Alberni Indian Residential School (from United Church of Canada archives page)
Watch this important video which was passed to me by Shirley Turcotte, amazing Metis healer and teacher.
One of the things that disturbs me about the current discourse of reconciliation is that we settlers are finding it easy (relatively) to apologize for residential schools, which no longer exist, but are not talking about or recognizing that reconciliation involves a transformation of everything we have assumed: about our legal status in this land (almost none of BC has been treatied: we are essentially uninvited occupiers), about the relationship between First NATIONS and our governments, about our current, continuing practices of cultural genocide through the child welfare system.
Watch the video.
One of the things that disturbs me about the current discourse of reconciliation is that we settlers are finding it easy (relatively) to apologize for residential schools, which no longer exist, but are not talking about or recognizing that reconciliation involves a transformation of everything we have assumed: about our legal status in this land (almost none of BC has been treatied: we are essentially uninvited occupiers), about the relationship between First NATIONS and our governments, about our current, continuing practices of cultural genocide through the child welfare system.
Watch the video.
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