Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.Part One of a three-part series on Aboriginal-Canadian relations.Canada has spent years being told that reconciliation is both necessary and urgent. I agree.But there is a question that Canadians should be permitted to ask without being accused of hostility: What does reconciliation actually require of both sides?That is not a rhetorical question. It goes to the heart of whether reconciliation can ever become a durable relationship rather than an endless cycle of accusation, apology, compensation, and renewed grievance.The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided an important starting point. Its principles do not describe reconciliation as a one-way obligation imposed upon non-Aboriginal Canadians. Principle Six says that all Canadians — as treaty peoples — share responsibility for establishing and maintaining mutually respectful relationships. Principle Nine calls for joint leadership, trust-building, accountability, and transparency.Those words deserve to be taken seriously.There is an important distinction between acknowledging Canada’s history and assigning personal guilt to Canadians who did not create it.Residential schools were a shameful part of Canada’s history. Government policies discriminated against Aboriginal people. Treaties were sometimes dishonoured. Aboriginal communities suffered profound cultural, economic, and personal damage.None of those historical facts should be denied.But neither should it follow that a Canadian whose grandparents arrived here decades after the worst of those policies is personally responsible for them.A person born in Vancouver in 1985 did not establish the residential school system. A Ukrainian immigrant who arrived in Canada in 1995 did not negotiate the Indian Act. A young tradesperson working on a northern construction project today did not dispossess anyone of land in the nineteenth century..Historical responsibility belongs somewhere. It should not automatically become inherited personal guilt.This distinction becomes increasingly important when language intended to describe historical structures is used in ordinary interactions as a description of individual Canadians.Words such as “settler” and “colonialism” can have legitimate historical and academic meanings. The problem arises when a person is told — explicitly or implicitly — that being a “settler,” “colonist,” racist, or supporter of “genocide” makes them personally responsible for historical wrongs they did not commit.There is a predictable consequence.People become defensive.Some stop listening.Others conclude that reconciliation is not actually about building a relationship with them but about requiring them to accept an increasingly expansive list of historical and contemporary accusations.That is not a good foundation for reconciliation.And there is another uncomfortable reality: reconciliation requires Aboriginal leadership to recognize that non-Aboriginal Canadians also have legitimate interests, concerns, and rights.The majority of Canadians did not create the institutions that governed Aboriginal people in previous centuries. They inherited the country as it existed. They work in its hospitals, build its roads, pay its taxes, operate its businesses, teach its children, and serve in its public institutions.They are entitled to ask whether government programs work.They are entitled to ask whether billions of dollars in public expenditure are producing measurable improvements.They are entitled to ask whether proposed settlements of land and resource disputes are fair.They are entitled to ask how Aboriginal governments themselves spend money.And they are entitled to disagree with Aboriginal leaders without being described as racist.That last point matters.A democracy cannot function if disagreement with a political organization — Aboriginal or otherwise — is treated as evidence of prejudice..Canada has chosen a rights-based approach to reconciliation. The federal United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRIP) became law in 2021, and the federal government describes the UNDRIP as an important framework for renewing relationships with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.British Columbia has also enacted its own Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).Those are significant developments.But rights come with responsibilities, and relationships require reciprocity.The same principle applies to language.Aboriginal Canadians have every right to speak angrily about historical injustice. Survivors and their descendants have experiences that many other Canadians cannot fully understand.But if reconciliation is defined as establishing and maintaining mutually respectful relationships, then respect cannot be entirely one-directional.Non-Aboriginal Canadians should not be expected to accept collective condemnation as the price of participating in reconciliation.Nor should Aboriginal Canadians be expected to abandon legitimate grievances merely to make others comfortable.Both sides should be able to say: This happened. It was wrong. We need to understand it. But we also need to decide how we live together now.That is a much harder conversation.It is also a much more mature one.I have spent more than 40 years working around major construction and maintenance projects employing thousands of tradespeople. I entered that work in 1980 and spent considerable effort trying to increase Aboriginal participation in our workforce.My experience was not that Aboriginal people were incapable of succeeding.Quite the opposite..I met Aboriginal men and women who were talented, dependable, and ambitious. Some succeeded extremely well.But I also encountered a recurring problem that deserves discussion: recruitment was often considerably easier than retention.Some Aboriginal people told me privately that they were caught between two worlds. They wanted to work, but when they returned to their communities, they could encounter expectations from relatives or others who were not working. Some described pressure to bring home purchases or goods for people who were not participating in the workforce.I cannot claim that experience represented every community — or even most communities.But neither should we pretend such experiences do not exist simply because they are uncomfortable.The question is not whether Aboriginal people are responsible for the failures of the past.They are not.The question is whether Aboriginal communities — like every other community — must eventually confront the problems that exist within their own families, institutions, and leadership structures.Surely the answer is yes.If a community is experiencing addiction, family breakdown, educational failure, violence, unemployment, or poor governance, identifying historical causes may be important.But identifying a cause is not the same as solving a problem.At some point, responsibility must move from explanation to action.That applies to Ottawa.It applies to provincial governments.It applies to corporations.It applies to Aboriginal governments.And it applies to individuals..Reconciliation cannot mean that one side must continually apologize while the other side is never required to examine its own conduct.It cannot mean that every failure is attributed to colonialism while successful outcomes are attributed solely to Aboriginal resilience.It cannot mean that billions of dollars are spent without Canadians being permitted to ask what those dollars accomplished.And it cannot mean that criticism of policy is automatically transformed into criticism of Aboriginal people.Canada can do better.But doing better requires something more demanding than apologies.It requires two groups of Canadians — Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal — to accept a simple proposition:We are going to have to live together.The question is whether we will continue arguing about who is entitled to feel the most aggrieved or whether we will finally concentrate on building a relationship in which both sides have rights, responsibilities, expectations, and a future.That is reconciliation worth pursuing.Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.
