Talk to the staff

Dear editor,

Your report (Sins of the Fathers, May Journal) is flawed, to say the least.

Ten former students were quoted, but only one former staff member. When Mr. Napier called me, I told him the true story of the schools would not be told unless he talked to former staff. He did not call back, nor, when he was "criss-crossing" Canada, did he visit me.

Mr. Napier wrote that uniforms were mandatory. The children in the pictures are not wearing uniforms. He wrote that hair was cut short (not a criminal offence ? my mother did it to me so it would not be so easy to get head lice) but the two girls using the scrubbing boards did not have short hair. Ethiopia is starvation. These children do not look starved. He writes that attendance was mandatory but Bishop Gordon Beardy only went for a year.

It is a tragedy that there was some sexual abuse. It is hard to believe that intelligent people such as clergy could be guilty of such a thing. However, if the churches or government knew nothing about it at the time, no action could be taken.

The other groups (besides former staff) who have not been interviewed are parents of the former students. Did they want their children to go? Did someone "grab" their children from them? Were they forced at gunpoint to hand their children over?

There are many, many success stories not written about and there were many fine staff.

I shall continue to tell the true story about the schools.

Bernice Logan, former staff member

Tangier, N.S.

Teachers tried to help

Dear editor,

Journalists tend to use words which don't fit the meaning of the philosophy which we workers, teachers and counsellors worked under in the Indian Residential Schools. It was not assimilation. That implies we wanted Native people to become the same as non-Native people in every respect.

Our philosophy was to help Native people become integral parts of the modern and larger Canadian society, with the education to be self-supporting, productive and contributing members of Canadian society.

In the early '60s, we saw Native children being integrated into town and city schools. This was the dream of their parents, chiefs and elders, for the children to have the same education as others.

Earlier, much school time had been given to older children to learn practical skills ? gardening, learning to drive the tractor, carpentry, helping in the kitchen, helping with the laundry ? that would help them on the reserve.

Canadian society was hoping for equality for Indian people.

Integration also means "wholeness," and that implies a spiritual part to our lives. This is what the church also wanted to give God's Native children.

Helping the children become integrated wasn't easy work. But the church tried. We can only hope Natives can forgive the efforts of those who tried to help, and "take it from there," to accept the dreams of their chiefs and elders and continue the work of being productive and contributing members of society.

Rev. Robert Brown

Thunder Bay, Ont.

That was my wife

Dear editor,

I found Sins of the Fathers balanced and informative. The supplement brought back a flood of memories.

On page 3, in the group of four young "nurses" at St. Michael's School in Alert Bay BC., the one on the right was Beatrice Spence from the Haida area of the coast.

In 1951 I went to Alert Bay as a physician. Bea was a school teacher and choir director at the local Anglican Church. We married in 1952. She always wanted to be a nurse and looked back fondly on her formative years at St. Michael's Residential School. In my year at Alert Bay we looked after the medical needs of St. Michael's School. Many of the staff became personal friends. I never sensed anything except courage, caring and compassion in the school setting. Most of the children were sent by their parents to school with the students going home for holidays or the fishing season.

If there had been any abuse of children I'm sure we would have heard about it. Without residential schools, the Indian people of the coast would have been truly abandoned. Simple hygiene, health instructions, disease prevention, tuberculosis isolation were all carried out in the residential schools.

I and a colleague had a contract with the Department of Indian Affairs. We cared for the Indian people in the district (3,000 or so) for 50 cents an Indian a month or $1 for a family a month. The children at the residential school were all freebies.

We raised seven children and they are proud of their Haida background and have become outstanding citizens.

I am currently involved with First Nations people through the Calgary Regional Health Authority where I am a board member. I'm convinced that the only way the culture can be saved is through education.

Our bonds with the First Nations will have to be spiritual, and forgiving on both sides. They have to become the physicians, nurses, teachers and business people to preserve their culture. If they truly believe they are an abused society, I'm afraid that they will be lost in self-serving greed and manipulated by their leadership into lifetimes of social activism and complaints.

Dr. John Morgan

Calgary

That was my mother

Dear editor,

My mother is in the picture of the girls dressed as nurses at St. Michael's School in Alert Bay. Beatrice Rose Spence, born April 9, 1923 on Graham Island, was a Haida Indian whose parents died when she was small.

My mother was indeed a product of the attempt at systematic removal of Indian culture from the Native peoples of Canada. She very reluctantly discussed her past when pressed by her children. She died Aug. 1, 1987 without ever revealing much of her Native past to me.

Margaret Morgan Gillan

Shoreview, Minn.

Lack of fluoride was standard treatment

Dear editor,

An unnecessarily inflammatory headline, Ottawa Experimented on Native Kids, (May Journal) draws indignation away from how some children in residential schools were mishandled by persons in positions of trust.

I noted that the letter reproduced on page 3 mandates no experimental use of non-traditional dental treatments. The letter is dated 16-1-50 and requires the usual-at-that time procedures of fillings and extractions. I have a mouthful of teeth reflecting standard dental practices of the day. The use of fluorides in water and painting the teeth was not advocated for a further decade.

We can all decry the mental and physical abuse instances, and deficiencies of diet, but I think the memo of 1950 regarding standard dental treatments should not be held against the federal government.

My mother, brother and I visited Aklavik, N.W.T., in the summer of 1945 with a bishop and archdeacon.

I found great love and a sense of purpose among the teachers and nursing staff of the residential school and the hospital at Aklavik, where long care tuberculosis patients, many of them children, were cared for.

Just at that time, the Department of Indian Affairs was beginning to assume the responsibilities for education and for medical services in the Mackenzie Delta, and conflicts between church-based services (Anglican and Roman Catholic) and government concerns were beginning to be felt. It all seemed part of the dichotomy perceived by a visitor ? the military vs. the Department of Transportation, the trappers vs. the oil explorers and developers, the RCMP vs. the traders, the church vs. the fellow-Christians ? everybody had an opposite-number worker who was reviled. It made life interesting.

So what else is new?

Flavia Redelmeier

Richmond Hill, Ont.

Anglicans making a break with history

Dear editor,

Sins of the Fathers recounts several varieties of wrongdoing, centred around residential schools. The leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada does not dissemble or cloak these sins; although they would include the government of Canada among those responsible for residential schools and their underfunding.

With General Synod named in over 350 lawsuits, there will be costs of settlements and legal fees. There may also be emotional hits, as angry people act out, and it gets ugly. Sixteen hundred plaintiffs have begun a process to see the church "take its lumps." Very few will stop without obtaining satisfaction. All of the church's assets will be insufficient to settle the claims for compensation.

Bishop Duncan Wallace of Qu'Appelle was quoted as saying, "All we need is a book, a bottle of wine and some bread and we're in business." Indeed, in Winnipeg, the church of St. Thomas-a-Becket (Anglican Catholic Church in Canada, not communicating) meets for Eucharist in the apartment of the priest. If Bishop Wallace has this level of institutional assets in mind, then I agree, the church will endure.

As Anglicans opt not to be targets, I expect a growing movement to distance themselves from General Synod. Already there have been independent churches established by Anglicans who differed with General Synod. Now that it is pay-back time for the residential schools, Anglicans will want to make a break with that dreadful history.

David Leland

Winnipeg

Judge the church in context of the times

Dear editor,

The Anglican Church did not get involved with residential schools to abuse aboriginal children. It did so because of the honest belief that this was a good approach to help Native young people become a successful part of Canadian society.

The vast majority of the people who developed and implemented this policy were no different from you or me. That the perfect vision of hindsight shows this policy was flawed does not detract from the fact that they thought what they were doing was right. Nor should it be forgotten that many aboriginal parents agreed and not only willingly sent their children to these schools but also took part in parent-teacher associations.

It is as unacceptable today as it was then that some of the children were sexually abused. Where it has happened, the Anglican Church has apologized and should continue to do whatever it can to help those victims. However, the actions of a handful should not be the justification for destroying this church. The fact that the Supreme Court of Canada seems prepared to allow this to happen shows that it is more interested in vengeance than in justice. In such a poisoned judicial climate it is impossible for the Anglican Church or any other institution involved with Native people in the past to get a fair hearing.

Values change. We should and are doing things differently today. But ask yourself: are you sure what we are doing isn't so offensive to the values of the year 2050 that the Anglican Church (should it survive) won't face lawsuits and prosecutions then? We don't know ? nor did those who came before us. Unlike the Supreme Court, when God judges us, may He do so within the context of what we have been taught and not within the context of some futuristic, unknown set of values.

Llew Hounsell

Cornerbrook, Nfld.

Missionaries made great contributions

Dear editor,

The Anglican Journal appears to side with a revisionist interpretation of history which is in danger of portraying all Canadians of aboriginal descent as permanent objects of pity.

Sins of the Fathers (May Journal) is doom- ridden and guilt-driven. It overlooks the great contribution of the missionary movement through residential church schools to provide a community environment of sacrificial Christian caregivers and role models for whole generations of children from deprived backgrounds of poverty, disease and cultural and linguistic solitude.

Having successfully survived the residential church school environment in several countries (other than Canada) from six to 18, I understand something of the "savagery" of that Spartan regime with all its deprivations, but I continue always to be moved profoundly by the example of my mentor-teachers who shared that life illuminated by "agape" love, sacrifice and commitment to others.

Mr. Napier's "exposé" of crimes committed by certain adults against specific pupils in their charge is (as intended) "shocking" and clearly serves as a societal warning but not as a clarion call to demonize government policy and church education.

The rehabilitation of the victims appears ill served by (1) assailing the national government over its using the educational system to foster Canadian identity and to bring (at least) the children into the Canadian dream and away from cultural and linguistic solitudes and by (2) pillaging the treasury of churches whose sole mission is and was to spread the Gospel of redemption.

Canadians should appreciate that it always remains the special task of federal governments to promote national awareness as a necessary counter-weight to the gravitational pull of parochial interests.

Philip Gates

Palgrave, Ont.

Aboriginals made their own choices

Dear editor,

Where were you in 1935? I was growing up in Kirkland Lake, a frontier-mining town. I remember the Natives who hunted and fished as their forefathers had done. I also remember the Natives who worked in the mines. The Natives living an aboriginal lifestyle were very poor and often sick, with a resulting shortened life span. In the early '30s, half of all Canadians were poor in the Great Depression.

In the next 60 years, mainstream Canadians raised our standard of living to one of the highest in the world. Aboriginal people who continued the aboriginal lifestyle did not participate in that wealth. Their brothers who worked in the mines made a different decision, and their children now participate in mainstream Canadian society.

Some Aboriginals, who were left behind economically because they chose an aboriginal lifestyle, are trying to catch up by extracting money from their fellow Canadians. Suing part of the Anglican Church into bankruptcy injures many Canadians who could no nothing to prevent the abuses perpetrated on Natives by Canadians of an earlier era. We are not connected to those abusive Anglicans and are not responsible for their mistakes. We are not responsible for the poverty of Natives who choose an aboriginal lifestyle.

Aboriginals have the same rights as other Canadians, to choose whatever lifestyle they wish. They do not have the right to demand that other Canadians subsidize through government or church, their choice.

The non-Native Anglicans who abused aboriginal people are solely responsible for their mistakes. They alone should pay the damages.

The aim of residential schools was to educate Native children so they could participate in mainstream Canadian society. The Anglican Journal suggests the schools hurt, rather than helped, aboriginal students. Were there really no successes whatsoever? Were all of the graduates worse off after attending those schools than they would have been, living in the primitive conditions of the aboriginal lifestyle?

D.S. Van Dusen

Ottawa

Focus on remaining spiritually debt free

Dear editor,

When we consider the issue of bankruptcy for the church, we have to be aware of what type of bankruptcy we are talking about. The church exists on two levels; as the institution and as the body of Christ. At the moment it is the institution that is being threatened. The bankruptcy it is being threatened with is material.

I do not think that the church, as the body of Christ, is facing bankruptcy. If it were, we would certainly have something to worry about, because that bankruptcy would be spiritual rather than material. And perhaps we should remember that Christ, to whom that body belongs, is not human, he is divine. Unlike humans, he is never going to be faced by bankruptcy; whether it is material or spiritual.

If the Anglican Church focuses on remaining spiritually debt-free as it deals with the pains of the residential schools issue, perhaps our material debts will be less.

Helen Robinson

Toronto

One law for all

Dear editor,

Since the Diocese of Cariboo, the national church and the federal government were found vicariously liable regarding sexual indiscretions of a former employee, are we now to expect that equal justice will be dispensed?

By that I mean are we now to look forward to vicarious liability being imposed upon elementary, middle and high schools along with their respective school districts and provincial departments of education for the sexual indiscretions of countless teachers and counsellors throughout the past 50 years?

It would seem that if such civil cases are not launched against the public school systems then there is some form of double standard being imposed upon the church.

Possibly I am naïve to suggest that such equality should exist in our laws. But if this is not a case of "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" then I admit to being naïve enough to believe that there is "one law for all of the people."

W. D. Woods

Coquitlam, B.C.

Letters overs

Dear editor,

I was dismayed when I read Primates Remain Divided (May Journal), specifically comments attributed to Archbishop Sinclair of Argentina and Archbishop Kolini of Rwanda, on how to handle disagreements, especially those which refer to blessing of same sex unions and pastoral acceptance of homosexuals.

Archbishop Sinclair wanted there to be a "process of decision making" and that "the primate's meeting (be) able to exercise enhanced responsibility and ? guidance, on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters." It seems that in many instances it is the process of decision making at the level of bishop that causes many to despair that Christian love will ever move beyond adherence to rules and regulations ? whether or not they are biblically endorsed.

We feel free to toss out those parts of the Bible which support things which are no longer socially acceptable, i.e. slavery, but we keep those things which shore up our prejudices, even as they flout the true meaning of the Gospel, freedom to be, love for God and the created order, which includes people of a different sexual orientation.

Archbishop Sinclair reminds us of "mutual accountability" but this seems to mean accountability to narrow, restrictive love, not that we should be accountable to God for crippling other human beings. There is no virtue in "keeping the unity" if the basis of that unity is to stifle the gospel of love.

Archbishop Kolini thinks that a break in the Anglican Communion is inevitable if "one part of the communion does something another part doesn't accept." Ah, but who is to decide which part is correct? Suppose some break away because they are not able to operate in an unloving and restrictive way?

I am sickened to read (again) that the church which we seek to uphold was, until very recently, happy to turn a blind eye to sexual abuse, but is unnaturally eager to monitor other sexual practices. Talk about straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel.

Sheila A. Welbergen

Winnipeg

Milner/sept.let

Dear editor,

I write as a disaffected Anglican.

I have kept in touch with issues facing the church by reading my parents' copy of the Anglican Journal, and the (Diocese of Calgary's) Sower. I have come to the conclusion that our church is suffering from an anxiety disorder.

We have looked at ourselves (as Canadians in general do) as tolerant, accepting people, who are somewhat better than our more extreme neighbours. We come up with all sorts of committees to study and all sorts of reports to document our wonderful acceptance of all creatures great and small ? in principle.

I say in principle, because that is all we have ever managed. We talk a great talk, and say wonderfully loving things to our brothers and sisters that have been left on the outside looking in at the banquet, yet we never set a place for them aside from the perennial seat at the card table.

Are we a church that truly follows Christ's teaching of loving all and accepting all regardless of their place in society?

As a gay man I am continually saddened to see my brothers and sisters who have bravely continued to toil within the system to effect change being treated as second class Christians and black sheep.

I am not asking that the church use the term marriage, or that it force a quota of gays and lesbians in the clergy. What I am asking is that it recognize its diversity has been what fed it for years, and that diversity is starved by the hate spewed forth by a vocal minority against people that God has called them to love.

Instead of witch hunts to find which clergy members are practising homosexuals, perhaps we should call on the carpet those who reject the call of our Lord to love one another.

I would love, one day, to go to church and meet my soul-mate and have the minister who introduced us to bless our union. I fear that will never be possible, due to the hateful behaviour allowed to run rampant through this church.

Stephen Milner

Lethbridge, Alta.

Kuiper/septlet

Dear editor,

An obituary following the death of Robert Runcie, the late archbishop of Canterbury, notes that he and other bishops were becoming a political force in Britain against the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

We are witnessing the growing influence of ultra-conservative forces in this country, along with an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots that should alarm us. With a weak NDP and the failure of the Liberals to come up with coherent, long-term social-economic policies that reflect a vision for a more compassionate society, isn't it time for faith leaders to raise an effective, collective voice on behalf of the many neglected amongst us? Taking the late Lord Runcie and his colleagues as their inspiration, perhaps the House of Bishops could lead the way.

Elske Kuiper

Toronto

Zachariah/sept.let

Dear editor,

I am delighted to see that Anglican Journal has been named the best newspaper by the Associated Church press and that it won 10 awards. Of course, the Journal has been recognized by awards many times in earlier years. As an avid reader of many magazines and especially the Anglican Journal, I heartily concur with this year's judges' decision. I particularly appreciate the expanded space given to "Letters" which makes the Journal much more interactive. Do keep up the good work.

Mathew Zachariah

Calgary, Alta.