Ki onitasonano – Our Shattered Universe

We have suffered greatly. Our resilience has been sapped by many traumatisms since contact with Europeans, including epidemics of diseases to which we had no immunity. Smallpox, for example, wiped out over 60% of our populations during the 17th century. Some authors put the figure as high as 90% – one of the largest population decimations in human history. In terms of modern Quebec, this would represent the death of between 5 and 7.5 million people out of a population of 8.6 million.

We have been continually dispossessed. The denial of the right to live on our ancestral lands cut us off from much loved territories we had been traversing for millennia. The loss of our children, our languages and our knowledge, together with the contempt we have been subjected to, are still today the source of many ills that are reflected in alarming statistics related to addiction, sickness, dropout levels and suicide.

The impact on our sense of belonging and identity has been devastating. To regain our health, we must talk about our suffering, but also about the knowledge that has been neither recognized nor transmitted, the betrayed alliances. We must rewrite the story of our lives by breaking the silence.

In a great many sectors – physical and mental health, justice, life expectancy, family life, housing, and earnings – the difficulties Québec’s Indigenous peoples face are proof positive that the public system has failed to meet their needs. We all bear the collective responsibility for this failure. It seems impossible to deny systemic discrimination. In a developed society such as ours this reality is simply unacceptable.

Jacques Viens, Public Inquiry Commission on Relations between Indigenous Peoples and Certain Public Services in Québec

How can we create a world from our “disunified” lives? Unsanitary housing, lack of clean drinking water, overcrowded prisons, inadequate children’s services, poverty: all the Canadian well-being indicators are negative among the First Nations. This shows us a picture of what we have failed to do as a country.

The Honorable Judge Murray Sinclair, Anishinaabe
Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada