TW: Transphobia, mentions of violence, residential schools, mentions of death and abuse, cursing
Everyone can miss me with that “Canada is better than the US” shit because it’s not. We are no better and to say we are is a blatant lie.
First, the bodies of 215 Indigenous children were found in a mass grave at a residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.. These children were killed by the residential school system. Residential schools are not a “dark chapter” in our history, they ARE our history. Canada was built on cultural genocide. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. My parents, who are not yet 50, got MARRIED that year.
Then, I find out yesterday morning that a transgender Tik Tok creator I follow, who’s from Quebec, got attacked. She was the victim of a goddamn hate crime and I wouldn’t have heard anything about it if I wasn’t a follower of hers.
I’m just so tired and angry and I want to do more to fight all of the injustices that are happening here but until I move out I’m not gonna be in a position to do so.
I will be making a post about the 169 graves found at a residential school in Alberta once I finish my Italian homework and have more information on it.
Atthe residential school memorial downtown, a speaker encouraged everyone present to take photos and share stories of the tributes and of what they had seen that evening. The memorial commemorated the recent discovery of 215 bodies at a Kamloops state institution that separated Indigenous children from their families and culture in an attempt to indoctrinate them into a western, Christian way of living. So I am doing as she asked.
I try to learn about and be mindful of Indigenous cultures in Canada and feel that, even as an immigrant, I still have more rights, freedoms and safety than people who were born here and who can trace ancestry back to before anyone like me ever arrived. I know, as many do, that the last residential school closed as recently as the 90s and that they were hugely harmful, abusive institutions with little to no accountability (thousands of other children remain unaccounted for to this day). I’m also well aware of the lack of access to healthcare, mental health resources and sometimes even clean water that affects many of this country’s Indigenous communities.
I have a complicated relationship with online activism and I feel I’ve known too many people who are performative or disingenuous, using it as a front and a facade in lieu of real action, and this includes much of the current Canadian administration. I also feel that what we care about and what we feel inside of us goes so much further than what we share on the internet.
I don’t know how to make other people care, but if you live anywhere in North America I would encourage you to use the internet to find out about the Indigenous Peoples who do, or once did, live in the spaces you move through, and what they are like. Education is one of the first ways that we can combat cultural erasure, ignorance and prejudice, and it’s also something that enriches all of us. If you’re in Canada and you can help financially, I’d suggest donating to the Residential School Survivors Society, or otherwise consider writing to your representatives to ask how they are working toward reconciliation, supporting and uplifting cultures and peoples who have been abused and oppressed for so long.
This isn’t mcr related but it’s very important information to spread awareness about. In Canada residential schools operated from the 1800’s until 1996. Indigenous children were stolen from their homes and stripped of their culture and identity. Many of these children faced physical and sexual abuse. An estimate of 150,000 children were forced to go to these schools. Of this number of children, an estimated 6,000 died as a result. For years indigenous people have been sharing their stories and experiences of their time in residential schools but went ignored by our country. Recently 215 bodies of children were found on the grounds of a previous residential school. This sparked demand for other grounds to be searched. Since then, 1,505 bodies of children have been found. This number will continue to rise as we locate more unmarked graves of these children. As an indigenous person, I will not stop spreading awareness and amplifying the voices of our community and demanding change in this country to bring our children home.
Important links:
What were Residential Schools? Plus additional information:
