SACKCLOTH AND ASHES AND CANADA DAY:

ON SPIRITUAL POVERTY AND GENOCIDE

The discovery over the past few weeks of mass burials of indigenous children in unmarked graves at Residential Schools demands a response. Yet, what response can there possibly be? As a settler, I have personally struggled to come up with anything meaningful to say in the aftermath. Apologies are hollow. Rage seems insufficient. Words fail. But silence too is unacceptable.

In reaction, some call for reparations. Yet, Canada has already provided compensation for Residential School survivors, as though we could buy our way out of our culpability. Others now call for the removal of the statues or names of the colonizers responsible for this genocide, or have proactively torn them down. As we approach Canada Day, still others are asking that we forgo celebrations this year in respect of those who were killed or continue to suffer. And this has provoked others to decry what they call “cancel culture”, arguing that such actions will somehow cancel history.

Oh, but if only we could cancel history. If only we could go back in time and remedy such a grievous harm. But history is what it is. It can’t be cancelled no matter how we might try. It simply is. And what it is, is a deep moral wound.

It is not an economic problem that can be fixed with cash payments, even though reparations are required. It is not a political problem that can be fixed by official apologies, even though apologies are required. Rather, it is a spiritual problem and that is something we sadly have little idea what to do with as a people. So we are left with no compass, no roadmap for what we are to do, for in our colonial hubris we have no precedent for humility and lament.

Thus we are inevitably drawn into a consideration of spiritual poverty. I first wrestled with the idea of spiritual poverty while leading the Mayor’s Task Force on poverty several years ago. It was our intent to engage the Indigenous community to provide recommendations on what should be done about the high rate of poverty among Indigenous peoples. This did not go as expected.

With my western colonial frame of reference, I expected we would have consultations that would provide a concrete plan with concrete actions that produced concrete results within concrete timelines. Instead, I was invited into relationship, participating in ceremony, and found myself sitting in circles where prayers were offered in a language I did not understand, simply allowing the words to waft over me like burning sweetgrass.  The result was not a “plan” in the way that my western mind envisioned, but a model of healing in which reconciliation, a deeply spiritual practice, was at the heart.

This experience taught me several things. First, despite our attempts to do so, one cannot separate the spiritual aspects out of our lives and compartmentalize the human condition. We are inherently spiritual beings and this infuses what we do together. If our spirit does not infuse our plans they are hollow. Anything we do now to attempt to right the wrongs of our past must include deep spiritual reflection and a harsh reckoning with our own soul first.

Secondly, if the central feature of anti-poverty work is the spiritual act of reconciliation, then the central feature of poverty is the wound for which such reconciliation is required. And this wound is a most profoundly spiritual one. The intentional destruction of language, culture and spiritual practice that was inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples across what we call Canada is the root of the inter-generational trauma that continues to rear its grotesque head with the discovery of every new mass grave.

While this act of genocide produced a deep spiritual poverty among those on whom it was inflicted, as people were stripped of their history, names, languages and beliefs, it also revealed an even deeper spiritual poverty among the colonizers that continues to this day. It is this spiritual poverty that leaves us speechless now because we have no words or traditions sufficient for the task of reconciliation that confronts us.

How can we? It was those same words and traditions that led us to unspeakable acts of violence. It was the language of colonization that turned people into “Indians”, that labelled spiritual practices as “heathen” and “savage”. It was those same words and traditions that prized the conquering of territory and the extraction of resources above all things, especially the dignity and sanctity of human life. And we justified it all in the name of our own spiritual practice and religion.

So we come to the week before Canada Day at a loss for words. Which is utterly appropriate because the only possible way forward is for those of us responsible to simply shut up and listen. It is not our time to speak.

As Indigenous people have grappled with the legacy of colonization they have gained strength by turning to and reclaiming their spiritual traditions that infuse culture, language and being; the ones we tried to annihilate. This testifies to a spiritual resilience stronger than the long reach of genocide.

If there is anything in this moment that we as settlers can turn to in our own spiritual traditions it is the possibility of reclaiming the spiritual practices of repentance and lament. I don’t know what the modern equivalent is of sackcloth and ashes, but for this Canada Day I humbly suggest we figure that out and don them. 

Derek Cook

Director, Canadian Poverty Institute