Dancer of Lies

 DANCER OF LIES


I drew this card before hearing of the Catholic Church’s lack of response, lack of honesty in addressing the two hundred and fifteen bodies found in Kamloops, just the starting number of all the bodies that will be found in residential school unmarked graves. Our people use Dance to express the Truth that goes beyond words. But clearly Catholic officials are Dancing with words to avoid telling Truth. Telling the Truth, as least in theory is supposed to be part of every Catholic official’s job description. Instead they use words to avoid the Truth. Why? Because their lawyers are telling them not to apologize fully and truly because that could lead to lawsuits and even criminal charges. The Truth should not be dependent on outcome and not telling the Truth is the same thing as Lying, no matter how you couch your words. If I seem angry and bitter it is because I started out in the Catholic school system in the sixties. I had nuns and priests and teachers calling me a dirty little Indian and I was beaten almost every single day. And what I experienced for a few brief years does not even begin to approach what my Tóta and my Grandfather lived through, what so many of our Grandparents and Great Grandparents and Uncles and Aunts were forced to survive, a system set up by and built by the Catholic Church as well as the government. The scars, the sorrow, the generations of suffering that were made by this system wasn’t done just to our Ancestors. It was passed on through generation after generation who did not know what to do with their pain, who had the tools that they might use to deal with their pain: their language, their rituals, their spirituality, their very humanity taken away from them. And still the Dances of Lies continue. Still the Truth will not be spoken by those who perpetuated the suffering. This not the kind of Dance our Ancestors knew. This is not how We Dance. This Dance of Lies was an integral part of how the Residential School system could exist at all. I, for one, will not join in this Dance of Lies. I know the Truth for what it is. I will Dance the Dance of my Ancestors. I will Dance the Dance of my Tóta. I will Dance the Dance of my People. I will Dance the Dance of Truth that does not hide behind words. Let them Dance their Dance of Lies. It was never our Dance. Like all things they would like us to Dance their way. As always they would like us to Dance their Lies. But we know how to Dance the Truth. And the Dance of Truth will always be our Dance.


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