#/ residential schools

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Indigenous peoples continue to struggle to access complete and timely records about Indian Residential Schools, according to a new report by the Senate standing committee on Indigenous Peoples. The report, Missing Records, Missing Children, was released Thursday and includes 11 recommendations to improve access to residential school records, including for the Canadian government to compel Catholic entities to release documents to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. "It's extremely important for the support of the survivors and the family members to bring closure because everyone is aging on," said Sen. Brian Francis, who is Mi'kmaw from Lennox Island First Nation and is chair of the committee. "The sooner we can get answers the better."

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[wizardly-weirdo]

I know I don’t have a large following. I know this post will get lost in the sea of other posts. I know I don’t come on here often, and when I do I try to keep my page free from death and other serious topics. Yet, I think this is imperative to say, especially since I myself am of indigenous descent. I ask all of you to join me in solidarity.

Cole Brings Plenty, actor, model, and most importantly activist was found dead. He was assaulted in a club in Lawrence, Kansas. He was killed and his braids; a symbol of his heritage, of his Lakota decent, and a sacred symbol across many an indigenous nation, were forcibly cut.

I beg of thee and I plead with thee, spread the word. Do your part, however big or little, to bring light to this situation. Whether it be by reblogging this post or others alike, or by going out and making a stand. Do it.

Shed light on the situation. This goes beyond the death of one man. It is about the abuse and the destruction of natives and their communities. Of the killing of many an innocent soul. Of the brutalization of many First Nations.

We have seen time and time again, many indigenous people die by similar means. We need to bring light on the deaths of any and all indigenous individuals dead, missing or at risk. It is an epidemic, an assault, and a silent cleansing of many a nation.

Whether it be the estimated 6,000 dead at the hands of Canadian residential schools, the murdered and missing indigenous women and children, or the killing of an actor and activist, you cannot deny the sheer abhorrence of this problem. The problem of many Native American people dying, going missing and being abused, at an alarming rate. At a level unprecedented and unparalleled, at a level of which should not be kept silent.

Cole Brings Plenty, actor, model, activist.

Look at him and spread awareness for him and for many others befallen by the same fate.

Remember him. Remember all of the others. Let nobody else befall the same fate again.

[godbirdart]

content warning: residential schools //

as Orange Shirt Day / The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation nears [September 30] I want to give a bit of context to those internationally who might not know that this day is.

Orange Shirt Day was started by Phyllis Webstad and others in 2013. This is a day to reflect and promote reconciliation, as well as uplift and support the victims and communities impacted by the Canadian residential school system. This is also the origin of the Every Child Matters movement.

The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, as it's known by the Canadian government, was only formed as an official national day in 2021 after 200 unmarked graves were discovered on the property of the former Kamloops indian residential school that same year. Currently there are estimated thousands of graves on residential school properties; many of which have not been properly addressed.

Kivalliq Hall was the last residential school in Canada and closed in 1997. This is not some far-off distant history thing, many people alive today were sent to residential schools as children.

If you want to give support, consider donating to the Indian Residential Schools Survivor Society, or Orange Shirt Day. The IRSSS does fantastic work, offering counselling and numerous support lines - including one for 24/7 crisis support. I'd also like to mention Reconciliation Canada, as they also do good work.

This is a small personal anecdote here, but I'd like to recommend checking out Indian Horse; a novel by the late Richard Wagamese that follows the life of a boy going through the residential school system. There is also a film adaptation by the same name. This book [and its film] offers valuable education on the dark history that is residential schools.

I'm always happy to have additional links and educational material added to my posts, so please do not hesitate to add onto this. thank you.

[shu-of-the-wind]

GUYS THIS IS....SO FUCKING IMPORTANT

this is so...it's so overdue but the amount of IMPACT this would have i am so,,,i am weeping at this. deb haaland the work that you're doing is incredible and you've been my hero for years but my GOD i would die for you

$23 BILLION YOU GUYS. DO YOU KNOW THE CHANGE THAT WOULD MAKE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT COULD DO FOR PEOPLE

THIS WOULD CHANGE THE WHOLE FUCKING GAME HOLY SHIT

[bossymarmalade]

CBC video: Stolen Children | Residential School Survivors Speak Out

Since their first arrival in the “new world” of North America, a number of religious entities began the project of converting Indigenous Peoples to Christianity. This undertaking grew in structure and purpose, especially between 1831 and 1969, when the governing officials of early Canada joined with Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, United, and Presbyterian churches to create and operate the residential school system. The last federally-run residential school, Gordon Indian residential School in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. One common objective defined this period: the aggressive assimilation of Aboriginal peoples.

[ legacy of hope ]

[folk-enjoyer]

Song of the Day

"Call of the moose" Willy Mitchell, 1980 As you might know, September 30th is Truth and Reconciliation day (more commonly known as Orange Shirt Day), a national day in Canada dedicated to spreading awareness about the legacy of Residential schools on Indigenous people. Instead of just focusing on a song, I also wanted to briefly talk about the history of the sixties scoop and its influence on Indigenous American music and activism.

The process of Residential schooling in Canada existed well before the '60s, but the new processes of the sixties scoop began in 1951. It was a process where the provincial government had the power to take Indigenous children from their homes and communities and put them into the child welfare system. Despite the closing of residential schools, more and more children were being taken away from their families and adopted into middle-class white ones.

Even though Indigenous communities only made up a tiny portion of the total population, 40-70% of the children in these programs would be Aboriginal. In total, 20,000 children would be victims of these policies through the 60s and 70s.

These adoptions would have disastrous effects on their victims. Not only were sexual and physical abuse common problems but the victims were forcibly stripped of their culture and taught to hate themselves. The community panel report on the sixties scoop writes:

"The homes in which our children are placed ranged from those of caring, well-intentioned individuals, to places of slave labour and physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The violent effects of the most negative of these homes are tragic for its victims. Even the best of these homes are not healthy places for our children. Anglo-Canadian foster parents are not culturally equipped to create an environment in which a positive Aboriginal self-image can develop. In many cases, our children are taught to demean those things about themselves that are Aboriginal. Meanwhile, they are expected to emulate normal child development by imitating the role model behavior of their Anglo-Canadian foster or adoptive parents."

and to this day indigenous children in Canada are still disproportionately represented in foster care. Despite being 5% of the Total Canadian population, Indigenous children make up 53.8% of all children in foster care.

I would like to say that the one good thing that came out of this gruesome and horrible practice of state-sponsored child relocation was that there was a birth of culture from protest music, but there wasn't. In fact, Indigenous music has a long history of being erased and whitewashed from folk history.

From Buffy Saint-Marie pretending to be Indigenous to the systematic denial of first nations people from the Canadian mainstream music scene, the talented artists of the time were forcibly erased.

Which is why this album featuring Willy Mitchell is so important.

Willy Mitchell and The Desert River Band

This Album was compiled of incredibly rare, unheard folk and rock music of North American indigenous music in the 60s-80s. It is truly, a of a kind historical artifact and a testimony to the importance of archival work to combat cultural genocide. Please give the entire thing a listen if you have time. Call of the Moose is my favorite song on the album, written and performed by Willy Mitchell in the 80s. His Most interesting song might be 'Big Policeman' though, written about his experience of getting shot in the head by the police. He talks about it here:

"He comes there and as soon as I took off running, he had my two friends right there — he could have taken them. They stopped right there on the sidewalk. They watched him shootin’ at me. He missed me twice, and when I got to the tree line, he was on the edge of the road, at the snow bank. That’s where he fell, and the gun went off. But that was it — he took the gun out. He should never have taken that gun out. I spoke to many policemen. And judges, too. I spoke with lawyers about that. They all agreed. He wasn’t supposed to touch that gun. So why did I only get five hundred dollars for that? "

These problems talked about here, forced displacement, cultural assimilation, police violence, child exploitation, and erasure of these crimes, still exist in Canada. And so long as they still exist, it is imperative to keep talking about them. Never let the settler colonial government have peace; never let anyone be comfortable not remembering the depth of exploitation.

Every Child Matters

[olowan-waphiya]

What is NIBSDA?

NIBSDA was conceptualized to serve as a national digital platform and digital repository for boarding school archival collections throughout the United States. As part of truth-telling, access to boarding school records for survivors and descendants is paramount to understanding this history and its consequences on Tribal Nations. Through cultivating historical insights, NIBSDA supports community-led healing initiatives throughout American Indian and Alaska Native Nations towards restored Indigenous cultural sovereignty.

⚠ In negotiating these pursuits, you may encounter content that can trigger secondary trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); we encourage individuals to prepare themselves prior to engaging with these collections and to seek counseling or healing if you experience any stress related to boarding school history.   Indigenous peoples are warned that NIBSDA may lead to other external resources that contain images, names, and references to deceased persons. For more information, please see Content Warning. ⚠

[jackalopepaperstudio]

In honour of the lost lives and innocence taken too soon.

[lobotomologist]

watching the finale of under the bridge and god. cam's confrontation of her dad over the adoption papers is heartbreaking. not just the realization that her whole life, her birth family was a short distance away - but her final statement. "but maybe i was meant to be something different."

god that cuts me so deep.

for those interested in reading more, AIM (adopt indian metis) was a real organization and took part in what's called the sixties scoop in canada, which was a mass effort to remove indigenous children from their families and be placed with white adoptive parents, effectively severing the ties of the children to their culture. cam's statement really gets at the heart of the way this robbed those children of any agency in their identity, any choice of it.

i suppose this is my soapbox moment as a canadian to say that canadian history is fucked and rife with racism. since the start, it has been an unceasing effort to eradicate the indigenous peoples from this land. there are those who have experienced this first hand in residential schools and forced adoptions. i am not one of them, but even the barest part of it that i, as a white canadian, can comprehend makes me genuinely sick to my stomach.

we talk constantly about raising awareness about the cultural (and literal) genocide of indigenous people in canada, but we get so detatched from it, viewing it as so far from current day. i hope that if anything, cam's storyline goes to show that it's not far from us - residential schools persisted into the 1980s and indigenous children are still removed from their communities at a disproportionate rate by social services.

there's no eloquent end to this post except to say that cam's story is one of so, so many here in canada.

[alinahdee]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/30/indian-boarding-schools/

For those who can't read the small texts, every purple dot you see on this map of the United States is a residential school that the U.S. Department of the Interior recognized. There are 408 of them.

The black dots are 115 MORE schools that the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition recognizes with their new criteria.

[floof-ghostie]

White folk complaining about immigrants being lazy/sexual predators is actually insane considering that their ancestors moved to a whole new continent for a "better life", and then proceeded to forcibly bring people over to said continent in order to enslave them to do the manual labour that they didn't want to do. All while kicking the indigenous people off of their land, and setting up systems where indigenous + black people were stripped of their culture and abused (physically, sexually, etc) of which we are still feeling the ramifications of today.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Department of Justice has asked an Ontario court to condemn allegations that Canada intentionally withheld evidence of serial child abuse at a residential school to deny survivors justice. The federal government contends there's no evidence Canada acted in bad faith when it failed to disclose thousands of records detailing physical and sexual abuse at St. Anne's Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont., for compensation hearings held between 2006 and 2014. "Some sort of explicit condemnation from the court is necessary regarding these allegations," Justice Canada lawyer Daniel Engel told Ontario Superior Court in Toronto on Thursday.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[where-our-stories-start]

So, this song I’m about to sing you, it fits appropriately enough on the circle of violence in this album, and it just, it’s like a poem set to music that I suppose tries to credit the experience of going to different parts of the world that have indigenous names, so Apalachicola, Hushpuckena, places in Australia that we would visit, and then I would ask locals, “What does this place name mean?” and no one being able to tell me what it meant. And it just, I suppose, credits that experience. And recognizing as an Irish person, that although there’s many place names, there’s a great written history in Ireland, and we’re very fortunate that we can still learn much of the language and it’s very accessible to us, the place names and their meaning is very accessible to us, and that is not always the case everywhere you go in the world. (x)

[godbirdart]

ORANGE SHIRT DAY / NATIONAL DAY FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION ◦ SEPTEMBER 30 2024

Took a moment to make a quick easy-to-share graphic about Orange Shirt Day. Note: this covers only a few barest of basic facts. Please utilize the sources and additional reading. Links have been added here for ease:

Sources: orangeshirtday.org ◦ nctr.ca ◦ reconciliationeducation.ca Additional Reading & Support: whose.land ◦ native-land.ca ◦ irsss.ca ◦ reconciliationcanada.ca ◦ rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca ◦ andyeverson.com National Crisis Line (IRSSS): 1 (866) 925-4419

Information can update over time. Always be certain to double-check information, especially if you are viewing this graphic years after it was posted.

[nofatclips]

In the Beginning Was Water and Sky, a short film by Ryan Ward

[bossymarmalade]

- september 30th, national day for truth and reconciliation -

Survivors experienced horrific atrocities while prisoners in these institutions. It is important that this image show the love and strength that colonialism tried to steal from us. Despite genocide, we are still here – still fighting for justice and restitution, as true Warriors. - Dorene Bernard, Mi’kmaq Survivor who attended Shubenacadie Residential School