For anyone who doesn't know what's going on in Canada right now (which, let's be real, is probably everyone who's not in Canada):
This week, a mass grave was discovered at a former Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, BC. The grave contained the bodies of 215 Indigenous children.
For people outside of North America, residential schools were places that Indigenous children were sent to, to have their language and culture stripped away from them. They were literally stolen from their families, and scattered across Canada, to ensure that they would be surrounded by children who didn't speak their language. They were given Christian names and forced to speak English. They were horrendously abused, and the survivors have been traumatized.
Hundreds of children never returned. The assumption has always been that they died. This has now been confirmed.
The school in Kamloops closed in 1978. They are now trying to identify bodies to inform family members. The last residential school closed in the 1990s. There is growing demand to search all of them, but the government hasn't responded to that, as of yet. Ottawa JUST gave in to pressure to fly the Canada flag at half mast. They weren't even going to do that.
This is the reality if anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. The residential schools may be closed, but that hasn't stopped the abduction of Indigenous children, let alone the hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
