Getting lost and finding a new perspective at Flat Bay, NF
A frustrating first full day in Newfoundland. We decided to get off the Trans Canada, and go along the coast as much as possible, our first destinations, Stephenville, then Corner Brook. We kept getting lost, though. First we came to a dead end down Route 403, which takes you into Flat Bay.
Even our navigational errors have lessons to teach, however. At the T-intersection, where the road branches east and west into the Flat Bay reserve, we came to a church and graveyard. Attracted by the flowers placed at just about every headstone, we stopped to get a closer look. It was like no other cemetery we had seen. These were not the graves of the forgotten! Shrines to relatives and ancestors, they were adorned with bunches of flowers, statuettes, solar lanterns, and words of remembrance.
We drove into the community, talking about the differences between this First Nation burial ground and what we’re accustomed to as European descendants. The graveyard reminded me how much we Europeans have to learn from aboriginal peoples about what it means to be a member of a community – a tribe. Indigenous cultures have ‘elders’, those who are the living repositories of the tribe’s wisdom and its honoured advisors; we shuffle our old folks into homes and, as often as not, forget about or belittle them even before their last rites have been pronounced.
The evolution of European society through the industrial revolution and its precedents, has atomized citizens, breaking down the tight social bonds that continue to hold together indigenous communities.
Is one path better to the other? It’s pointless to answer in those terms. I believe European and First Nations cultures can learn from one another, but that the benefits of sharing perspectives can only be realized in respectful, caring relationships. The genocide that took place in North America during the colonial era was justified by a dehumanization of indigenous peoples. That was a lost opportunity as well as an immoral blunder, which will require generations of work at Truth and Reconciliation heal.