Time to fix the damage

In a time that still burns in the memory of living people, flatbed trucks would ride through a community that had already been segregated and isolated by race. Children were gathered onto those trucks and taken away.

For nine months, their names and languages were stripped from them. Some were forced to endure physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Then they would be returned home for the summer, lost and damaged, torn between two cultures.

That’s only one of a stunning array of stories that were told about residential schools across Canada. The closing ceremonies for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s inquiry last week has left Canada’s leaders in the awkward position of having to respond in a respectful way to what, for many, is the revelation of a long history of cultural genocide as old as the nation itself.

The result has left people with mixed reactions: horror that such terrible things happened here; defensiveness from those who were not involved or too young to connect. It was met with both apathy and sympathy.

For me, the image of children rounded up on trucks bore a striking and sickening resemblance to the stories my own family has told me about Jews rounded up on trains in eastern Europe, disappearing forever in the hands of enemies who were once neighbours.

It’s not fair to compare the Holocaust to Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people.

On one hand, the Nazis slaughtered six million people in less than a decade. The latest estimate is that at least 6,000 children died in residential schools. On the other hand, residential schools lasted over a century, affecting generation after generation, slowly scraping away cultures and languages. The practice continued with impunity, uncensured on the international stage, ending through public policy only 30 years ago.

Whether or not they’re comparable, the effect on the mental health of the populations bears an important resemblance.

In Canada in the 1960s, doctors began to notice a trend. Children of Holocaust survivors were seeking psychiatric treatment at a rate three times higher than other patients. At first, the theory was that Holocaust survivors had difficulty raising children because of the trauma they had experienced.

It turns out that’s not the whole truth. Research found mothers were physically passing on their trauma to their children. Second generation Holocaust survivors were suffering from heightened emotional sensitivity, depression, anxiety and addiction. It is called transgenerational trauma, and it can echo for generations.

Many non-aboriginal Canadians have just begun to understand the harm that was done in residential schools. It will be a long time before most Canadians will be able to process it. But for the children of those victims, the damage is done.

Mental health care is less accessible on reserves today than it was for children of Holocaust victims half a century ago, but the rates of suicide and addiction among the children of residential school survivors suggests it will be a while before aboriginal Canadians will be able to process it, either.

mihal@mihalzada.com