To mark the suffering of the approximately 150,000 Indigenous children forced into residential schools, the federal government is planning a new statutory holiday. We support that plan – if it’s done right.
After all, we take a solemn day every year to reflect on our war dead without letting Remembrance Day turn into a series of patio parties and mattress sales.
Today, schoolchildren learn about the horror of residential schools. The City of North Vancouver council discusses the 2,000 Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Sechelt Nation kids who were “aggressively assimilated” at St. Paul’s Indian Residential School on Keith Road. But a quick glance at the comments section of any news website or politician’s Facebook page makes it clear there are swaths of people who still just don’t get it.
These are the same willfully ignorant blowhards who complain that the relocation of a John A. Macdonald statue from Victoria’s city hall is erasing history. It’s true, John A. was our most important father of Confederation. He was also the father of a government policy to starve Indigenous people.
Ironically, the controversy over removing the statue has done more to educate people than an artist’s bronze work ever could.
Both the statue and holiday are only symbols, however, not a substitute for clean drinking water or infrastructure on reservations throughout the country. Our national policy of unintentional and intentional abuse ruptured families and caused harm that can still be seen and felt today.
That’s an ugly truth, but if we ever hope to achieve reconciliation, we all need to start with the truth.
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