Today is the inaugural "Truth and Reconciliation" Day – now a national holiday in Canada. That is a worthy initiative, but of course it's just fancy trimmings on a national disgrace. How do you reconcile that 15 or 20 generations ago, a bunch of Europeans came and stole the land from the indigenous people who had been living here since time immemorial.
In the early days of colonization they slaughtered anyone who defied them but even more insidious was the way they tried to "kill" the Indian in native children in order to make them assimilate into white society. I suppose assimilation is preferable to enslavement and it's interesting that the colonizers recognized that the way to shape the future to their liking was to start with the kids and imprint them with a new way of thinking. And to a certain extent it worked. Many "graduates" of the most reviled residential schools went on to build successful lives playing by the white man's rules. But so much was lost and so many were damaged.
Imagine how different it would have gone if the colonizers had recognized what a beautiful, respectful culture the First Nations offered. Their knowledge of natural healing herbs, their responsibility to care for the land and the water and their respect for the elders. All this knowledge, collected over millennia of living on this land, was just dismissed as "primitive". And now, after all this time, white people are seeking out these natural remedies, some even delving into native spirituality with pipe circles and sweat lodges (call it appropriation if you will but the end result is kinder, gentler people).
I've often thought (and said) that the only way to change societies that thrive on mutual hatred is to start in the schools and make sure that little kids are spared all this vitriol and taught about compassion and kindness and discouraged from a natural tendency to look for reasons to feel superior to others. Many will still be instilled with bigotry, prejudice and hatred from their parents at home, but if it's not reinforced in the school system, they might have a better chance to break out of that cycle and bring up their kids with more tolerance, embracing diversity instead of fearing it.
One great benefit to this upheaval is that it is spearheaded by women. So many indigenous women taking on the role of leaders and even in the "Black Lives Matter" movement, it is women who set the tone, and even when they talk tough you know that with them in charge we won't be starting any wars.
In the modern world we have (mostly) overcome theocracy, but patriarchy is just as damaging and any society that is trying to keep women down should be ostracized by the rest of the civilized world until they come to their senses and realize that the "warrior class" is a thing of the past and it is the women who will lead us to a kinder, gentler future.
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