By now, we’ve all heard about the horrific discovery of the remains of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
To say what happened to these children and countless others is sad would be an understatement of magnificent proportions.
What happened to them was pure evil, fueled by hate, intolerance and greed.
Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at my own children and thinking about how hard we are working to make them remember their Punjabi roots:
- We gave them names to reflect their culture.
- They’re enrolled in Punjabi classes.
- We try to speak the language with them as much as we can.
- We took them to Punjab to show them their ancestral village.
- We teach them about their faith and rich history.
We do all of this because we don’t want them to forget who they are. As the children of immigrants, we’re proud of our roots. We honour and respect the trials and tribulations of our parents and our forefathers.
Their sacrifices made us who we are today. For us, it’s important that these stories, these rich histories and traditions be passed on to our next generation and generations to come.
Then I think of the 215 children buried in Kamloops and every other child who was put into a residential school. The authorities at the time did the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do now:
- Their names were taken away.
- They were forced to forget their language.
- Their traditions were ridiculed.
- Their culture was dismissed as primitive and savage.
- They were made to feel shame for being who they were.
All this, and that too on their own land. It’s one thing for us as the children of immigrants trying to hold onto our culture in a new country, but imagine being forced to do so on your own land.
Imagine someone coming to your home and telling you how you live, the way you raise your children, and everything you believe in is inferior and savage.
Then imagine them devising a way to eradicate your rich history by taking control of your children.
Vital Grandin, a Bishop and avid supporter of residential schools stated the following in late 1876, when speaking to the goal of residential schools:
“We instill in them a profound distaste for the native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origin. When they graduate from our institutions, the children have lost everything Native except their blood.”
It’s sickening.
Imagine people like Grandin taking away your children, putting them in “schools” to make them forget everything about themselves. Picture your children receiving beatings, horrific abuse of every sort imaginable and living conditions too deplorable to describe. Imagine their names being taken away.
Imagine them being taught to hate the very blood that flows in their veins.
In the case of these 215, imagine your children losing their lives, simply because they were who they were.
It’s tempting to comfort oneself by looking at the date of this horrendous statement and think about all of this happening well over 100 years ago, but the Kamloops school closed in 1978.
The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996.
Let that sink in for a minute. Many of us can distinctly recall what we were doing in 1996; it wasn’t that long ago.
Canada is a beautiful country, which we are grateful to call home, but it also has a very dark past. As Canadians, we have a sacred obligation to understand and acknowledge the atrocities committed against the Indigenous people of the land we call home, but it doesn’t just stop at that. We also need to find a way to assist and support our Indigenous brothers and sisters in any way possible as they process and cope with the horrors they and their ancestors have been forced to endure.
Your pain is unique and deep, therefore we will never fully be able to grasp its extent, but we as a community stand with you, today and forever.
