through the discovery of the systemic relationships and the discovery of our own privilege, which has been for settlers part of our blind spots that actually protect the imbalance power that we have. Other things have helped. Like the TRC gave us an introduction to Indigenous intellectual life which is very rich and very challenging. But again, relationships I think is the number one thing that has given us the energy, the motor really, that has driven us through this.
Paul: Thanks, Peter. I see that we've only got a few minutes left on our session. So maybe starting with Kory again, do you have some concluding remarks or anything that you'd like to add to sort of wrap up this conversation today?
Kory:I guess the only thing I would say is that I know together we are stronger. The commonality between all of us, if you have kids or nieces and nephews or whatever, is we all want the next generation, I want my children to have a better life than I had. The only way we can do it is if we all work together to ensure that that is the case and we all make the places and spaces we occupy better. Because the reality is together we are stronger and we have no choice. We've seen COVID, we've seen all of these things, we've got to do things differently going forward. I hope we can all make our places and spaces better.
Paul: Thanks, Kory. Alika, did you have something you wanted to add to wrap up?
Alika: Yeah, just thanks everyone for being a part of this conversation. If you are feeling kind of those feelings of frustration or discomfort or other things, I just want to reassure you that is part of it. You can't work around these feelings. You have to work your way through them. Then remember that this is what comes up when you're actually dealing with reconciliation. If you're not uncomfortable, you're probably not doing it right.
Paul:
Peter.
Paul: Yeah, I'll second that. Just to take Kory's words there, together. Together can be quite challenging but boy is it ever worth it. The pain is painful but don't be afraid of it. There are no shortcuts.
Paul: Thanks so much, Peter, and I think looking at the clock it looks like that's about all the time we have for today, unfortunately, but before we do end our session, and I see the CPD information's on the screen, I did want to acknowledge and thank Shereen Samuels, who's the Director of our EDI programs here at the firm and her colleague Miranda Martini, Manager of EDI and Shannon Wadsworth, the Events Specialist at the firm and their respective teams for all of the assistance they gave me in putting this session together, and of course, thank you so much to our three panelists, Kory, Alika and Peter for so graciously giving us your time and your insights to us today, and thank you to everyone who's joined us virtually today. Enjoy the rest of your day everyone.
Paul: Thanks, Paul, for pulling us together too.