The government-instituted Indian Residential Schools of Canada created a deep rift within our society. On the one side, the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, who are struggling with the lingering aftereffects of children being torn from their families and culture. On the other side, the people of Canada, many of whom struggle to believe that their government, their churches, could participate in such a program of cultural and racial oppression. Other countries have similar rifts - Germany and the Holocaust, South Africa and apartheid, the USA and slavery.

Some look to the government to heal the wounds of division, prejudice and racism - to create Reconciliation. As if Reconciliation is a one-time event. While the government can certainly work to lay the framework and point in the direction we need to go, Reconciliation happens at the individual level. It happens when people can sit down, one-on-one, and engage in conversations that reveal the similarities rather than the differences.Whether we are Indigenous people, settlers or immigrants, the legacy of Indian Residential Schools is ours to handle, ours to reconcile, ours to resolve.