Yesterday, Thursday 30 September 2021, was Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to remember and honour the country’s lost Indigenous children and survivors of the state-sponsored “residential school” system—a period during which many Indigenous children were removed from their families to attend residential schools, where they could not speak their native languages and were mentally and physically abused, some never to return home.
A legacy of Canada’s own problematic colonial history, the objective of these schools was to erase the languages, traditions and culture of the country’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. An estimated 150,000 children were taken from their home to often-faraway schools between 1883 and 1997.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which took place between 2008 and 2015, described much of what happened during that period as “cultural genocide”. One of their 94 calls to action in their final report was to create a federal statutory day of commemoration.
30th September is now a day for national reflection, to reflect on what happened, but also the legacy of those events and their impact on people, their families and communities today which includes placing Indigenous needs as high up as non-Indigenous ones, factoring in Indigenous perspectives in decision-making, and acknowledging their right to self-determination. A small step forward in an otherwise very dark period of Canada’s history.
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