When I read Leo Paré’s piece about the troubled community of Hobbema, my initial reaction is to ask, “Why are these people doing. . . ?”, “Why don’t they just. . . ?”, and “How can they not see. . .?” This train of thought leaves me feeling overwhelmed and helpless. But the train can’t stop there. After a moment’s pause and reflection, I find myself asking a different set of more aptly placed questions.
What makes me think that I can understand — not to mention fix — situations like those in Hobbema? Situations where my vision is limited to the perspective of media or the view from my car window?
How can I better understand? I appreciate Paré’s strategy of looking at the history of a situation in order to understand the roots of a problem. So let’s take it a few steps further, back to pre-treaty era.
Let’s ask ourselves: how much have the people indigenous to this land gained by agreeing to share it with the first Europeans (including my ancestors) who arrived here? What have we shared in return? (And as a brief aside, when I hear the claim that “the past is over! Let’s live in the present!” I immediately suspect that someone’s trying to hide something that would get them in big trouble if I happened to remember it!).
Let’s presume for a moment that my ancestors were right; that the people indigenous to this land had it wrong, and needed to be “saved” and “civilized.” What has this process done for them? For their health? For the health of this land?
Further, what has “civilization” done for me? These are not questions of simply good and bad. The implications are vast and interconnected. Attempts to use simplistic understandings to grapple with complex situations serve us poorly.
So let’s embrace this complexity and interconnectedness by talking honestly about our own experience of disintegrating communities.
Our own experiences of senseless violence; corrupt law enforcement; and frustratingly bureaucratic community services.
Let’s talk honestly about mental illness, substance abuse, partner abuse, and self-abuse found everywhere — yes including in my community: My white, middle-class, suburban community.
Let’s talk honestly about how wealth can conceal sicknesses from public scrutiny, and how impoverished communities have no such luxury.
There are powerful lessons of sickness as well health to be shared here, and the most powerful way to share these lessons is from a place of humility and honesty about our own dirty laundry; our own need for outside-the-box thinking, and our own need for real change.
Kelsey Lavoie
Red Deer