residential schools
as a cree person who worked in residential school research for multiple years, i want to emphasize to non-indigenous people that educating yourself about residential schools is better than relying on your indigenous friends/coworkers/colleagues/classmates to do the educating for you.
it is also important that you don’t get all of your information from social media. i see non-indigenous people, particularly canadians, reblogging and retweeting a lot of posts about residential schools and it always makes me wonder “are you doing anything else?” if you want somewhere else to get information and you’re not sure where to start, read the truth and reconcilation reports. even the executive summary is going to provide you with a lot of additional information and education.
you can find all of the trc’s reports, including the report on missing children and unmarked burials, online, for free, here: http://www.trc.ca/about-us/trc-findings.html.
if it’s easier for you to listen to the report, there is a video series of people reading the executive summary that was created in 2015, when the reports first came out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCffE1UIqX23NvDpVXipSVVA.
the news coming out about unmarked burials at residential schools is tragic, but i don’t know any indigenous people who are surprised by it, particularly those of us who have family members who attended residential school or for survivors themselves. there is a reason we use the word survivor. i’ve been to the cemetery on the site of the school my family attended. i’ve seen graves that are only marked because our communities marked them, graves with no names attached because the church and government officials working at the school didn’t think these children were important enough to have their names recorded.
if you are non-indigenous and you’re upset/angry/horrified by the number of unmarked burials coming out at these schools, i am begging you to do more than share social media posts. we have been talking about this for decades. we have always known. educate yourself, because the resources are free and they’re out there.
(via kimabutch)
