Address to the Ottawa Peace Festival – September 29, 2010

 

Thank you for this invitation to speak here tonight. I have two stories from my experiences in Iraq and in northern Ontario. From these stories I have drawn three lessons. One lesson is that racism and beliefs about cultural superiority may play a role in the decision to use violence. Another is that our stated reasons for using violence often mask economic reasons which are less noble sounding. And finally, the use of violence corrupts those who use it.

 

I met Mohammed, an eight year old Iraqi boy, at his farm home between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi which are west of Baghdad. It was in the early fall of 2003. Our team was investigating the circumstances of Iraqi citizens whose homes had been raided by coalition, mostly American, troops. Coalition troops raided Iraqi homes in many parts of the country nightly. Mohammed told me this story through a translator.

 

One day that August, after midnight, American troops arrived at his home in force. The troops blew open the door of the compound and threw in percussion grenades, beginning their routine 25 seconds of terror, meant to suppress resistance. They shot Mohammed’s mother, father, and two sisters, ages 18 and 9. They took the wounded to hospital and Mohammed’s twenty something brother to prison.

 

Mohammed’s mother died in hospital from her wounds. The American authorities buried her without telling the family. The family spent a month finding the location so they could recover the body and give it the proper rites. Mohammed’s two sisters recovered and returned home. But the family had no information about the father or the older brother. They asked our team to help find them.

 

For over a year we made inquiries to American authorities as to their whereabouts. The authorities misdirected and stonewalled us. They denied their responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions to report where the men were being held. Finally they reported that Mohammed’s father had died in prison, circumstances unknown. We never did learn the older brother’s fate.

 

Though Mohammed’s story is particularly tragic it also represents experiences of thousands of Iraqi families following the occupation. There were so many men imprisoned following the house raids that the authorities could not track all of them. American authorities admitted that between 60 and 90 percent of the imprisoned were not part of the insurgency and were wrongly imprisoned. They had been imprisoned on the basis of wrong information, malicious information, or the zealous behaviour of the troops.

 

Before I talk about what sense of I’ve made of that visit to the farmhouse and the Iraq war and occupation, I’d like to tell you Nancy Morrison’s story.

 

Nancy is an Anishinaabe elder from a band living south of Kenora, Ontario. I met her in the fall of 2005 in Kenora. Our team had been supporting the Asubseeschoseewagong, or Grassy Narrows, community’s blockade of clearcutting, since 2001. This band is about 80 km north of Kenora and is one of 29 bands that are signatories to Treaty 3.

 

The Ministry of Natural Resources licenses big lumber companies to cut down huge swathes of forests. This practice destroys the Anishinaabe traditional way of life, does not benefit them economically, and violates the Treaty. That is, both settlers and First Nations agreed that they would share the land and neither would take action unilaterally that affects the other. Until I heard Nancy’s story I thought clearcutting was only another example of corporate misbehaviour. I didn’t get how this practice fits into our history with indigenous people.

 

When Nancy was three years old the Indian agent told her grandmother, her guardian as Nancy’s parents had died, that she had to go to St. Mary’s residential school in Kenora. It meant leaving home and the grandmother resisted until the agent threatened to cut off her support payments. 

 

Nancy hated the school. She missed her family and community. The nuns forbade her to speak her language and she resisted learning English. The nuns beat her to force compliance. She ran away. The OPP caught her and took her back to the school. While at home when she was eight years old elders initiated her into the midiwewin society, a shaman lodge. The nuns learned of this when she returned to school. They stripped her naked, shaved her head, beat her with a leather belt and made her walk between lines of the school’s students.

 

Nancy survived the violence of being ripped from her home and the brutal treatment at St. Mary’s. Many of the tens of thousands of children sent to residential schools died there, victims of diseases like tuberculosis that were endemic to these schools.

 

I understand now that the residential schools were meant to assimilate indigenous children into settler culture so that their connection with the land would be broken. In that way, settlers, corporations and governments would have no obstacles to mining, fishing, forestry operations, and hydro electric damn development. And though the residential schools no longer exist, and the government and churches have apologized for this practice, the fundamental dynamics have not shifted. Our governments refuse to honour the treaties and jail those who protest this injustice.

 

I take these lessons from these two stories.

 

In each case a more powerful country or party viewed the other as inferior in some way. The Canadian governments, settlers and churches saw indigenous people as pagans in need of Christianity and civilization. The Bush governments believed the Iraqis needed democratic rule, and that because Iraq is an Islamic nation that they are lesser than a Christian nation. Racism and beliefs of religious or cultural superiority make it easier to use violence. Challenging oppressions of all kinds must be part of making a peaceful and just world.

 

In each case the stated reasons for using violence masked more fundamental reasons which were control over resources – land, water, minerals, fish, or oil. Whenever we hear idealistic reasons put forward for going to war or using violence to achieve a good end, we ought to be sceptical and dig deeper.

 

And finally, the proponents of going to war, or using violence for seemingly good ends, do not recognize that the use of violence will corrupt them. They do not recognize that the use of violence sets off a chain of events that they can neither predict nor control. The American troops in Iraq imprisoned more and more Iraqis until they lost count of how many there were. The Indian residential schools not only provided low quality education but became death traps for native children.

 

It is as though in deciding to use violence one has let loose a demon in oneself and in the world. How else does one explain that soldiers who have a code of honour shoot women and children? How else does one explain that nuns who profess a love of Jesus and his children beat and humiliate them? For me this is the most powerful reason for renouncing the use of violence.

 

Thank you for your attention and I welcome your questions.  

 

David Milne