The Blanket Exercise

The Blanket Exercise

On a late Saturday afternoon in the beginning of May about 50 individuals gathered in the basement of the St. James Anglican Church in East Vancouver for a Blanket Exercise. As I said in an announcement I had read in our own congregation, The Blanket Exercise is not a session on learning about native protocol in giving blankets, which is a tradition among a number of the First Nations, particularly here on the West Coast of Canada. It is rather an occasion to experience in a graphic way what indigenous peoples went through over the last 400 years since the colonizers, the immigrants, the settlers, first Europeans and later others, came to the Americas. This was an event put on by the BC Anglican Diocese with the help of their Indigenous Justice Ministries Coordinator, Brander McDonald, who also serves in a similar capacity for Mennonite Church BC, so it was also promoted for MC-BC. The exercise was developed by KAIROS Canada (http://www.kairoscanada.org/dignity-rights/indigenous-rights/blanket-exercise/) and some of their team were also involved.

In some ways, this particular gathering was organized after the fashion of the once-banned traditional West Coast potlatch. This meant it began with a welcome by an indigenous Elder. This is a practice that, in my experience over the last decade, is much more common in British Columbia than in most of the rest of Canada, as these lands were mostly not covered by treaties and therefore unceded, not relinquished to the settlers, and can still be claimed as their land by the First Nations. Thus, they have the right, if they so choose, to welcome us. This was followed by an introduction of "the family," in other words, the hosts of the potlatch. In this case, these were significant individuals involved in organizing the event, including some indigenous persons.

Then, we were given instructions for participation in the blanket exercise. There were some 20 blankets of a great variety spread out over the floor inside the large circle in which we sat. We were invited to step onto the blankets and mill around, interacting with one another as we wished, signifying the movement of First Nations peoples prior to and with the arrival of settlers. As we did so, a series of readings were read by various narrators and participants. Some of these were quotations from First Nations speakers. Most summarized historical developments in the settlement of Canada and the changes that have taken place in the relationship between first England, the Crown, and then the Government of Canada.

Some individuals were given file cards of different colors and the significance of these was uncovered as the story unfolded. Some cards stood for those who were killed off by the white men, such as all the First Nations in Newfoundland. Some stood for those unfortunate children who died in residential school. There was a telling moment when all those who represented children in residential schools were told to move off onto one blanket by themselves. Then they were invited to join the larger group but the remaining members of the larger group were told to turn their backs on them, signifying the alienation that they had felt when they returned, often as strangers, to their own communities after years away having their identity stripped of them. Other cards indicated those who died from smallpox and other diseases.

The reading accompanying this activity also included a litany of increasingly controlling and restrictive legislation. The impact of that was that the blankets kept getting rolled up and in fact disappearing. The result was that the surviving participants representing both settlers and indigenous people found themselves in very close quarters. To be sure, there were more positive moments when developments allowed for the blankets to be rolled back out, but always there was the caution, "not too much." One of these times was when the Government of Canada, represented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, read the official apology to First Nations peoples in 2008 for what Canada had done to them in the residential schools.

Participants had been cautioned at the beginning that this could be a trying and moving experience for some, and that there was counseling support available if this happened. After the readings were all done and the blankets were shrunk to as small an area as all of that required, we all broke into smaller circles with a facilitator to reflect on what the experience had meant for us and what we might take away from it to others. This is where we found that for some, the experience had become quite uncomfortable. Some First Nations participants in particular, finding themselves standing uncomfortably closer to immigrants then normal personal space would allow, found the experience somewhat unsettling, realizing it reflected a sad reality that their peoples have experienced over time as they were displaced from their lands by the often hostile and not-understanding immigrants.

After the sharing circles had come to a close, everyone joined the large circle again and the host family gave out gifts. This was what happened at Potlatch. Indeed, it was generally the custom for the hosting family to give away everything. Gifts could not be refused either. Finally, the guests would all be invited to share a meal, which was what happened here as well. Of course, traditionally, this would have been presented as a most sumptuous feast, where the host would have served their all and their best.

If you ever get the chance to take part in an exercise like this, I would encourage you to do so. You will be struck in a very moving and graphic way by what we as non-indigenous people have done to our totally undeserving and, in fact, mostly welcoming, at least to begin with, First Nations peoples. As was also pointed out by one of the participants in our group, even today, just as to an extent with the indigenous people of South Africa, after apartheid was over, it is the indigenous people here who have been reaching out to offer us forgiveness for what we have done, looking for reconciliation, pleading at the same time for us to listen to what they have experienced at our hands. As was read in the first quote of the exercise, from Dene Elder George Erasmus of the Northwest Territories, co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”

We will not become one people in this country, a community, until we learn fully what our shared history is, acknowledge it, and reconcile with one another. Indeed, I personally believe that God can never fully bless the church in this land as he would like, until we lead in the way in this. That is the challenge for us. Mennonite Church B.C. members had a chance to participate in one of these events organized by our Indigenous Relations Coordinator, Brander McDonald, at Emmanuel Mennonite in Abbotsford in April of this year, but the event had to be canceled because of apparent lack of interest. I sincerely hope we can raise enough interest in these matters to schedule another one. We still have a ways to go.

Lorne Brandt, 2015-5-2