allthecanadianpolitics:

The recovery of mass and unmarked graves at former Indian residential school sites in recent weeks has released a deluge of outrage and grief across the settler colony known as Canada. Horrifying truths are being unearthed that reveal the treachery by which Canadian governments, churches and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) originally stole — and continue to steal — Indigenous lands. I say recoveries because these are not new discoveries; this particular form of genocide unleashed against Indigenous children has been aggressively instituted and actively concealed by Canadian governments, churches and the RCMP since 1831, when the first residential school was established in Brantford, Ontario. Genocide here is defined both as murders of children and criminal acts of negligence and mistreatment that caused deaths that could have been prevented if authorities had acted on the concerns that were repeatedly brought to government. The high death rates, inhospitable conditions and preventable causes of death were known.

“It was not secret, even beyond the stories from survivors and all we heard during the [Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)],” states Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson, referring to a national commission that took place in 2008, in a recent social media post. “[It was k]nown by the government, known by the churches, and to some degree known by the Canadian public. We cannot pretend this is a revelation — that would also be hiding the truth. This is a reckoning of generations of criminal wrongdoing and widespread complicity in this brutal system.”

None of what I say here is “news”; rather, it is the culmination of urgent messages that Indigenous peoples have been shouting for years, across the country and the globe, in myriad ways, in perpetuity.

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“I feel like a lot of people are still missing the mark despite being sympathetic and supportive of the babies being recovered,” writes Nehiyaw activist Desiree Raton Laveur. “A lot of folks still have this notion that these are ancient crimes that have long passed…. There are thousands who perished and need to be sent home and grieved, yeah. But there are thousands more who lived through the nightmare and are actively and endlessly villainized for it every day of their lives. You’re sad for those who were buried nameless, yet you want the survivors pushed out of your sight in the exact same way,” she says.

“If you want to honor the babies who never made it home, support the ones who did.”

(via pinehutch)