I was at last week's T. R. U. E. meeting about the media, which Saturday's Expositor called "one-sided."
One-sided? In issues involving the oppression of a minority group by the dominant society, there often is no genuine thing as one-sided or the existence of two sides of a story.
The renowned South African theologian, Albert Nolan, made this quite clear in his essay, Taking Sides, written when the apartheid system in his country was about to burst.
Nolan writes that in issues of oppression, there is not always "another side" to the status quo. Rather, there is the true reality of the oppressed, whose story often does not make the media, except perhaps when violence breaks out. And there is the laissez-faire justification of the dominant side, which keep the economic and political machines working against the needs of the oppressed. In other words, there is a right side and a wrong side, and the act of the Christian is to take the right side.
The repeated message of the native media reporters and the Toronto documentary activist on Thursday night was that the real events behind Caledonia in 2006 were inaccurately reported, with a list of such misrepresentations that are too long to repeat here. Ditto for the focus on Gary McHale and some white supremists who came into the area to inflame tensions further. While CHCH-TV was the worst offender, having them not present is not the issue -- we know what the mainstream media said and did, That was the purpose of the forum in the first place.
Prior to the forum, I e-mailed T. R. U. E. about the way it advertised the forum, which said something like, "Learn about what the media did NOT report about the Douglas Creek Estates occupation crisis in 2006." Shouldn't T. R. U. E. include someone from the non-native media, such as Expositor managing editor David Judd, I asked.
T. R. U. E. replied that the focus of the meeting was not on the mainstream media, but on the video documentary clip which Tom Keefer was to show. Moreover, the purpose of T. R. U. E. is to get the Six Nations side of various issues, they explained.
I benefited from watching the film clip from Tom Keefer's documentary Thursday night. It confirms eyewitness reports I've heard from natives and non-natives who were at Caledonia during the tensions. Also, letters to The Expositor by Six Nations folks such as Clive Garlow and Wilma Green specifically have been stating, "You are not reporting our side of the story."
Judd was present to give his side and to speak with persons afterwards, which many of us appreciated.
Was the meeting one-sided? Yes, in the sense that it revealed the true side (no pun intended).
Judd stressed his paper's call for the feds to settle these claims ASAP. And when someone from the audience shouted that she hoped that the Expositor's community advocacy role includes Six Nations, Judd did say yes. Let's hope that The Expositor is true to Judd's word.
I certainly look forward to the next T. R. U. E meeting where a Six Nations pastor, Rev. Adrian Jacobs, will give a Six Nations perspective about why area churches should get involved with land claims.