#SettlersTakeAction
For 24/7 Support:
Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419
IRSSS CRISIS SUPPORT: 1-800-721-0066
We find ourselves once again offering our thoughts and our support to Indigenous communities as reports come in of hundreds of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves in Saskatchewan. Community leaders told us there would be more. Family members knew there were more. And, sadly, as communities across the country search the grounds of former residential schools, there will no doubt be hundreds more tiny bodies located.
The pain this is causing families who lost their children years ago with no words of sympathy or explanation is unimaginable. The intergenerational trauma flowing from the horrific experiences of the residential schools continues to leave Indigenous communities struggling with individual and collective grief.
The colonial structures that enabled the violence of residential schools today resonates in our prisons and jails, in our educational systems and curricula, and in our abandonment of remote communities who still live without clean water or basic utilities. The patterns are not a closed historical chapter but an ongoing one. Until each and every recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee report has been enacted, in a partnership between Indigenous communities and federal and provincial governments, the book remains open.
