"I Haven't Been to a Memorial"

I haven’t been to a memorial. News of the discovery of an unmarked burial site of 215 babies and children at a former residential school in Kamloops B.C. came the same weekend as the anniversary of my mom’s death. Like many in my community, I was shattered. Truth be told, I’ve been crying off and on for days since I heard. The grief hits me in waves. Every time, I think about my grandparents, aunties, uncles and my own mom at these ‘prisons’ and tears well-up. I knew that if I’d gone to a memorial, even looked at the shoes and beautiful little moccasins people laid out as a dedication to these young lives lost, it would all be too much for me to take.

Reaction and repercussions to this horror have burned like a forest fire across the nation. I’ve received an outpouring of heartfelt messages from my non-Indigenous friends and allies. Statues of once prominent figures in Canada’s disdainful legacy are being taken down or vandalized. They stand now, appropriately disgraced. September 30^th, 2021 will be the first national day for truth and reconciliation after Bill C-5 was passed unanimously in the Senate on June 3^rd. This apparently comes at a sizeable expense to the government that could have better been spent building infrastructure in Indigenous communities, many of which still don’t have potable drinking water. An expense that could be off-set by the monies the Canadian government spends fighting residential school survivors in court to suppress documents regarding their horrific abuses.

Trudeau first tweeted, calling this horror “a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.” This is the very foundation upon which Canada is built and it’s not over. Many are saying that residential schools have evolved into the modern-day foster care system. Indigenous children account for 52.2 per cent of children in foster care when Indigenous children make up only seven per cent of the youth population in Canada. The statistics are the same for inmates in Canadian prisons, over 30 per cent of whom are Indigenous – while Indigenous people make up approximately  5% of the country’s population. Suicide and poor mental health plagues our communities, from the intergenerational trauma of having parents broken by these ‘schools.’ I would be grateful to turn the page.

My biggest fear right now is that we will get what we want, to have all the other residential school properties searched for the bodies of its students. They’ll inevitably be found. Rumours of these secret graves sites, laid to rest along with the bodies of these sons and daughters. My other fear is that nothing will happen and Canada will simply forget as the past would dictate. Either way, I must brace myself for what’s to come. Live in fear, that same way my grandparents and my mother did while they were at these schools. But at least I’ll know its temporary.

I recently came across a letter that was written by my Grandma dated April 30^th, 1950, from a sanatorium after she contracted tuberculosis at Spanish Residential School. It’s addressed to her Aunt who was still at Spanish. She writes of her teachers there, “They go to church on Sunday. They pray the Lord, to give them strength to whip the kids on Monday.” Signed, “Yours until the undertaker undertakes to take you over.” Grandma was clearly accustomed to the notion that these ‘schools’ had graveyards and not playgrounds. My grandfather helped the Jesuits build crosses for them during his time at Spanish. According to the CBC the odds of dying for children in Indian residential schools was 1 in 25 while the odds of dying for Canadians serving in WWII was 1 in 26.

My mother was their eldest child and she attended a Federal Indian Day School on Wikwemikong Unceded Territory. These day schools were also included in a class action settlement for the mistreatment of the Indigenous students who attended them. After I filled out the gut-wrenching paperwork for my Mom’s Day School settlement detailing the abuses she’d suffered, I realized she was ineligible because she’d died just a few years’ shy of those included in the class action law suit. She died because of what she endured at that place.

This should all be taught in Canadian schools. I’ve had to teach students about my people, residential schools and Canada’s sordid history. It’s heartbreaking yet I know Canadian curriculum about Indigenous peoples is woefully inadequate so it’s a necessary evil. I was embarrassed as a child to learn we were such ‘savages.’ Rewriting history so it actually reflects Canada’s gruesome legacy, rather commemorating and whitewashing it, is just the beginning of the reckoning that Canada must now face.

At times, it feels as though I’m doing the healing for all the generations of my family who were forced to attend these prison camps. But I’m tired of being called resilient and exhausted by the strength I’ve had to exhibit in the face of this trauma.