INTERNATIONAL NEWS A DRUM IS HELD ALOFT DURING A WOMEN’S MEMORIAL MARCH IN VANCOUVER HONOURING MURDERED AND MISSING INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND GIRLS. CREDIT: MELANIE GRAHAM-ORR ACKNOWLEDGING A PAINFUL PAST AND PRESENT IN CANADA BY JULIA AOKI I HAVE BEEN SITTING WITH the devastating news that has come from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. I won’t detail that tragedy here, for reasons I convey below. But for those who have not yet encountered the news, I encourage you to search “Kamloops Residential School” and become familiar with the recent revelations from that region. Addressing a tragedy of this magnitude is For settler Canadians, these are tools used in our name, seemingly impossible in a short editorial. To summarize or condense the terrible truths of the Kamloops Residential School (KRS), without the time or resources to adequately hold space for those directly living this trauma to speak on their experiences, has the potential to do harm — particularly to those readers who continue to be impacted by colonial violence. Instead, I want to use this space to draw attention to the shared obligations of settler Canadians in the pursuit of the “truth”, if there should ever be “reconciliation”. Settler Canada needs to become familiar with its own history and present. Canada has used its self-designated authority to systematically erode traditional cultural practices and exact violence on Indigenous communities through the imposed reserve system, residential schools, the disenfranchisement of women, subversion of traditional governance systems… and on, and on, and on. tools by which land has been expropriated, seized, and dominated; peoples and cultures have been systematically dismantled; children have been taken from families; and generations of women have been dehumanized and made susceptible to violence. One of the foundational tools for this work was the Indian Act, as it conferred responsibility for the education of Indigenous children across most of Canada to the federal government. These schools were then administered by various Christian churches, with the express intention of dismantling Indigenous culture. The horrors and atrocities that occurred in those schools have been documented through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, neglect, malnutrition, unattended disease, and a devastating confirmed death count, with a much higher presumed death count. While it is often cited that the last residential school closed in 1996, it would be a mistake to assume that so too closed a chapter in Canadian history. In 2019, more than 40% of children and youth in the guardianship of the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development were Indigenous, according to the province of B.C. In 2018, the BC Coroner’s Office released a report of findings from a study of 200 deaths of people with links to the foster system between 2011 and 2016, and found a disproportionate number of those deaths were Indigenous children and youth. This is all entangled with poverty and homelessness, the issues we confront every day at Megaphone. The 2019 Homeless Count in Metro Vancouver showed once again that the homeless Indigenous population in Vancouver is radically out of line with the general population. 46% of unsheltered homeless people counted in Vancouver in 2019 identified as Indigenous, whereas Indigenous Peoples make up only 2.2% of Vancouver’s general population. While it’s painful to confront the violent histories of the place we call home, there is power in knowing our past as we try to divert our path toward a different future. While I implore our readers to actively reflect on the history and active presence of colonialism, I also encourage you to seek out First Nations, Métis, and Inuit stories and media and self-determined reporting on these issues. ■ Courtesy of Megaphone / INSP.ngo 4 DENVER VOICE August 2021
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