tw: Residential Schools, Abuse, Trauma, Neglect, Intergenerational Trauma, Genocide
The CUE community paints and displays tiny rock moccasins to mark National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Sept. 30th) and in memory of the Indigenous children who never made it home from residential schools.
The display represents the thousands of small children who were forcibly removed from their homes to attend “schools” where many endured abuse, neglect, shame, forced labour, malnourishment and non-consensual experimentation. The horrors experienced in this system are well documented in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report and Summary (2015).
The small moccasins also remind us of the many Indigenous Nations who are in the process of recovering the bodies of their children from former residential school sites and surrounding areas. To this day, new unmarked graves are being identified all over Canada. With more than 5,000 child remains already recovered, based on survivor testimonies, the Indian Residential School Society estimates more than 10,000 child remains have yet to be located.
We recognize the intense emotions this display brings up for people- please take care of your spirit but never forget what has and continues to happen to Indigenous peoples in what we now call Canada. The legacies of assimilation policies (that created the residential school system) continue to impact Indigenous families and communities today. Overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in child welfare, corrections, policing incidents and deaths, homicide rates, human trafficking, sexual and physical violence rates, houselessness, unemployment gaps, poverty, and addictions are all direct outcomes of intergenerational trauma due to colonization and the residential school system in Canada.
We ask that you stand with residential school survivors by participating in continuous learning, calling for justice and action, donating to healing programs and services, purchasing orange shirts that donate to Indigenous organizations (not corporations), and/or having conversations about truth and reconciliation with your family.
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