Robert S. Wright, MSW, RSW TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: PROMOTING JUSTICE AND HEALING 1

Institutional Abuse and Race Whether institutions house children, the disabled, the elderly, the medically fragile, the mentally ill, the convicted... All are vulnerable populations, in part due to their status as institutionalized persons and often due to socio-economics When considering institutional care of Aboriginal and racialized persons we add another significant layer of complexity to this discussion... Intersectionality The role of Aboriginal and racial identity in North America must be considered as a unique and particularly intractable phenomenon, one that requires complex methods to begin to reveal its pervasive influence 2

Aboriginal and Racialized Canadians North American Diversity is fraught with complicated and tragic history Enslavement of Africans, Genocide of First Nations, Global strife resulting in trans-global immigration etc. A local knowledge of how our racist history is a living legacy is necessary: Africville, Cornwallis, Consumer Racial Profiling, Overrepresentation of African Canadians and Aboriginals in the Criminal Justice System, an Underrepresentation of Those Populations in Mental Health Systems, for example (Carol Aylward in her book “Canadian Critical Race Theory: Racism and the Law” speaks of the need to have a working knowledge of this living legacy in order to be able to “spot issues” of race as they may appear) 3

Can Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Diminish Systemic Discrimination? In my view... Not as they have currently been applied Truth and Reconciliation and Alternative Dispute Resolution Processes have been applied to incidents of egregious abuse where Aboriginal identity and race have been obvious factors (Apartheid in SA, Residential Schools in Canada, The Greensboro, NC event of 1979, Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Halifax Black Firefighters) With perhaps the exception of the SA case, though such studies obviously consider the influence of Aboriginal identity and race, their terms of reference and mandate tend to be limited to incidents and bound by time such that they can make only passing reference to broader social implications of systemic discrimination 4

Are We Truly Working to End Systemic Discrimination? In a nation that acknowledges multiple founding peoples, that was built up on the foundation of ethnic/immigrant labour and whose future depends on immigration anything less than a “full court press” in our efforts to end systemic discrimination should be seen as unacceptable, yet Many still misunderstand and harbour negative sentiments towards access programmes designed specifically to advance social opportunities for Aboriginal and racialized Canadians Our Human Rights Agencies have not developed the capacity or been given the mandate to address issues of systemic discrimination... Leaving us still with the “incidental” idea of discrimination 5

Addressing the Legacy Some considerations Our best hopes may be linked to taking a population health approach to institutionalized persons rather than sorting out from among them those who have been “abused” Like monitoring a population of people who have been exposed to a toxin, a health surveillance programme would include all members of the population, not just those who were currently showing symptoms A great emphasis would be put on studying the social determinants of health and the relative health of this population to their peers and the larger society A social justice initiative to address the particular social inequalities that are the legacy of our tragic history would need to be linked to this initiative When individuals who suffer keenly from this legacy are identified culturally appropriate health and human services need to be deployed to assist those individuals, families and communities that are affected 6

Robert S. Wright, MSW, RSW TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: PROMOTING JUSTICE AND HEALING 7