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.
100 more bodies were found at a school in Manitoba, and 35 at a school in Saskatchewan the same week. 751 more unmarked graves have just been discovered at a school in Saskatchewan. This isn't normal or okay, and I'm willing to bet your school didn't have a cemetery. You can't call this anything other than what it is - genocide.
Indigenous Canadians have always known that this was happening, but now non-Indigenous Canadians are finding out about the true horrors of residential schools for the first time and everyone is shocked. This isn't new, it isn't shocking, and it certainly didn't only happen at two residential schools. Indigenous Canadians are so terribly mistreated by this country and they have been begging for help for decades, but it took 215 children for anyone to care, speak up, or take action.
We're supposed to be taught about Indigenous issues from elementary school straight to high school. Indigenous issues were taught so poorly that by the time I was in grade 11 and the Indigenous history portion of the social studies course came up, everyone started to complain and our teacher actually apologized to us because "it's boring but we have to study it." There's been no respect until now and people haven't been properly educated as a result.
Anti-Indigenous racism is not a thing of the past. The last residential school closed in 1996, so this isn't just ancient history. Several First Nations across the country don't have access to clean drinking water and have been on boil water advisories for up to 20 years. Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be killed than non-Indigenous women, and about 133 are missing or murdered every year. Canada is portrayed as this polite, friendly utopia, but the polite-Canadian stereotype is used to hide the history of racism and genocide that this country is built on.
As settlers, we need to do better. Listen to and amplify Indigenous voices. Please take the time to educate yourself, whether you're in Canada or elsewhere, and please keep talking about this.
Learn about the Indigenous land you live on
Take a free online Indigenous Canada course
Donate to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society
Donate to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
Learn about the history of Canadian residential schools
Sign a petition calling for a national day of mourning
Sign a petition calling for a thorough search of every residential school
