I’ll be perfectly honest with you.

I’m not an expert in sociology, psychology, or cultural studies.

I don’t know the half of everything that the residential schools entailed.

I went to the Belkin Art Gallery today by the ocean at UBC to see the exhibit of “Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools”, and I couldn’t speak the entire time.

I knew the residential schools were evil, but I didn’t know they were that evil.

Evil enough to steal children from everything they’d known,

evil enough to steal those children’s innocence and souls and lives,

evil enough to mar their hearts, their bodies, their sense of who they are.

And that evil took place not too long ago, right here. In Canada.

And I can’t shake it, and please don’t think I’m coming from the point of view of a European Canadian who doesn’t really care and is just writing a blog post to look “socially adept.”

Why did we think it was okay for this to happen?
Why did we let it happen?

We are all for buying ethically sourced clothes, and sponsoring third-world children. It is glamorous to go to Africa and build a house for a week. It is glamorous to fill shoeboxes with mittens and non-perishable items every November.

It’s even glamorous to be someone who has suffered anywhere but Canada.

And I’m not discrediting people who have suffered, anywhere, but I am discrediting us.

We raise money for mental health awareness campaigns and “write love on our arms” for the suicidal, and that’s cool, too.

But when people start talking about the Indian Residential schools, where they were stolen from their culture and families and support system and forced to learn English and European and Christian ways, we somehow don’t see it.

We only see their struggles- the alcoholism and drug use that often accompanies suffering. We tailor our mental health programs to white fifteen-year-olds instead, and come up with AA and preach sobriety – not trying to see what has caused the pain these people are dealing with.

I guess these are an awful lot of empty words coming from me, someone who has been so zealous for justice and help outside of Canada, and has forgotten the injustice that took place right under our noses.

The injustice that is taking place under our noses- the funding-cuts from the First Nations mental health programs, the painful process it takes to get compensation for medical help, the attempt of Canada to “pay” the First Nations for what they suffered, as if that will help.

And honestly, I don’t know what to say, or what to do, or what to think, or how to live. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, and I wish so bad that there is. I know all the blog posts in the world can’t change anyone’s thinking and can’t take back the innocence stolen and the lives lost in these horrible, horrible, residential schools.

I’m sorry.