This month we focus on Holocaust education. Holocaust Education Week has become a mainstay in our community and has evolved into a time of reflection not only for us as a community, but as a means to think about other communities that have suffered genocide and crimes against humanity.
In the end, such reflection ought to lead us to one inexorable conclusion: that without peace, we are doomed as a society to repeat the sins and evil of the past.
A short time ago, the world observed International Peace Day. It is UN inspired and celebrated each year on Sept. 21. According to the United Nations website, “the General Assembly has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.”
Indeed, this year’s theme was “The Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace.”
In 2015, the United Nations identified 17 sustainable goals that must be met to develop a peaceful world. From the challenges of poverty, hunger and xenophobia, to eradicating racism, political corruption, ensuring clean safe water and protecting our environment, it is a list that is at once compelling and complex.
The world today remains very much a place on the edge. While here in the western world we have luxuries we never would have thought possible even a decade ago combined with ample supplies of food, clean water and democracy-based governments, we are often the envy of countries that have far less.
And yes, we are very fortunate. But that good fortune gives us added responsibility. And yet, we still have so much to learn about the Earth, diversity and peace. We need to be prepared to learn these lessons from sources that are not apparent at first blush.
Anne Wilson Schaef is a world-renowned academic who has devoted much of her life to indigenous culture and learning. In her book Native Wisdom for White Minds, she tells of her work with Hawaiians among many other indigenous peoples.
She relates the adage of one Hawaiian elder who said: “The day Hawaiians disappear will be the day when the water no longer flows.”
Schaef explains: “What I have come to understand is that if we cannot save the redwoods or the whales or the Hawaiians, it is not their disappearance that is key. What is key is that we will have lost the level of consciousness that allows us to comprehend the importance of diversity to the survival of the planet. If we do not understand the need for diversity, nothing else matters.”
How does all this intersect with International Peace Day and Holocaust Education Week? We all desire peace on a very direct and pragmatic level. Yet even here in Canada, when we examine the UN’s “sustainable goals,” how is our own report card?
READ: MUTUAL RECOGNITION KEY TO PEACE IN MIDDLE EAST
Canadians have just spent a year of reflection following the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We have come, I would say, begrudgingly, to accept the historical truth of the genocide we committed against our indigenous people. Sadly, not much has changed yet as a result.
At a time when indigenous reserves are still on water advisory notices, and have been for over 20 years; when, despite political and government rhetoric that we are committed to cleaning river and lake water, the decision of the Ontario government to permit clear-cut logging that demonstrably increases mercury outputs into the water system next to the Grassy Narrows reserve remains a real threat; when Canada plans to welcome over 25,000 Syrian refugees but has yet to make a dent in the issue of Yazidi refugees who we acknowledge are facing genocide, how close are we to real peace? How close are we to “never again?”
International Peace Day and Holocaust Education Week are wonderful concepts to embrace. But until we put real meaning behind these concepts, they are destined, sadly, to remain just concepts