What we have wrought

Far too many Canadians are blind to our colonial past, many willfully so, but nothing demonstrates our colonial legacy as the residential school system does.

Case in point: they were taken away from their parents at age five or six for 10 months a year. They were forced to eat vomit, subjected to sexual and physical abuse and put in an electric chair.
“The little ones first,” recalls Edmund Metatawabin to the Wawatay News in July. “And I was, I think, about number seven or eight, meaning I was one of the smaller ones.”
The children sat on a wooden seat with their arms strapped to a metal chair. A Brother held a wooden box with a crank ready to send the electric charge.
“Your feet is flying around in front of you, and that was funny for the missionaries,” Metatawabin says. “So all you hear is that jolt of electricity and your reaction, and laughter (of the Catholic school administrators) at the same time. We all took turns sitting on it.”

 Think about that folks, we snatched kids from their families and tortured them in the name of assimilation, stripping them of their language and culture. Also think about the Catholic church reneging on compensation for these crimes.

It will take much more that a mealy mouthed apology from the PM to address the great harm we have wreaked on the indigenous peoples whose land we stole and profit from to this day.

When we look at the issues facing First Nations today we must always view them through the lens of our colonial past and present. These issues just didn't spring up in isolation, they are a direct result of our actions as such we have a huge debt to repay.

We cannot begin to address the suicide crisis and other issues plaguing First Nations across the land until we as Canadian own up to our role in creating these issues. We need to do whatever it takes to help indigenous peoples and communities to heal.

However we cannot simply impose solutions, we need to ask those affected by our actions what they want and need to begin the process of healing. Let them dictate the process while we support those solutions with every ounce of resources we have.