Tag Archives: genocide

Last week, news broke at the other end of the country that would bring painful memories back.On May 27, a statement shocked Canadian society when 215 children’s remains, including a 3-year-old infant, were found on the Residential School site in Kamloops, BC. The Residential School is a boarding school founded for white cultural assimilation of First Nation children.
The Residential School, which reminds Koreans of the Japanese colonial era years, began in 1876 and closed its last school in 1996. Most residential schools were run by Protestants, Anglicans, and Roman Catholic churches, and continued violence and terrible abuse were committed to exterminating First Nation culture. The Canadian government first apologized on June 11, 2008, for “pardoning the suffering of separating First Nation children from their parents and forcing them into church boarding schools, disconnecting them from their traditions,” while Trudeau officially apologized on November 24, 2017, for the government-led policy of discrimination, abuse and cultural extermination. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission defined the Residential School as cultural genocide, and the school taught the history of First Nation oppression and tried not to forget the wrong past. I am speechless in the face of barbarism committed in the name of “difference”. This tragic history is so familiar to me as a Korean because of the modern and contemporary history of a tragedy such as colonial ruling, the Korean War, the pain of division, and military dictatorship.

What is worse than yesterday’s mistake is today’s me, who do not reflect on myself. I want to emulate the attitude of Canadians who bravely apologize and reflect on the history of disgrace.