Lawyer Brings S. African View To Abuse Cases
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 12:44
A Prince Albert lawyer working with survivors of residential school abuse has a unique perspective on forgiveness.
Phillip Fourie is originally from South Africa, where he began his legal career — including serving as part of the new government’s post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commission, which has been a model for Canada’s Indian residential school process.
Fourie says he sees “a definite correlation” between what his Aboriginal clients and their abusers are going through and what he saw in his home country.
“I was part of that whole process of reconciliation, and making a mindset (shift) from ‘what was’ and if you want to call it the ugliness of the apartheid system, to something new and reconciliatory,” he says.
In South Africa, Fourie saw first-hand both how crippling long-held bitterness can be, and how valuable forgiveness is, both to the oppressor and to the victim.
Fourie says a South African friend’s decision let go of his desire to revenge his wife’s murder taught him something he can now bring to his residential school clients.
“People need to forgive, because it’s like mountains that people carry around, and if we can come to a point where we can truly sit around a table and talk about this, and forgive — and ask forgiveness — I think that is where the healing is going to start,” he says.
Fourie and a team of resolution health support workers, elders and counsellors are currently travelling to several northern communities.
After visiting La Ronge on Wednesday, the group will be in Southend today and tomorrow.