The complete truth, before reconciliation.
Gratitude time! This month we’d like to offer the chi-est of miigweches to Amanda, Robert, Gabriel, Jennifer, Alicia, Kevin, Mme Horrell, and Kelvin for signing up as paid subscribers! Amanda who signed up on Patreon, and one time gifts from Amanda, Catherine,Wilamina and Kevin. A special shoutout to
Steve Sloane
the last Residential School (Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut) shut down the same year Titanic hit theatres. That means the government continued to commit genocide in front of our eyes for more than a decade after we had access to cellphones and the internet.
1997 wasn’t that long ago—a mere 28 years—but the language colonial institutions employ to refer to Residential Schools does a great job of making you think otherwise. For the fifth annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day), we will once again be invited to reflect on the history of Residential Schools and the harm they had on survivors and their kin. My emphasis is meant to underscore the tense in which the state would prefer you engage with the idea of Residential Schools: the past. Why is that? Because the further away it feels from the present, the less this current chapter of white supremacy has to atone for. Controlling the language of reconciliation allows the state to set the terms for reconciliation—which ultimately means avoiding any real accountability. Make no mistake; it’s an intentional tactic that relegates Canada’s genocide of Indigenous Peoples to a fever dream rather than the ongoing reality that it is.