It's hot here, probably not hot compared to many places in the world but hot for us. My flowers are coming along and the vegetables are coming up in the raised planters that the big guy made for me. The tomatoes I started from seeds that I saved last year survived and are growing too. My lilacs are starting to bloom and the rhubarb is huge.
I couldn't sleep last night; it was too damned hot and my extensor tendonitis has started up again. My right foot was throbbing as I tried to fall asleep and I feel like an old lady this morning with my aches and pains.
This week in the news there were 215 bodies of children found underground at the site of a residential school in Kamloops. The school was run by an extension of the Catholic church. Both the government of Canada and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate are withholding records that would help determine the identity of these children. Residential schools amounted to cultural genocide for the indigenous peoples of Canada. I only learned in the last couple of years that my son's grandma went to a residential school and contracted TB there as well. She spent two years at the Charles Camsell Hospital being treated for TB.
Children were taken from their families in an effort to "...to kill the Indian in the child...". Children were forcibly removed from their familes, visits from their families were restricted, the children were prohibited from speaking their native languages and the schools attempted to destroy any traditional cutlure in the children.
Residential schools tore families apart, destroyed centuries old traditions and resulted in the widescale abuse and deaths of children. It is a horrific part of our history but not one that can be ignored. From 2008-2015 a Truth and Reconciliation Commission traveled across the country to listen to the stories of indigenous people, with a mandate to document the history and impacts of residential schools in this country.
Needless to say, only a handful of recomendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been implemented. The last residentail school only closed in 1996. I am angry and heartsick. Can you imagine having your child forcibly removed from your home? Can you imagine that child never returning and nobody will tell you what happened? Can you imagine what that would do to your heart? Your mind? Your soul?
So today I'm writing letters to the Catholic Church, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the government of Canada because I can't change what happened in the past but I can hold people accountable.
The big guy and the little guy cooling off on the deck.
I cannot imagine how the government can justify withholding documents that could help identify these people.
ReplyDeleteWhat was done to the Indigenous Children by the Catholic Church is right up there with what Trump's Border Patrol has done with the children down at the Trump Fence! It is all disgusting and totally inhumane!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen the news of those 215 lost children broke, it shredded my heart. Such inhumanity lives in our humanness, it is a fight we must engage, to let the good wolf win. As you are.
ReplyDeleteThe catholic church is a criminal organisation working hand in hand with corrupt racist you-name-it governments the world over. No other way to describe it and I base my opinion on what happened in Ireland until quite recently.
ReplyDeleteThere were many of those schools in the US too. "Assimilation!" was the battlecry while rape and murder of a culture was committed. Sabine is right about the Catholic church. Could the devil himself have caused more pain and horror than that organization? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteJack, however, is a beauty. I love that picture of him and his grandfather so.
No I can't for one minute imagine having my child taken away from me because my "skin was the wrong colour" or I "spoke the wrong language"!!!! I just can't wrap my brain around it. On a much larger scale it must be like what was done in Ireland (and other countries) to children born out of wedlock "in the day". The film Philomena really brought that home!!! And Ms Moon is right, can there be anything more beautiful than that picture!
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to me that the government won't turn over records. Nothing the church does surprises me anymore, they're capable of such evil. In Phoenix AZ there is a major thoroughfare named Indian School Road. Why didn't they just name it Cultural Genocide Parkway? Father Kino, who is generally revered in Tucson, killed the culture of the local indigenous people.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad went to such a School and he Lost a Younger Brother there, the story I heard was that the Brother Died of Starvation and the complications from it. My Dad did not have a decent Education, probably at Grade School level, if that, even tho' he was highly Intelligent. Because the American Government did the same thing as the Canadian Government with the Indigenous Tribes, separating Families, forcing the Children into Labor and calling it an Education. My Dad never spoke much of the abuse he suffered, he was stoic and always made something Positive out of anything Negative Life handed him, I suppose it was an instinctive survival technique he had to adapt to and to stay sane in an insane World that was stacked against his People. So much of his side of the Family's History is Oral and it wasn't until I was older I understood my Paternal Grandma's distrust and dislike of White People. Since Dad had Married a European Woman while in the Military and visiting her Country, I looked most like Mom's Family and so it distanced me from my Paternal Grandmother. I didn't understand as a Child and Teen... now of coarse I do. I had a privilege some of the relatives never enjoyed and could fly under the Radar of Racism against Native people due to my appearance. I suppose a lot of mixed Race individuals have that dilemma, of acceptance by Society and of being Between... as my Dad called it when you're not 100% of a certain Race.
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