The colonial legacy of Canada is something which is appalling, and some experts even call it genocidal.
Many of us were shocked a few years back to learn of the unmarked graves of dead Indigenous children at former residential schools all across the country. The horrific stories of abuse and cover up carried out by the schools’ teachers and administrators, while federal overseers turned a blind eye, is enough to make one’s skin crawl.
When those unmarked graves came to light, it was an awakening moment for many Canadians of non-Indigenous origin who vaguely understood colonialism was bad, but did not yet fully grasp how monstrous and insidious it could be. After these residential school revelations, the blinders came off, and there is no putting them back on again.
Similarly, nothing we can do now will ever bring those children back, nor give them life again. But we can honour their memory, we can mourn their deaths, and we can all work toward a better society in the years ahead.
On Sept. 30, also known as National Truth and Reconciliation Day or Orange Shirt Day, we once again have the opportunity to say, “Every Child Matters.” We would encourage our readers to seek out local events and information on how they can mark this day of mourning and sadness, and come together in the spirit of reconciliation with our Indigenous brothers and sisters.
“I cannot think of the pain and horror of those lost and those who survived, without tears welling up, without anger entering my heart,” writes poet Chief Stacey Laforme. “Tears are cleansing so we do not deny them, but we rise above anger because your treatment of us in the past cannot control us today. That was the very intent of the residential school system: to control us, to take away who we are.”
The first step toward reconciliation is admitting a wrong. Once that is done, there may be hope for a new way to emerge that is not so heavily burdened by the sins and crimes of the past.
Let us all work together toward that day.
