Slideshow image

by Selinde Krayenhoff

 

In 1994, my husband and I purchased a few acres of land on a small gulf island where about 30 families had summer homes. As we began exploring the island, we came across a beach known as “The Saltery.” Even though I had grown up in Vancouver, I knew very little about local history; so when we found little bits of blue and white pottery in amongst the sand and stone, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Locals told me there had been a fish canning plant on that beach; pilings in the water and small bits of pottery were all that were left. I learned that 300 people had lived on Reid Island; most of them Canadians of Japanese descent and that in 1942 they had been rudely ripped from their homes and livelihood and interned in camps in the interior of British Columbia. They weren’t given time to pack, so shards of pottery were all that was left of their kitchens. Interestingly enough, that summer we went on a road trip through BC and I found myself standing on the site of one such camp in New Denver trying to absorb the enormity of what had happened there. After all, my parents were incarcerated during WWII—my father in concentration and death camps in Germany, and my mother in prison in Holland. But this was Canada!  

A few years later, we were visiting our public library. “Hey,” I said to my husband, pulling a video off the library shelf, “this should be interesting!” It was 1997 and I was holding a video entitled "Kuper Island" in my hand. For the previous four years we had been traveling in our boat between Kuper (now called Penelekut Island) and Thetis Islands to reach our property on Reid Island. I knew very little about Kuper other than you came to it by invitation by the indigenous people who lived there. I had spoken with a few of the residents at different times while we were launching our boat or on the rare occasion when we took the ferry—conversations about fishing, tides and the weather.  

That night, we made popcorn, made ourselves comfortable and turned on the video. That was another eye-opening, mind-blowing time in my adult life. This film was not about the flora and fauna of a gulf island and the quaint history of the people who lived there. This was an exposé of a residential school that was the centre and source of terrible suffering and tragedy. I don’t remember many of the details of the film, just the impact. When I realized that one of the women speaking about her life in the school was my age, it dawned on me that she would have been attending school on Kuper while I was attending elementary school in Vancouver less than 50 km away as the crow flies. I could hardly take it in. How could this have happened without me knowing anything about it?  

If I hadn’t picked up the small pieces of pottery on the beach or pulled that video innocently off the library shelf, how long would it have taken me to wake up to the history of our country, our province, our own backyards?

People talk about “white privilege.” One way I’ve come to understand this term is to realize that whether I wake up and see the truth or not, is a choice I can make. For people who have been on the receiving end of systemic racism and genocide, it is not a choice. They live with the impacts of racism every day. That’s a profound difference.  

Jesus tells us to wake up, to open our eyes and ears so we can know the truth. The truth is not easy, it’s not comfortable. It’s a choice. It requires being willing to go on a journey of discovery—to be willing to listen to the pain, suffering and anger of others, then let that suffering and anger change who we are. We don’t need to change other people. There’s been too much of that already. Let’s focus on ourselves for a change. We need our own hearts of stone to be transformed. We need to learn our own history. We need to become informed. And then, and only then, once we’re open and willing, can we listen to how the Spirit is calling us to new life, to justice, to right relationship with God and neighbours.  

Dismantling Racism is a program of discovery that Bishop Logan has brought into the diocese. Please watch for updates in the Diocesan Post and on the diocesan website as new information becomes available.  

 

Selinde Krayenhoff is the incumbent at St. Mary, Nanoose Bay and is co-leading the initial training in Dismantling Racism with Patrick Sibley this September.  

 

Photo: freeimages.com