The Pathological Pretentious Performance of Acknowledgements

History as a tool of propaganda

Image by Don Craig

By N. Invictus (an anonymous Canadian teacher)

Am I the only one struck by the coincidental timing of the National Day of Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation, the 'Million March' protest, the 'Don’t Delete the Parents,' and the 'Leave our kids alone' movement? The irony isn't lost on me.

In recent weeks, we've all been confronted, informed, and sometimes inundated with the distressing news of our haunting past: the Residential Schools. Let me be clear—I am no denier. While I'm not a historian, I've lived long enough and experienced more than my share to understand that throughout history, in every nation, tribe, culture, and government, injustices and atrocities have occurred. It is not my intent, by any means, to downplay the wrongs of the past—any past.

However, I do not endorse using history as a tool of propaganda to manipulate the present or to discredit the powerful, positive, and productive aspects of the past that have paved the way for the lives we lead today. Such an approach strikes me, at the very least, as ungrateful and self-centred. Furthermore, I hold no belief that the seemingly ostentatious display of wearing a specific colour and reciting a prescribed acknowledgment at every gathering, akin to reciting the Lord's prayer, can erase the past or ameliorate the current challenges faced by our fellow Canadians on Reserves.

What I find particularly ironic are the fragments of lectures, Xs (tweets), and announcements that we continually encounter, underscoring how the Residential Schools were explicitly designed to obliterate the culture of Indigenous communities, to sever children from their parents' nurturing, and to impose the Christian faith upon them. All this, at a juncture when the majority of Canadian parents are themselves protesting against precisely these issues!

The double standard exhibited by our federal government and certain provinces is nothing short of hypocritical and reprehensible! Our education system and schools seem determined to erode and disregard family cultures, estranging children from their parents' guidance, and instead, imposing ideologies of gender, sexualization, and CRT onto students. One need only listen to the Prime Minster's conversation (from around minute 5:15 onwards) with a concerned Muslim parent, where he candidly states that their children will be raised in opposition to their family's culture, beliefs, and faith. Concurrently, these same schools are loudly proclaiming slogans of shame and guilt, condemning the past, while reveling in their perceived moral superiority with the ostentatious display of orange.

The entire situation would be comical if it weren't painfully true. The indoctrination of children has persisted for not just years, but decades, only recently revealing its full extent in a dark and alarming shift that has crossed all reasonable bounds, bordering on nothing short of a crime. Our present condition is one that future generations will look back upon with a growing sense of recognition and acknowledgment: the families whose cherished cultures and values were condemned and labelled inappropriate, the students who forfeited their innocence and childhood to a repugnant, pervasive, and progressively perverse influence that is thrust upon them, endorsed, and even celebrated—those who became victims of a multi-million-dollar medical industry that sees this as a long-term investment. Families torn asunder by this, parents and students betrayed by schools which, though not residential, are culpable and guilty of partaking in this charade, and teachers and staff who played along to get by. Not to mention the medical professionals who seem to have lost all sense of shame or scruples.

If only this religious ritual of repeated acknowledgment in every meeting and gathering had proven beneficial for the past, the present, or the future. Quite the opposite, it serves as a distraction from reality and imposes another belief system that erodes our pride and love for our great nation. Most of us came here not to replicate the lifestyles of ancient tribes—though there's nothing inherently wrong with that—but to be a part of the Canada that its founding fathers established, despite their flaws, shortcomings, and wrongdoings.

Am I truly the only one who sees the simultaneous deletion of present parents while condemning the deletion of past parents as not just ironic, but outright abhorrent? 

(In case it's not clear, this is a rhetorical question).

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Nasty Business of Deletion

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