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My favourite subject in school was gym.
When I walked down the hallway at Kameyosek Elementary School, I walked past charcoal sketches of Indigenous leaders. Old-wrinkly-wise-haunting faces with eyes that looked into my soul. All the way to the gym.
There was one Indigenous girl in my class, that I know of.
She wouldn’t speak.
Our teacher yelled at her. Threw bits of chalk and erasers at her. But she wouldn’t speak.
In our school library, I read a picture book that told the story of buffalo on the prairies. There were so many that the Indigenous hunters would herd them over cliffs. Until the settlers, travelling across the prairies on slow moving trains, began shooting the buffalo for sport. For entertainment.
Then there weren’t enough Buffalo left for the Indigenous people.
When I was in junior high school, at Williams Parkway in Brampton, Ontario, I played on the school basketball team. Our coaches taught us fair play. Respect. We accepted our defeats. We were humble when we won. When we outmatched our opponents, we did not run up the score.
At our end-of year tournament, we played against the other schools that we had played during the regular season. But there was a new school. Our coaches didn’t want them there. They came from far away where they didn’t have other schools to compete with. This was their only competition of the year. They were Indigenous.
Our coaches encouraged us to play hard and run up the score until they were defeated 62-2. My coaches were pissed when the other team got those two points. It was my mistake.
When I was in high school I did a research project about the North American Indian Act. It was so awful. It is so awful. But it was an independent project. None of my classmates learned about the racism and sexism built into this document.
My classmates didn’t read the stories of Indigenous women, victims of sexual assault, brought to court in handcuffs in the same van with the perpetrator who assaulted her. Because she was afraid to testify. So they arrested her, handcuffed her and forcibly brought her to court. This wasn’t a ‘chapter in our history’. This was current.
I read about children suffering, alcoholism, drug abuse, no employment, no opportunities, no clean water, hopelessness.
But where was this happening? How could this be my country? I have lived in 6 provinces and travelled across the country many times. How could this suffering be happening completely out of my sight?
I have heard many non-Indigenous Canadians spew ignorance. Judgment. Hate. Lack of compassion. Lack of understanding. Lack of respect. Without any research, without knowing any Indigenous people, these settlers have all the answers. And it’s always the fault of the Indigenous people. Why don’t they just get over it?
When I finished university, I was looking to travel, earn some money. I thought about teaching English overseas.
My dad said, why not go north? I said, I am not qualified. I don’t have an Education degree, just a Bachelor of Arts. I can’t be a teacher in Canada without an Education degree.
He said, yes, you can. They can’t fill positions. It’s difficult to get trained teachers to go to some of these northern communities. They will accept you.
He was right.
I was hired to be a gym teacher in Brochet, Manitoba, serving Indigenous youth living in the village of Brochet and the Indigenous youth living in Barren Lands First Nation.
I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I took a commercial plane, a bus, a taxi, a shuttle, and a small twin engine plane.
I travelled to a community on the shore of Reindeer Lake, surrounded by a million lakes, a million Islands and a handful of Indigenous communities. None accessible by road.
I learned that my ignorance was deeper than I had realized.
I learned about living.
I learned about resilience.
I learned that Canada is not what we say it is.
Canada is not what I was taught it is.
Non-Indigenous Canadians have been nudged from our slumber with the discovery of the remains of 215 previously unidentified children.
We are saddened. We are shocked. We are appalled.
But have we changed? Non-Indigenous Canadians are guilty bystanders of the Residential School System.
Guilty.
We are guilty now because we know that many Indigenous communities still don’t have clean drinking water.
We are guilty now because some Indigenous communities experience shocking rates of suicide that force communities to declare a state of emergency. It happens regularly. Communities with less than 1000 people experiencing 5 suicide attempts per day.
We are guilty.
AND, we are still allowing abuse to be a reality for children.
We know that 34% of children in Canada will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18. We also know that the risk is much, much higher for Indigenous youth.
The abuse that was tolerated in the Residential School system lingers on in the fabric of our culture. We must actively purge it from our society.
The suffering at Residential Schools did not disappear because non-Indigenous people refused to acknowledge what was happening.
The sadness we feel now, when we can no longer deny the truth, does not make the suffering disappear.
We must agree to protect children.
In my non-Indigenous community, children are trafficked and sexually abused. My neighbours turn away from the issue. Our schools do not take steps to protect children. We remain in denial.
I have seen many people sharing resources, books and films to help non-Indigenous Canadians to better understand the impact of the Residential School System. It is encouraging.
I have started to watch Indigenous-made films nightly. I want to hear more. I want to learn more.
I also know that change starts from within.
If my community is going to have a role to play in reconciliation, then we had better get our own shit together and start taking care of our children.
Because we have nothing to offer another group of people so long as we continue to neglect and abuse the children closest to us.
Helping others starts with helping ourselves. You can begin by acknowledging that you have a role in keeping children safe. And the children closest to you (emotionally and geographically) are at significant risk of being sexually abused.
Please help us end child sexual abuse for all children in Canada.
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