Photo from Toronto Star
As someone who has learned a bit of history on my own, I have to admit that a lot of what is now coming into public knowledge about the Residential School System in Canada is new to me. Like the Canadian history of other people of colour in this country the history of the school system that ravaged Indigenous communities and families was a history that was told by the perpetrators while the views of the victims remained hidden and unheard.
The Residential School System in Canada was nothing more than a diabolical plan by the Canadian government in the late 19th Century to assimilate the indigenous communities throughout Canada by sending children by the thousands to boarding schools run by the Catholic Church. When you hear community members utter the word genocide, think about why they say that. Thousands of children were taken from their homes and communities, placed in schools with the purpose of assimilating resulting in losing their ancestral language and customs. Unfortunately, as we have been finding out in the news, many children placed in these schools never made it out alive.
Just in the last several weeks, two mass graves containing children were uncovered. The first mass grave located at the Kamloops Indian Residential School contained the bodies of 215 children and if that was not tragic enough, a second mass grave was found at the Marieval Residential School containing 751 children.
Yes, 751!
It makes you wonder what type of operation was being run at residential schools. These are just two mass graves found however residential schools were run in every province in the country and the last one was closed only in 1996. For years people have been saying that bad things happened in these schools but it never seemed that the governments were listening. It never seemed that indigenous communities were given the benefit of the doubt in the public space. Just as First Nations communities continue to battle to have their concerns heard about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, they have had to pressure governments to listen to them and their accounts of personal stories and anecdotes about the abusive school system.
Unfortunately, it takes bodies being uncovered for the country to show some sense of real support but is it real support when people have been saying for years that these graves exist? Do we as a society get points for now showing the support we should have shown when the complaints started? The flags half-mast, the orange colour social media profile pictures always perpetuate the same message from me and that stops the performative acts and act, act now! Start listening and not only when bodies turn up but before. We do a lot of cute things like have statements before public meetings and events declaring we are on unceded land but as much as the recognition of that is great, I'm sure that many First Nation communities would have more concrete issues they want Canada to deal with. Whether that be self-governing, infrastructure, employment, healthcare etc, we see how businesses could get billions of dollars during a pandemic yet certain communities have suffered for decades with less than adequate funding for necessities society as a whole takes for granted.
The evils of the residential schools are only part of the genocide Indigenous people talk about but unfortunately because people will only focus on their insecurities of being called out as part of a society that actively tried to assimilate First Nations people, they will close their eyes to why there is anger about the history of the residential school system.
We can only hope that nearly 1,000 children's bodies in mass graves will be enough for governments to take seriously the demands of First Nations communities and stop the performative lowering of the flag. Raise your flags, it is money and support and a true sense of reconciliation that is needed.
At the least, do it for the children who were betrayed and mass graves still to be uncovered.
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