Recognizing National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Sep 28

Since time immemorial, Indigenous people have been the stewards of our water. They called these lakes, rivers, and oceans home long before European settlers arrived and claimed land, resources, and cultural autonomy on Turtle Island.

Through this aggressive assimilation, over 150,000 Indigenous children were removed and separated from their families and communities to attend residential schools. Attendance was mandatory. Many never returned home.

We must never reduce the ravages of residential schools to a footnote of history. Just over two decades ago, The Muscowequan Indian Residential School—the last residential school in Canada—closed in Saskatchewan. But the lasting trauma of these institutions cannot be sealed away with the buildings that housed them.

Today, both on and off of reservations, are residential school survivors and the families of those who never made it home.

This year, for the first time, September 30th will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. On this day we honour the children who suffered through physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse and we remember those who died in the residential schools set up by the Canadian government and run by the Church.

“No one knows for sure how many Native children wound up at residential schools in the United States. Canada reckons their own numbers at about 150,000, so the tally for America would have been considerably higher. But for the children who did find themselves there, the schools were, in all ways, a death trap. Children were stripped of their cultures and their languages. Up to 50 percent of them lost their lives to disease, malnutrition, neglect, and abuse—50 percent.”
― Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

These residential schools sought to ‘kill the Indian in the child’, to wholly eradicate Indigenous language, spirituality, culture, and teachings.

But they did not succeed.

This September 30th, and every day, we ask that you join us in remembering the children who were torn from their families and abused in the residential school system, to ultimately be buried in mass unmarked graves or to live on with the now generational trauma inflicted by cruel, violent, government-sanctioned attempts at assimilation.

We ask that you also join us in acknowledging the truth about residential schools and their lasting effects on Indigenous people. We ask that you join us in the reconciliation process by cultivating equitable, unprejudiced, and respectful relationships with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis People and advocating for the political, educational, economic, and environmental rights for survivors.

“It is more important than ever to learn about who’s land you are on, the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples that continue to this day, why Indigenous peoples are vital to the healing of our planet, and to join in celebration of their beauty, strength and resilience.”
— Luke Swinson, Illustrator / Muralist living in Kitchener, Ontario. Anishinaabe - Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation