#indigenous child graves

[zo1nkss]

I have GOT to stop making 3 second stops on twitter rn, the amount of "wHaT iF tHeY dId ThIs To AmErIcA" posts from ppl literally living working thriving over the graves of my ancestors is driving me fucking insane and I'm going to start getting in serious fights with strangers over it.

[reality-detective]

The Vatican: Human Trafficking Hub

The Vatican Underground- Cleared

The Dulce Base- Underground Cleared

The Area 51 Underground Base- Cleared

Orion Group ❌ (Defeated)

Ciakharr Group ❌ (Defeated)

Killy Tokurt Group ❌ (Defeated)

These are the three main factions responsible for the

The CIA is connected to the Killy Tokurt Ops. They are the one who specialize in soul scalping. This is how our government leaders were replaced. Removing the light body & soul and replacing it with a physical vessel void of any connection to source.

Sherry Shriner covered this in many videos/audios. Megan Rose spoke about this in one of her books. Corey Goode is also another source who spoke on the caste system of the Ciakharr who are the top elite in their race.

Remember when I mentioned that people were not ready once they found out who have been eating the children? Guess what was the capitol for the "Child Sex Trafficking" breeding hub?

The Vatican.

Do you remember the story or report that came out in July of 2019 where thousands of bones was unearthed in two ossuaries discovered in the Vatican City, as part of an ongoing search for clues into the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl more than three decades ago in 1983?

Do you remember the mass grave full of baby bones found along the shores of Israel's Mediterranean coast, in the ancient seaport of Ashkelon in 2014?

Do you remember An Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan?

As a matter of fact that was a 2,300 page document that leaked that verified Pope Francis’ cover up of a Vatican Pedophile Ring. Did you know 20 Chilean Priests who went public on their connection to that very same Pedophile Ring, were killed in a plane crash right after their meeting with Pope Francis?

Back on July 20 2014 the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels found defendants Pope Francis Bergoglio, Catholic Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Pachon and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby guilty of rape, torture, murder and the trafficking of children. (Nothing Is Happening?)

I highly doubt it.

Two adolescent women told the ICLCJ Court that Pope Francis raped them while participating in child sacrifices during the Springs of 2009 and 2010 in rural Holland and Belgium. According to a former employee of the Curia in Rome, rapes and murders of children also took place at the Carnarvon Castle in Wales and an undisclosed French Chateau.

A Prosecutor introduced notarized affidavits by eight others claiming to witness these same crimes organized by the Vatican. Another witness testified that they were present during meetings with the then Argentine priest and Bishop Francis and the military Junta during Argentine’s 1970′s Dirty War.

According to the witness, Francis helped traffic 30,000 children of missing political prisoners into the Vatican Pedophile Ring.

Do you know why this has taken so long? If you knew how vast these underground tunnels are you would understand why certain EOs signed by D. Trump kept getting extensions.

The Military at some point will disclose the battles that went underground.

The weapons used.

The strategies used.

The entries/exits used.

The medical technology used.

The portals/gateways that were used.

You got a glimpse of this during the fight that went on underground with the Phil Schneider lectures that still can be found on YouTube about the Dulce extraterrestrial confrontation that resulted in lives being lost and him being scarred from it.

People are only looking at the human aspect of this process. They are not looking at this as governments officials serving a unknown species that want world dominion who is an entire different secret government whose base are in these DUMBS-(Deep Underground Military Bases) who control all of our 3 letter agencies who are middlemen/conduits who these covert species use to control Washington. 🤔

Julian Assange

[notchainedtotrauma]

they had always been here. every indigenous community massacred, every single prophet assassinated, every child sacrificed to colonialism, every slave rebel shackled in their grave, every unassigned body piled as refuse somewhere, had never disappeared. whatever part they burned into air, whatever part they buried underground, whatever part they threw in the sea, came whole again in every breathing growing thing, and when the warning time came they were all of them (all of them) screaming.

from M. Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

[shadowkoo]

Every Child Matters

I try to share a similar post each year with the purpose of educating those who may not know about Canadian & American indigenous peoples and the struggles we have gone through generationally. But honestly, this year I am pissed off so my tone in some areas may read as such. I will not apologize for that.

I am angry that so many people don't know (not your fault, it's the media's fault and their lack of coverage up until recent years). I am angry at both countries' leaders for doing the bare minimum for many years. And I am angry that so much of my ancestor's history was removed and altered from the truth for centuries.

However, I am glad that with each passing year, more people are learning, and I truly appreciate those who care enough to show their support.

With that said, please mark your calendars and wear orange on September 30th! This is your official reminder! Please continue reading and consider sharing this post so more people are aware 🧡

September 30th is known as Orange Shirt Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, across Canada and North America in remembrance of those who suffered in US/Canadian Indian Residential Schools. We recognize the harm done to generations of children by the Indian Residential Schools and share our collective histories as an affirmation of our commitment to ensure that Every Child Matters! 

Remembering the 150,000+ Indigenous children who endured physical, mental, and sexual abuse at these residential schools; trauma that continues to be felt to this very day by survivors and their families.

Children were stolen around this time of year to attend these ‘schools’. Parents who fought to keep their kids would often be arrested and/or beaten, it was nearly impossible for them to keep their children once the police and school officials showed up to take them. And even once the school season was over, they were not returned to their families.

We knew many children had likely suffered and died from the abuse, but could have never guessed the atrocious number of remains that we are now finding.

As of May 2022, The remains of over 6,000 children have been recovered from unmarked graves at the locations of these former residential schools within Canada, and 500 have been discovered at 19 schools in the US. However, the Interior Department said that number could climb to the thousands or even tens of thousands.

For reference to help you digest how large the numbers will become when all schools have been properly investigated, there were approximately 139 schools in Canada and so far only (as of May 2022) 36 investigations have been completed in Canada. The US has identified more than 400 schools that were highly supported by the U.S. government during their operations, and more than 50 associated burial sites, a figure that could grow exponentially as research continues.

This wasn’t as long ago as you might think. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1998, only twenty-five years ago. As of 2020, 7 off-reservation boarding schools continue to be federally funded.

“Kill the Indian, Save the man” was a common phrase in these schools. Being Indians was savage, but we were ‘savable’ in the eyes of their Christian / Catholic God if we were stripped of the things that made us indigenous.

I am lucky enough to know survivors. I am alive because of survivors.

Survivors taught us younger generations about the horrors they dealt with in residential schools. Beaten, tortured, murdered. Watching other children die from diseases grown in their unclean living situations. ‘Forgetting’ what tribe a child is from and giving them to another reservation to care for until the following year when they’d be taken away again. Raped girls who survived traumatic births at a young age only for their babies to be thrown in the furnace. Sterilizing boys and girls so that if they were released they couldn’t create any more ‘indians’.

These children were ripped from their homes, watched their parents die if they fought to keep their children, were forced to cut their hair (our hair is as sacred as our traditional clothing), and beaten if caught speaking in their native languages. As a 'reward' for good behavior in school, certain children were sent away to live with white families as slaves to 'learn the white way' during long breaks between school periods. 

Keep the families of those who lost loved ones who never returned and the survivors who lived through unimaginable trauma in your hearts. On September 30th wear orange. Join a protest. Support indigenous peoples every day, but especially on September 30th (National Day for Truth and Reconciliation), June 21st (Canadian National Indigenous Peoples Day), and October 8th (American Indigenous Peoples Day). Share our stories. Educate yourself on our history, not the false history written in books by white men, churches, and governments that supported and endorsed these institutions.

Because Every Child Matters.

Resources where you can learn more:

Orange Shirt Society

CBC News - scroll to find the map

NPR

CBS News

CNN News

The Indigenous Foundation

[missbolt]

This is all so horrific. The number of native children who were killed and the brutality of the Canadian residential school system in general is hard to comprehend. The points about how the effects are still lasting and how violence is still inflicted on indigenous people are important ones.

On the point about residential school systems in different places: though I don't think as many children died here, and the systems seem to have differed in several respects, residential schools were used to assimilate indigenous Sámi children in Norway too (as well as in the rest of the Sámi lands in Sweden, Finland, and Russia). Speaking Sámi languages was generally forbidden in these schools. Many children were abused. The residential schools created a lot of suffering and trauma here as well.

Though the details differ from place to place, the methods used for colonising and assimilating indigenous peoples across the globe are really strikingly similar.

Hey remember when they found over 200 bodies of native children buried behind a residential school and the world cared for... what, a week?

They've counted about 6,000-7,000 now, for those of you who do still care

[spot-the-antisemitism]

More on the Israeli Miku making people mad series: what is this mental gymnastics??

surface-concept made a post basically like "why are you mad at Israeli Miku if you're fine with Russian, Chinese, USA, etc. miku"

I just... BITCH USA AMERICAN CULTURE WOULDN'T EXIST.WITHOUT THE GENOCIDE OR DISPLACEMENT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

Same with countries like australia, new zealand, canada, literally every other country in America, idk Taiwan?

"oh it just comes down to feelings" that sounds like a you problem buddy!

"i cannot think of Israel without thinking of Palestinians suffering" idk like that's your prerogative but apparently you can think of the usa without thinking of indigenous peoples' suffering, and canada, and australia, and new zealand, and russia, and you can think of turkey without thinking of the armenian, assyrian and greek genocides, and of Afghanistan without thinking of the genocide of hazara people, and of Myanmar without thinking of the genocide of Rohingya people, and of Indonesia without thinking of the suffering of people in West Papua and of the genocide in East Timor, and of Portugal Spain France Belgium the UK etc without thinking of colonialism and genocide of indigenous people, and of Germany without thinking of the fucking Holocaust. So maybe ask yourself why Israel is such an exception for you!

Like "celebration of Israel is like dancing on Palestinian graves" the genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil is ONGOING and no one is going around saying brazilian Miku THE ORIGINAL is "dancing on indigenous peoples graves", like what the fuck. Do you HEAR yourselves

Sorry for ranting. Why are people 🤦‍♀️

Someone wants to genocide Jews in their homes and steal their stuff but also think Indigenous people want to do it to them and lies awake hating Jews and fearing Indigenous people

The thing about white people in south africa is they stayed there, the native africans didn't rape and genocide them and take their stuff like you want to do to Jews

and buddy you are the people torturing the child in the basement to get more utopia out of their suffering not the one who walks away you media illiterate fuck

[jewishbarbies]

of course, being a child, you believe your parents when they tell you things like the republicans aren’t racist and why wouldn’t you? dad has black friends and you don’t know what racism is or what it feels like. they tell you being gay is new and it’s a sin but we’re such good people that we don’t care as long they don’t act like they’re gay around us. and it’s easy to believe when your parents have such fun stories with openly gay friends and you don’t know what homophobia feels like.

then you grow up.

you’re allowed to see a bit more of the world and other republicans don’t look like mom and dad. other republicans are mad they can’t say the N word, hate the idea of a black president because to them black means incompetent, and they vote against gay marriage. they hate mexicans and say indigenous people should’ve fought harder and believe muslims are all terrorists. mom and dad never said that.

then you start to see your parents a little differently. you realize that your mom has such a visceral reaction to gay people on tv not because it’s a sin, but because they’re gay and she’s homophobic irregardless of your religion. you ask her and she says she wouldn’t like it even if god himself came down and said it was okay. your dad starts being more open with you about the things he texts his co workers because he think you’ll laugh, but every mean and crude joke is soaked in obvious racism. he makes comments a lot about black people being entitled when someone mentions equal rights and complains mexicans stole his job because he didn’t qualify for a job he wasn’t owed.

for once in your life you actually get to talk to people of color and the queer community and even get to know your own as a jew. and you don’t understand. you can’t understand why your parents are scared of them and why your mom hates who you are and your dad belittles people of your faith. nothing makes sense. who are these people? are these really the people that raised you? how could they lie to your face while also telling you the truth?

and it hurts. your bones ache and you can’t breathe and you just wanna go home, but you are home. you are home, they raised you, and this is your life now. you know now republicans are not good people and your parents are republicans. and if they knew who you were, they would hate you, too. you know it’ll feel better someday, you like knowing you’re a better person now. but your parents are dead and no one ever taught you how to dig a grave.

[hussyknee]

Will white queers please come and get their people

The staggering half-wittedness of this logic aside, ALL OF THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING YOU IGNORANT FUCKS PEOPLE ARE GETTING FIRED REPORTED AND DOXXED RIGHT AND LEFT.

I cannot tell you of the depth of my sheer, utter loathing for these craven, snivelling, ghouls. The last fucker doing this with both the trans flag and Palestine flag in their bio is the final insult. There has been a barrage of these posts by white queers both here and on twitter in tandem with the escalation of Israeli bombings, and some of the responses have been in the vein of "yes we know, but now is not the time". As if it that makes it any less repugnant or your hands any less stained in blood.

After three fucking weeks, the Rafah border has been opened for all of 500 people, most foreigners and dual citizens and a handful of gravely injured Palestinians. Instead of calling for a ceasefire, this demon wants brownie points for letting them leave and leaving the other two million people with a few trucks of """"aid""". So they can patch themselves up before getting blown to pieces. And repeatedly, repeatedly, liberals want us to acknowledge this as the "good" we will lose if Trump comes to power.

This grief is fathomless, depthless, unbearable. Anyone who does this is the same as fascist appeasers and collaborationists. Kids in cages? You don't care about kids being massacred!White queers will literally lick the boots of genociders and child-murderers. You would have sold Jews out to the Nazis, the African slaves back to the slavers, the Civil Rights Movement to the segregationists, the Indigenous tribes to the scalpers and their children to the residential schools.

If you are our allies please shut these scumbuckets down. Otherwise, don't worry, I'm sure the Democrats are gearing up to be the same kind of defenders to you that they've been to Muslims, Latin immigrants and the Black community. Genocide will definitely feel better if you've chosen who gets to do it to you.

[thepersonperson]

I don’t think you can isolate the kanji 夫 the way you can with 厨 in mizushi. In English, it would be as if we were to interpret the word “salesman” to carry a secondary meaning of “sales husband” or “sales lover” because the word “man” in English can also mean husband or lover in isolation, per Merriam Webster. Like that’s just not how a native speaker would interpret those words or construct a pun. I think Gege uses bonpu because it’s a specific Buddhist term, like Sukuna’s not only calling Gojo mid in a general sense, but also specifically a person who has not achieved spiritual awakening.

Prev Related Ask

Oho! But why not anon? Why shouldn’t I isolate the 夫 in 凡夫? Wordplay is a very flexible thing across all languages.

In English you give me the example of “salesman” -> “salelover”. And I don’t think that’s quite right. What’s going on here is much more like “red rum”=“murder” from The Shining.

(Spoilers below the cut.)

A native English speaker coming across "red rum" in isolation would not think to combine the two words and read it backwards. The context of The Shining is what makes us realize there’s more to it than “red” and “rum”. Upon reflection (in the mirror) the “red rum” becomes “murder”.

This doesn’t mean the “red rum” is only “murder”. The clever thing about this wordplay is that both readings represent something in the story.

The Shining is about an alcoholic man, Jack, losing his mind while isolated at a decaying hotel for work and trying to kill his family. It's his son that starts saying "red rum" early on in the story. (The hotel is also haunted because it’s built over the graves of murdered indigenous people and there's other supernatural stuff going on. I think that’s important to know too.)

Rum, a type of alcoholic drink, is a nod to the root cause of Jack’s problem, the alcoholism. Red is a recourring color in both the book and the movie that seems to represent a lot of things within the narrative. The red on cheeks flushed in drunkness or anger, the blood of those spilled within the hotel’s grounds, a warning sign of danger�� “Being in the red” is also a problem for both Jack and the hotel’s finacial state. (And Jack’s mental state too.)

Murder is the danger Jack poses and the reason the hotel exists in the first place.

It’s also noteworthy that a child (Jack's son), who is probably too young to fully grasp concepts like death at the hands of a caretaker, is trying to communicate this danger in 3-letter words that aren’t understood by the adults around him. He’s also copying or mirroring what something else is telling him.

It’s a warning of what’s to come and why it is happening while reiterating narrative themes, but that requires both readings. There’s not one reading or the other, both are happening at the same time. And the only way we can conclude this is by considering the rest of the story.

And if you want to see really abominable wordplay that just breaks all the rules in Japanese, please read Umineko. It’s spoilers to discuss how insane and niche it is, but it make sense for the story because the characters are unhinged weirdos that enjoy screwing with people in esoteric ways that drive you and the people they’re tormenting crazy. (Those who have read know Exactly what I’m talking about.)

(Very mild Umineko spoilers.) Being able to solve the ridiculous wordplay riddle in Umineko requires that you understand the particular neurosis of the character that created it. This character loves both Japanese and English word games and literature. Even though the riddle is written in Japanese, you use that knowledge of this character’s westaboo tendencies to recognize that some of the kanji are secretly representing English letters. And those kanji have to be isolated and read a different way using hints contained within the riddle. (Aka no native speaker would think this way normally. There’s a good reason this thing didn’t get solved for YEARS. Massive Spoilers for proof of this. Shout out to the one person who managed to do it before the solution was released, well sort of.)

I’m using all these weird examples because this is the particular kind of freak Sukuna is. If it were any other character, it would be reaching. But because he is a literature nerd that bends and breaks the rules as he wants, his Dismantle and its kanji doubling as cutting to understand/solve, and the fight being framed as a date, there is a very real chance he meant the mid husband on top of the ordinary/unenlightened readings (religious connotations too). All these readings are to be taken at the same time because Sukuna truly is [redacted] Umineko.

[heyftinally]

Just saw a literal child on here say "people who support Palestine aren't true Americans".

Good job, you paid 5% attention in 4th grade history - indigenous tribes are the true "Americans", not us. Right idea, wrong application. Let's hold you back a grade and try again.

Bold of you to assume I want to be a "true American". In this country, the people that talk about "true patriotism" are racist, semester, queerphobic pieces of shit. I don't align myself with bigots. So if that makes me "un-American", then fucking good. Fuck this bigot-loving country.

I love having literal children try and shame me for opposing a genocide. Sit down, drink your juice, and watch "skibbidi toilet" or whatever it is. Let this adults defend PEOPLE TRYING TO SURVIVE AN ACTIVE GENOCIDE.

Be thankful it's not your 6yo sibling you have to carry with you in pieces in a ripped grocery bag because you don't have time to stop and even consider giving them a burial, knowing the unmarked graves of your parents are piles of rubble hundreds of miles away.

[sarkos]

To this day, these churches still draw from the spiritual legacies of Christian missions and receive funding from off-reservation congregations under that definition. Global Ministries of the United Methodist church spent over $11m in 2022 for missionary services. Wels spent $661,018 just for the Apache missions and over $23.5m for all missions, as laid out in its most recent report, from 2023. Wels first came to Arizona in 1892, five years after the Dawes Act. When it was clear that exterminating the Apache people would not be possible, the federal government engaged Christian denominations working with the military to force the assimilation of the Indigenous people. RH Pratt, the superintendent of the first “industrial” boarding school under this policy, coined the term that embodied the philosophy behind these institutions: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” pews and stained glass Federal boarding school policy allowed the military to forcibly remove Apache children from their families and send them to industrial schools in an attempt to militarize and alter their identities. They were forbidden to practice their religion or speak their language, and reports of physical and sexual abuse were common. Many children never returned home. If an Indigenous child was found outside during school hours, Indigenous police were appointed to snatch the child and deliver them to a school under the US military’s jurisdiction. If a parent sought to hide their child, they could be imprisoned or cut off from food and other necessary daily supplies. Apache children were kidnapped and taken as far as Pennsylvania, where they were forced to fully assimilate into Anglo-Christian society. Their clothes were burned, their language forgotten. Many children died of disease, neglect or abuse. And while the number of deaths is not yet known, it is believed that Apache children comprise a quarter of the graves at Carlisle Indian Industrial school. To think that 1800s attitudes towards Apache children have changed would be a mistake. Outside of the Wels mission, volunteers of other denominations drive around in colorful buses and still pick children up throughout the reservation, whether on the side of the road or other public areas. They take them to play games and learn about their version of Jesus and then drop the kids off again where they found them hours before. Parents are not always told or asked permission.

They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities | Native Americans | The Guardian

Great-Grandad survived Carlisle. In his words, “It was a hell of a way to meet Jim Thorpe“

All of this is why my reaction to someone telling me they’re Christian is the same as “Would you like to hold this blue-ringed octopus?”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

AP, via The Guardian:

At least 973 Native American children died in the US government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools. The investigation commissioned by the US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 US boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said. Additional children may have died after becoming sick at school and being sent home, officials said. The findings follow a series of listening sessions held throughout the US over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.

“The federal government took deliberate and strategic action through boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American cabinet secretary, said in a Tuesday call with reporters.

“Make no mistake,” she added, “this was a concerted attempt to eradicate the, quote, ‘Indian problem,’ to either assimilate or destroy native peoples all together.” In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s. The schools gave Native American kids English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brick-making and working on the railroad, officials said. Former students shared tearful recollections of their experience during listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They talked about being punished for speaking their native language, getting locked in basements, and having their hair cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and withholding of food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects.

At least 973 Native American children died in forced assimilation boarding schools for indigenous peoples, per an inquiry by Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland.

[aisling-saoirse]

Carlisle Indian School Cemetery, Pennsylvania

Hey Everyone, Today I went to the infamous residential boarding school cemetery with my Shawnee coworker, I'm not native myself but wanted to look for record of my grandfather's former neighbor there.

The cemetery is located on an Army Facility, you have to get an ID and background check before going on. The complex history of the site is mostly erased but there are still some portions where you find relics of this memory. Of these Jim Thorpe's name (famous indigenous athlete) is plastered everywhere but whispers from the servicemen about ghost stories and rumors of unknown bodies being burned in the (former hospital) hotel's boiler room were told to us. We kind of found this a bit offensive honestly but most people we encountered were very happy we were researching the site.

The hardest part was honestly visiting the graves, there were 227, I believe more went missing. Some students had their nations attached to their names others were simply listed as unknown, almost all of them were far from home. Because I am not native I will reserve my emotions about this space, many survivor's families who I've talked to have mixed emotions about what these schools meant (after all Jim thorpe did become a great athlete). however it is very hard to suppress the image of a child stolen from their family brought to (what is explicitly) a military run concentration camp and never being seen by their family again. The violence and acts of genocide commited and continued by the united states in the act white supremacist hegemony are really everywhere. The land does not forget what it holds.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive history post, if you happen to know of an indigenous person who may have attended a residential school or are interested in learning more about them you can search for information on this website: https://nibsda.elevator.umn.edu/page/view/152

[raincitygirl76]

September 30, 2023 marks Canada’s third official National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, as per link at the bottom of this post.

Above are my nieces before school on Sep 29 (the closest school day, as Sep 30 falls on a Saturday this year. Mon, Oct 2 is a statutory holiday in lieu of Truth & Reconciliation Day).

The Every Child Matters shirts I bought them last fall still fit (miraculously, considering how fast they both grow!). I bought them from an indigenous BC artist who was donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each shirt to an indigenous-run non-profit which raises money to lease very expensive ground penetrating radar equipment. Used to find unmarked mass graves on the grounds of former Canadian residential schools, so those children can finally be put to rest with dignity.

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html

[fureverbookworms]

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

Note: I read this book about four months ago and I am writing this based on my brief Storygraph review and what I can recall from it.

This book is a multi-generational saga that follows a man and his son trying to escape the clutches of an Argentinian cult through some of the country’s most tumultuous decades. It has horror elements, but I wouldn’t hold it in the realm of your typical King or Hendrix novels. Rather, it’s more of an overarching gothic, heavy atmosphere that mainly focuses on the horrors of generational trauma, colonialism, and political unrest. There is also just a hearty dose of gruesome body horror and magical realism.

I was enamored with the world building. I wish I could go back and erase the first two thirds from my mind to experience them again. Enriquez does an amazing job nesting this cult and its history within the actual historical atrocities surrounding the characters. Some of the more harrowing parts have some foundations in reality, such as the exploitation of indigenous children by plantation owners and the mass graves of the politically disappeared.

Another key element of this book is Juan and Gaspar’s relationship. Enriquez does not craft a morally perfect father figure in Juan. We are first introduced to this man who is desperately trying to save his young son from the clutches of this cult, Gaspar, but then he later morphs into a man who will do anything to protect Gaspar from his own fate, including being his son’s abuser. I think that swapping from Juan’s point of view to young Gaspar’s point of view at the time she did was a genius move for tension building. The reader has more of an understanding of Juan’s motivations and reasoning for his actions than Gaspar does, but we experience those actions through the lens of his victim. It adds another layer of gut twisting dread to the reader every time the two interact because we simultaneously know that Juan is doing what he sincerely believes is the best thing for his son and we have to watch this man be his son’s monster.

I am deducting just a fraction of points purely because it was so long and the story did seem to get lost in the weeds at times. I wouldn’t gripe about it, but the ending was confusing and a bit lackluster in my opinion. There are so many parts of this book that I remember vividly (such as the AIDs vignette, Juan and Gaspar’s road trip, the World Cup saga, “Haunt me,” the reveal of the children on the plantation, etc) but I cannot for the life of me recall how the main issues of this book were resolved. I do remember being confused and needing to go back a couple of times in an effort to figure out what the hell just happened.

That said, I’d be down for a reread or revisit this via audiobook if I have the time. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to be utterly immersed in the author’s work and read an incredibly heavy, slowly paced epic.

4.5 stars

CW: child abuse, body horror, violence, racism, classism, homophobia, the AIDs crisis, death of a parent, graphic sexual content, gore, torture. (Essentially, if it’s bad, it likely makes an appearance in some form or fashion).

[walrusmagazine]

Where the Children Are Buried

Thousands of Indigenous children died at residential schools across Canada. This is the story of one community’s search for unmarked graves

For decades, Indigenous communities and families had raised the alarm about children who attended residential schools and never came home, but neither the schools nor the government made any systematic effort to record their deaths. Estimates range from several thousand to upward of 25,000 across Canada. Because the Department of Indian Affairs regularly refused to ship bodies home due to the cost, children’s remains were often interred on site or in local graveyards. Those lands were often then sold and leased and disturbed by commercial and agricultural use. “Subjected to institutionalized child neglect in life, they have been dishonoured in death,” noted the TRC, which incorporated the testimonies of nearly 7,000 survivors. Most records that did exist, including cemetery locations, were destroyed or hidden by the federal government and the Catholic Church. (Between 1936 and 1944 alone, the government destroyed upward of fifteen tons of paper.) Often, burial sites are known only through local oral histories—as is the case in Delmas.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Photography by Sara Hylton (sarahylton.com)