The thing about apologies...

 The Canadian Government, among other governments around the world, has issued a number of apologies for historic wrongs. It has apologized to Japanese-Canadians for interning them during World War II and confiscating their property. It has apologized to the Chinese-Canadian community for the exorbitant tax that was imposed on early settlers from China in order to deter them from staying in Canada. An apology was provided to Indo-Canadians for the Komagata Maru incident wherein a boatload of Sikhs were detained and then turned away from Canada because of a desire to maintain a 'white' society in Canada. There was an apology for the Inuit High Arctic relocation. And of course, there was the apology for the Indian Residential School system.

This past weekend there was a world broadcast premiere of a documentary called "A Sorry State". There is much academic literature on the issue of state apologies. However I found the personal perspective of the filmmaker on the issue much more cogent and visceral than many of the papers on the topic.

Mitch Miyagawa has a very interesting perspective because his family members were on the receiving end of three formal state apologies. His father had been interned by the Canadian government during WWII and had lost their property. His parents divorced and each remarried. His father married a woman who had attended an Indian Residential School and who had thus received an apology in that regard. His mother married a man whose parents had paid head taxes in order to come to Canada. So the topic of apologies is a personal theme.

Coming from the perspective of a child of apology recipients, and also as a father who is teaching his children about apologies, Miyagawa takes the viewer through a simple yet profound journey about the meaning of state apologies. He is skeptical about them - feeling at first that state apologies are politically expedient and shallow if unaccompanied by action. But he goes further to explore the various meanings given to them by recipients. His father denied a negative impact resulting from the internment and the need for an apology. In any event, he feels that there is no need to dwell on the past. However, because the apology has sparked interest and discussion with his filmmaker son, we find that at the end of the movie and at the end of his life, Mr. Miyagawa does acknowledge that his family did suffer. So the apology was a vehicle for raising consciousness both for him and his son.

For his step-mother, a health support worker who is immersed in the world of recovery from residential school trauma, the apology was important. However Miyagawa also interviewed residential school survivors who were very cynical about it because their residential school experiences were denied by government because of a lack of records.

For his step-father, the apology was an important step to help him feel less alienated in Canadian society. As he noted, he was not proud to be Chinese-Canadian when he was young. It was hard to be Asian in a sometimes hostile society. Acknowledgment that past treatment was wrong, was important for him to feel a sense of belonging.

I think one of the most interesting concepts came from a Japanese-Canadian activist who noted that the important thing is that a government acknowledge that democracy is diminished the moment when the human rights of citizens are denied by government action. His main concern was that there be some sanction or check in place so that governments realize that their actions will have political, institutional and other consequences.

The key thing that I was reminded of when watching this documentary is that apologies are very personal and very emotional. They are a very basic part of human interaction. They are meant to happen between individuals who have had some conflict. It is these characteristics that are necessary to give them meaning. The meanings associated with them are as varied as the types of relationships that exist between each person apologizing and each recipient.

State apologies, however, are abstract and often distant in time. Also, the type of responsibility behind the apology is sometimes hard to grasp because it is vicarious. It is rarely the direct perpetrator who is apologizing to the person harmed. So the emotional transaction between the perpetrator and the transgressed person is sometimes hard to find.

I am not saying that the raison d'etre for state apologies is wrong. I think that the fact that a government is willing to examine its past and address the harms suffered by its citizens through its policies and legislation is critical. But I do not think that an apology is actually terribly meaningful as a vehicle for social change where the transgressor is the government. 

I realize that many will contradict me on this point because they feel that an apology is the deepest form of acknowledgment that a government can give. It indicates that a government is not qualifying how wrong the action was and it understands the personal significance of past actions to its citizens. I have in fact witnessed profound emotional reactions by those who have received apologies for historic wrongs.

But I think that to personalize a government is a mistake because it gives the recipient a false sense that there is some level of emotional responsibility for the recipient's well-being that will result in a change of action. In fact there is no sense of emotional responsibility in a government. It is an institution with a task to govern the people. In a democracy, it is tasked with governing through representation by the people. When a group of people is transgressed, the institution is weakened. Government is moved by different levers than emotional responsibility. Consequently, apologies - which are more appropriately interpersonal emotional interactions between a wrongdoer and a victim - are not the right vehicles to capture the complexity of the transaction and the type of responsibility between a state and its citizens.

It is perhaps for this reason that no matter the level of apparent abasement by a government and the emotional impact on the recipients, government apologies strike people as being problematic. Somehow they don't make sense entirely, and they don't quite capture what is needed to address historic wrongs.

Something as simple as saying "I'm sorry" should not trigger such a lot of complicated writing....

Interesting note - Who tracks what?

Just a quick note - Within seconds of posting my comment on gun purchases and fear in the US, my post was picked up by what I suspect are monitoring sites for gun or anti-gun lobbyists in the US.. Never seen that happen quite as quickly before. Pretty powerful debate. Pretty emotional issue....

Peace through Fear? Is it really the Home of the Brave, Land of the Free?

FACT: After the shooting of innocent people in a theatre in Colorado, gun sales went up. (CBC)

FACT: After the shooting of young school children in Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA, gun sales went up.(Washington Post)

Every time there is a person who uses a weapon that is capable of great destruction, such as rapid fire guns to kill many people at once in a peaceful setting, people are awoken. However, when they are newly awake, they scream, "How could this happen?!" "It's an act of a mad person!" "How could this awful thing happen here where things are so peaceful?" "This has never happened quite like THIS before!"

 This seems to happen every time. Mass killings have occurred enough - 61 times in the United States since 1999 - for us to know better than to think that somehow each time it is unique.

The latest media frenzy over the killings in the school in Newtown Pennsylvania has been a focal point for debate and outrage because this time the 'unique' factor was the extreme youth and innocence of the victims in a school setting. But does the fact that they were young children matter? What about the Breivik killings in Norway? They were also young people. Were they less 'innocent' because they were at a political meeting? Was their slightly older age (probably 6-12 years older) a meaningful difference?

Was it the fact that the killing happened in a school? Yet there have been school killings before, so is the setting really critical? Should a person who goes to a movie theater be more on guard against being shot (and be considered 'less innocent') than a child at a school?

I do recognize that the latent visceral fear that parents feel when they leave their small children with a caregiver in a school setting - perhaps for the first time - is the key factor here. It is the latent anxiety for one's children, which most people feel in the most peaceful societies, which has been awoken. It is a powerful motivator and hopefully one that stimulates useful debate and action.

However we cannot think that these killings are unique simply because they shock us at a deeper level. They have a common element - the use of weapons capable of killing many people quickly. These killings have become more normal, and the accessibility of tools used by the killers is what makes them possible. It is the fact that a weapon can kill so many people so easily, that allows for devastating physical manifestations of emotional and spiritual violence.

We need to be able to recognize people who are emotionally and spiritually violent (Dawson College shooting) in order to deal with the source of disruption. That is of course often left out of the debate because it is a politically difficult discussion to have, and perhaps not very interesting to people.

However the issue I want to deal with in this post is the role of fear, and whether it contributes to peace and freedom.

The United States is called the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave". Yet all we hear is fear-motivated action that limits the actual individual freedom of people to live without an expectation of violence in their lives. People are afraid - they buy more guns. People are afraid - they create gated communities. People are afraid - they shoot at innocent people they don't trust. Society gets more violent and people then get more afraid.

Is this freedom?

Does this make sense?

Does a gun create any sense of spiritual or physical or emotional freedom in a society?

No.

A gun lobbyist would say that it is up to the person to create that sense of peace in themselves, and a gun is a neutral element.

But that is disingenuous and ignores the fact that many people buy guns because they fear for their own personal security and they fear other people with guns. And it ignores the fact that a gun is a significant magnifier of violence. As such, it is a magnifier of fear and social dysfunction.. It is a tool of great destruction.

Does buying a gun buy peace? No. It creates false security. It creates peace of mind based on a fantasy. It contributes to a broad societal siege mentality and volatility.

There is only peace of mind until the next mass killing.

Kateri - Saint for the faithful or the Church?

On October 21, 2012 the Vatican announced that the Pope had canonized Kateri Tekakwitha, thus making her the first Indigenous North American saint in the Catholic Church.

Now I admit that I am not Catholic and I don't fully understand the saint-making process. However I do have some awareness of the reality of the Catholic Church's interaction with Indigenous communities, and the loss of faith of many Indigenous people in light of the residential school system, as well as other incidents of abuse perpetrated by Catholic church officials such as occurred in Mount Cashel Orphanage.

I know that there are many people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous both, who have strong faith in Kateri and her healing powers. The Vatican's recognition of her sainthood is likely strong acclamation of something they already knew through their faith.

There are also many people for whom this action seems to be 'a reconciliation gesture'. In a recent Globe and Mail article, one woman said:

“I believe the Vatican chooses very timely canonizations,” she said in St. Peter’s Square. “There has been abuse. This will help end some of the pain that happened between the Catholic church and the native Americans and Canadians since the time of the settlements. Now is the moment to give hope to the American and Canadian natives.”

It is very, very possible that I am missing a very big point of this canonization, but I see a fundamental problem with this view.

On one hand, if you are of the Catholic faith, saints are recognized and not created. In other words, they have some special holiness that imbues their actions and indeed their bodies with special powers. Relics and miracles are manifestations of their holiness. If this is the case, and if the Catholic religion only recognizes saints and does not create them, it seems to taint the Church if canonization is undertaken for the selfish and political reason of drawing alienated people back to the Church. Why is canonization required to recognize saints at all? What purpose is achieved by the process? For the truly faithful, canonization might be besides the point. And if you have been alienated through the actions of Church members and the Church itself, how is this going to help?

In terms of political gestures of reconciliation, the formal recognition of an Indigenous saint could well appear to be a token effort unconnected with the crimes perpetrated by individual church members, and the institution that hid their crimes only to allow them to perpetrate again.

To me, it appears that the Church is perhaps trying to draw those who are already within its fold. For those who have experienced abuse at the hands of a priest or nun, or who have heard violent denials and resistance to the truth by Church officials, the canonization is not going to change a thing.

It is an act in and of itself and can be valued as such by the faithful, but it is nothing in terms of reconciliation with victims of crimes.

Family reconciliation - Children of perpetrators of gross human rights violations

In Hitler's Children, director Chanoch Ze'evi creates a dialogue with and between the children or grandchildren of the most powerful and terror-inducing Nazis from the Second World War and Jewish Holocaust survivors.  The perspectives of those who carry the names of war criminals and who must somehow cope with that legacy is fascinating. One brother and sister whose great-uncle had been a noted war criminal decided to have themselves sterilized. Obviously the taint of the name was not the only issue for them. They had a fear of the blood that ran through their veins. In fact, this was an issue that almost all progeny in the film had considered:

Do I carry the monster within me?
Am I evil?
Am I guilty??

A further question plagued them:

How do I reconcile the love I received from my parents and grandparents with the horrors they perpetrated on others?

One of the grandchildren made the interesting comment that it is not possible to live in a grey area where one reconciles the love with the horror. She felt strongly that either you deny the horror and love your parents, or you acknowledge the horror and reject your family. She had observed that there was really no middle ground experience for her generation. Children who could not reject their families, also denied the Holocaust.

Another child of a war criminal spent his entire life consumed with the task of ferreting out his father's crimes and holding them up to scrutiny. At one point in a lecture he gave, a woman got up and asked him how he had coped with grappling with the evil he was exposing, and the effect on his own family life. His answer was really a non-answer in that he did not really understand that her question had to do with the tragic fact that his father's crimes had in fact destroyed his life. He had not coped. He was consumed by an awful truth and an awful hatred of his parents and their generation.

The last and most poignant and perhaps thought-provoking vignette in the movie involved the journey of the grandson of the Auschwitz commandant and the grandson of an Auschwitz survivor back to the camp. While there, the commandant's grandson met with a group of Israeli young people, many of whose families had been directly affected by his grandfather's crimes.

I was struck by many things. First, there is no small amount of courage involved in facing one's family's legacy and stepping forward with bared soul to those who have been harmed. Though it is apparent that this young man had not perpetrated, he was potentially a modern-day personification of the terror survivors had suffered. For those people whose entire family identity was tied to the crimes perpetrated by his grandfather, he was a focal point for them.

The interesting thing is, that human grace and empathy being what it is, his vulnerability and courage stimulated a moment of absolution in an Auschwitz survivor who had actually been in the camp. In answer to a question, the grandson said he felt guilty about the actions of his grandfather. At this point the survivor came to him and said that he understood that he himself was not the perpetrator. The release and relief for the grandson was palpable. I think that in his heart, he wondered if he bore the burden of the crime of his father.  Here, his existence was absolved by probably the only person who could do it.

This is not to dismiss questions of collective guilt and accountability for genocide. However, it is important to recognize that this particular individual does not solely bear the weight of the thousands of murders perpetrated by his grandfather. For this is the question that I think he had in his soul.

The commentary by the observing grandson of the Auschwitz survivor who traveled with the commandant's grandson was insightful and illuminating. He did not doubt the sincerity of the moment of reconciliation, but he said it was 'too quick'. He felt that it lead to a sense that there was a happy ending. In his view, there is no ending. And it is not happy.

I think that his opinion was actually quite complex and interesting though I disagree with his comment about 'quickness'.

This documentary was an attempt to set up a bridge or process of reconciliation to deal with the past. As can be seen in the movie, reconciliation can mean reconciliation between victims and perpetrators, reconciliation within family, and reconciling (or not) truth with emotion. Reconciliation is the attempt to create some level of coherence from complexity, for the purpose of stepping forward from the same point.

The moments of intense emotional reconciliation that occurred when the grandson of the commandant met face to face with the group of Israelis and survivors were not quick moments that occurred out of the blue. The reconciliation moment was a transformative moment that resulted from years of preparation and emotional and intellectual journeying on both sides of the equation. Those survivors and Israeli students came after having learned and reflected upon the horrors their families had suffered. They came with the emotional ability to face the progeny of a perpetrator in a very charged location. They came with the ability to assert the truth of their families' experience with the knowledge that they might hear denial from the other side. On his side, the commandant's grandson came to the stage after a long emotional journey through the landscape of his own family. He dealt with his extreme fear, his ignorance and his shame.

And yet, I understand what the commentator was saying. The reconciliation moment was a cathartic moment for the grandson of the perpetrator when perhaps catharsis for him is not the critical issue. Survivors have to live with the legacy of the Holocaust. Humanity has to live with the legacy of the Holocaust, and the knowledge that it is not a singular occurrence. For the grandson of the survivor, this is more significant than the personal moment between the commandant's grandson and the Auschwitz survivor. For him, the collective impact and responsibility for the Holocaust is more significant.

I agree with the commentator, but I also think that these individual moments of understanding, honesty and connection between human beings are significant. It is moments like these when there is a level of connection created. There is a powerful coming-together of both sides to better understand an enormous breach of humanity. The descendants gather to view this breach, this violent terror that occurred. They try to learn from it and to take a step forward.

The reason why the documentary was so riveting is precisely because we do not often see true encounters between people grappling with their own personal accountability for the events of the past. Though it was not the Nazi war criminals themselves, we see that there is a horrific legacy that their progeny carry. To witness their struggles, their encounters with the past and their encounters with the present is relevant. Where the parents could not be present, the children are coming forward to deal with their heritage.

I agree with the commentator: reconciliation is not quick. It is merely an effort to come together on the same path of understanding before trying to step forward on a journey of peace.

Hiatus!

I have been on hiatus from the blog for a few months, primarily because I have been working on the online community resource project. There are only so many hours to go around! The more interviews I do, the more I learn.  We are developing a website for the project, so new interviews are being set up for the website instead of the blog. I hope that once it is set up, you check it out!

And I will be restarting regular blog activity sooner rather than later....

Is jail the best way to address childhood abuse?

Last night I watched 'A Hard Name" - a documentary by Alan Zweig.  In this film Alan Zweig interviews a number of ex-convicts about their experiences in jail, and their lives before and after jail. It was an absolutely riveting documentary that kept me up way past my regular bedtime.

In the introduction to the film, the commentator expressed surprise that all of the interviewees had been subjected to sexual abuse as children. I was surprised that he was surprised! But this is because I have spent over a decade immersed in the stories of adults who had suffered from some form of sexual or physical abuse as children.

In my opinion, Zweig's film is a must-see before anyone can really develop policy regarding crime. Is the 'tough on crime' approach with its accompanying building of jails, tougher sentences and cutting of re-integration programs really the right approach? Is this the best way to help people avoid a life of dysfunction after childhoods filled with deprivation and abuse?

Before judging, see the child in pain within the convict.  Then figure out what to do. Otherwise risk cyclical dysfunction and social pain that is linked to the historic abuses suffered by the most vulnerable in our society - the children.