The View From Here – What Do We Do Now?

My husband asked me yesterday if I knew about the kids, and I was stunned to find out what he was talking about.  215 kids bodies discovered in a massive grave at a former residential school in British Columbia.

As parents, you immediately think about your kids and want to hug them close.   As you read more into the headline, you realize how awful it is.  How incredibly awful it was.  How little we know about what happened.  How hard it is to understand.

I didn’t know anything about residential schools until the last few years.  It wasn’t something we were taught in school.   According to Wikipedia,  “The schools aimed to eliminate Indigenous language and culture and replace it with English language and Christian beliefs.”

We can’t say “I didn’t know” anymore.

I’ve spent hours today trying to understand how and why this happened.  Trying to wrap my head around why anybody thought it was “best” to rip families apart and remove kids from their homes, to remove their culture, their language, their traditions.  My heart hurts for those kids and I get so angry at everyone responsible.

Knowledge is power.  So that’s where we grow and get stronger and where we FIX IT.  We can’t erase it or pretend it didn’t happen in OUR country.  Not now.

But we can learn about it and talk about it, and help in the healing.

There is actually a map that you can use to search for the closest residential school was located to where you lived or grew up.  The closest to me when I was a kid, growing up in Mississauga, was The Mowhawk Institute in Brantford.

Today flags are lowered to half-mast.  You’re encouraged to wear orange and leave a teddy bear on your porch tonight at 6pm with the porch light on.

Memorials are being held all across the country.

But as George asked this morning – what happens TOMORROW?  Because what we do tomorrow and the days that follow will matter more than the lowered flags and orange shirts and teddy bears and kids shoes that line the memorials.

I don’t know what to say to this.  I don’t know how to respond to this.  I’m still a bit stunned and stuck trying to process it.   Because I honestly don’t know what that feels like or how I would feel as one of those children or the parents to hand over their child knowing they were trying to be changed into a different mold, because who they were was not accepted.

This happened in our country.

Anybody else having a hard time wrapping their heads around this?

I’m so sorry to everyone who has been impacted by this and who will continue to feel the impacts of this for years, if not generations, to come.

I remember when the late Gord Downie used his voice to help – and used his final days, and final concert and final album, to share the stories and to encourage us all to figure it out.

It’s a sad day for our country, Canadians are feeling devastated by this news and our hearts are breaking for those 215 kids who never made it home and for all the others we don’t know about.

But what about tomorrow?

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan