I am Part of a Complicated Colonial Story
Part of a Colonial Story
I am part of a complicated colonial story. As the son of Dutch immigrants, I have come to both celebrate the good of my ancestral and spiritual heritage, and lament over some of the history of my nation, and that of my Dutch ancestors in relation to the treatment of Indigenous peoples. History reveals a trail of carnage, including broken treaties, making indigenous ceremonies and practices illegal by Canadian law, and insisting that indigenous children ought to be removed from their “savage parents” [1]. Indigenous children were taken from their families, and stripped of family, language, culture and way of life, placed in residential schools. Many died there, never to return to their families. The ongoing work of responding to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is hard, because it involves facing a reckoning with our own past that is at times horrific [2].
I was raised without any reference to these parts of Canadian history. Partial erasure of the past allowed Canadians like me to carry on, distancing ourselves from the unknown atrocities that have contributed to systemic identity issues and pain in indigenous communities. And when these truths have been unearthed, people became unsettled. When the news broke in the Spring of 2021, the extent of unmarked graves discovered at the sites of former Residential Schools in the Spring was disputed by some. In fact, a kind-of counter-erasure of the past circulated, stating that parts of the story were even made up. So the Canadian government appointed Ms. Kimberly Murray as the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, whose report was published in October 2024 [3].
I was recently in an ecumenical meeting of clergy discussing the Interlocutor’s Report. There was lament, and a strong sense of commitment to address denialism. Murray writes in her report, “While it may be tempting for Canadians to believe a mythical and idealized version of national history, denying the painful truths of Survivors and of the missing and disappeared children is a barrier to advancing reconciliation” [4]. As a Canadian who is settled on the land we have come to know as Canada, I have a commitment to foster reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. However, I do not subscribe to all that is happening in a wider decolonization project.
In recent years, individuals and institutions not wanting to re-traumatize or to be in any way associated with injustices experienced because of our nation’s past, have seen fit to tear down statues and eradicate the memories of people associated with past atrocities. One of these figures is Edgerton Ryerson (1803-1882), who was involved in the development of the indigenous residential school system. He was also a Methodist minister, and the founder of Ontario’s education system [5]. Toronto‘s Ryerson University was named after him. To foster reconciliation with indigenous peoples, his namesake was removed and his statue torn down by students in 2022, and the school was renamed Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). Hayden King, executive director of TMU-based Indigenous thinktank the Yellowhead Institute, said in an interview about the impact a year later,
“We lobbied, we fought for years to have that name changed and to have that statue removed. It was a hard fight and I think the Indigenous community deserves a lot of credit for that … we all take a lot of pride in that… Unfortunately, the progress has stalled after that. It’s almost as though the university gave us the name change and now, the era of reconciliation at the university is over.” [6]
The question of how we reckon with the past, with colonialism and the recolonizing efforts are important to keep dialoguing on. The trouble with tearing down statues so they don’t harm us in the present is that they cannot actually take away the stories of the lives these statues represent, nor can they assuage the vulnerability of those traumatized by past events. There is no escaping the deep work of forgiveness for reconciliation to be experienced.
Frank Furedi, who is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, makes the case for a careful treatment rather than erasure of the past in his book, The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For its History [7].
Furedi’s Premise Affirms Thoughtful Remembering
“We must study the present as part of an ongoing history”, he writes [8], for “when the past is contaminated, it becomes nearly impossible to endow people’s life with meaning in the present” [9]. The way he pulls out the social engineering elements that promote “radicalized presentism” [10] in the educational systems that form a worldview that treats the past with contempt or see it as a clear danger to engage with [11]. He affirms that this simply doesn’t work in the end.
“They fail to comprehend that in reflecting and reacting to the past, they are, in effect, positioning themselves in relation to it. As Dorothy Ross stated, ‘We do not make the world, we find it and remake it.’ [12].
Thus, Furedi concludes that we must reject this collective “Social amnesia…” [which] dislocates people from the process of history. It limits their capacity to grasp their lives in the here and now [13].
Do We Need to Defend the Past?
Furedi’s conclusion goes beyond what I previously thought possible. I wonder, has he gone too far? His concluding aim is that we come to see “the defence of the past and learning from its legacy is the precondition for possessing a capacity to face the future” [14]. Defence seems to go beyond learning lessons from both the good and the bad of human history, within the limits of our ability to perceive past reality.
I concur with the logic that presentism or the erosion of barriers between us and the past, judging them by today’s values is not healthy [15] In his chapter on Anachronism, Furedi argues against the queering of the past [16]. As a counter-argument, do we all not hear stories or watch film versions of characters from the past and try at one level to associate or disassociate with the characters? Could we not think of these queer renditions of imaginative association or disassociation with characters? It feels like a thin line between “association” and “remaking a figure from the past in my own image”, because both require imagination to access them for any positive or negative learning. The boundaries are bent, but people use the past’s absence of queer stories to try and dismiss the reality of sexual minority existence today, and this can also be harmful.
In the end, Furedi’s call to a more nuanced view of history helps bring some healthy balance. In the call from Ms. Murray, I too hold that “A mature and healthy democracy is strengthened by its willingness and ability to confront the political, legal, and moral failures of its own past and change accordingly” [17].
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[1] Quote from Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, in Robert P. C. Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act : Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality, (Port Coquitlam, BC: Indigenous Relations Press, 2018), 169.
[2] Canada, Government of Canada; Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs. 2015. “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.” Administrative page. December 14, 2015. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525.
[3] “Executive Summary of the Report from the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools”. October 2024. “Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools.” May 26, 2022. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/interlocutor-interlocuteur/.
[4] Interlocutor, viii.
[5] “REMEMBER THIS: Ryerson Was Influential — for Better and Worse,” July 20, 2024, https://www.newmarkettoday.ca/remember-this/remember-this-ryerson-was-influential-for-better-and-worse-9245166.
[6] “Toronto Metropolitan University Reflects on New Name Change One Year Later | Globalnews.Ca.” n.d. Accessed February 12, 2025. https://globalnews.ca/news/9651716/oronto-metropolitan-university-name-change-one-year-later/.
[7] Frank Furedi, The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its History, (Polity Press, 2024, Kindle edition).
[8] The War, 325.
[9] The War, 6.
[10] The War, 24.
[11] Furedi quotes German Tönnies about phase three response of contempt. “Back in the 1880s, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies pointed to the tendency of modernist technocratic institutions to react to the customs and traditions of community life with ‘veiled hatred and contempt’”. The War, 87-89.
[12] The War, 92.
[13] The War, 325.
[14] The War, 31.
[15] The War, 139.
[16] The War, 150
[17] Interlocutor, viii.
About the Author
Joel Zantingh
Joel Zantingh is a catalyst for peacemaking and intercultural teams, speaker, theologian and consultant. He is the Canadian Coordinator of the World Evangelical Alliance's Peace and Reconciliation Network, and the Director of Engagement with Lausanne Movement Canada. He has served in local and national roles within the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada, and led their global mission arm. He has experience teaching in formal and informal settings with Bible college students and leaders from various cultures and generations. Joel and Christie are parents to adult children, as well as grandparents. They reside in Guelph, Ont., situated on the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and home to many past, present and future First Nations peoples, including the Anishinnabe and Hodinöhsö:ni'.10 responses to “I am Part of a Complicated Colonial Story”
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Joel,
Thanks for the insight of a Dutch-Canadian. I was intrigued by the story of how King realized that the era of reconciliation was over after they got the name changed. Do you know what else they were looking for after the name was changed and the statue removed? Was this event seen as some sort of partial reconciliation but not really going all the way.
What is so baffling about these events is that they serve as a ‘false-positive’ of sorts. People consider to have done something, rather than considering they have merely buried something.
This is why reconciliation is a journeyman not an event.
I would argue that the symbolic act was intended to show that the school was calling out harmful past events, in response to the cultural moment, but the narrative on their own TMU History page of their website does not even refer to the name change as a teachable moment, simply an instance that occurred. https://www.torontomu.ca/about/history/
Hi Joel, your post reminded me how much I don’t know about colonialism in other countries. Thank you for bringing it into the light. In your work for Peace and Reconciliation Network are the consequences of colonialism articulated as a barrier to moving forward with grace?
Hi Diane. Thanks for your thoughtful question.
In psychology’s attachment theory, the concept of rupture and repair are used to understand the breaking point in relationships. Colonial power was intended for good, but did considerable harm, and requires nations to go back and figure out what was lost, stolen, or ruptured.
But how this factors in to our PRN work is interesting, because story-telling, or truth-telling is a crucial first step before any reparation can occur, but here is where Furedi adds something new to think through. In his four phases on dealing with the past (War, 83-90), people develop a way of relating to their own history, and this will indicate the level to which a particular people are addressing their past, or seeking to remake it.
Cancelling the past will create new ruptures which will need repair eventually.
Hi Joel, Thank you for sharing some Canadian history. I don’t know much about the treatment of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, but I’ve been learning more. Recently, I started reading Gabor Maté’s “The Myth of Normal,” where in one chapter, he recounts the tragic story of an Indigenous woman who suffered abuse from medical staff while in labor—an injustice that ultimately cost her life. This example sickened me. It made me appreciate your work even more! In working with diaspora pastors, have you observed how they find healing from the past?
Elyse, there are a number of Canadian thought-leaders connecting the healing with Diaspora leaders with our Indigenous – Non-indigenous reconciliation.
I will say that it is not monolithic. Some cultures have very little residue of Colonial pain, while it has infected others at a DNA level. The other dynamic is whether or not their country is experiencing ongoing tyranny, war, or atrocity, and how much “Canada” seems to care. Peace building efforts are often impacted by these dynamics, and require a willingness to get beneath the surface.
Joel, My dad moved to Canada to provide his family with freedom. He wanted to disassociate himself from anything to do with Apartheid. Years later, we found out that Canada treated the Indigenous people in a very similar way.
I too wonder if Ferudi went to far in his conclusion. What role does the church play in coming to terms with the past?
Graham, thanks for this question. Two suggestions I often make are for Churches to not over-spiritualized, and to apply cultural intelligence.
What I’ve discovered is that some in the Church want to skip steps of truth telling, or story sharing that is crucial to hear how the past is understood. Forgiveness is easy to say, but hard to do.
The other reality is that how we view time is very different from Indigenous perspective and Settler / Euro-Canadian perspective. The Church needs cultural intelligence to recognize that Broken Treaties, Residential Schools, Sixties Scoop and other events that I might consider to be in the past, are part of a lived reality in the present to some Indigenous people, for whom time is not linear.
I’d love your thoughts on this as well.
Hey Joel, I appreciate your insight on the Canadian historical perspective. My question is how do you think institutions can balance acts of reconciliation—such as renaming universities—while ensuring history is remembered and engaged with thoughtfully?
Joel, given your reflections on reconciliation, Furedi’s argument against ‘social amnesia,’ and the removal of historical figures like Ryerson, how can societies meaningfully engage with historical injustices without reducing history to a battleground of competing narratives?