I thought I should take the responsibility to post this and remind everyone about what today is.
National Day For Truth And Reconciliation
Both my parents are survivors of the residential school era and my family have had to live with this horror all our lives … whether we knew it or not.
For me the day is not to shame anyone or lay blame on those around me.
But rather to let everyone know about this history and never allow anything like it to ever happen again.
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I want to give you the internet equivalent of a firm handshake. This needed to be said, thank you for being the one to say it.
I return the hand shake my friend.
Chimeegwetch doodem … it means “thanks very much my friend.”
I wish more non native people would take the initiative instead and acknowledge commemorations like this. It normalizes things like this and makes it more significant for us native people … it makes us realize that more of non native Canada is open to acknowledging events like this, and by extension becoming more open and accepting of indigenous people and our culture … not that Canada doesn’t already, it just makes it more so.
I wish more non native people would take the initiative instead and acknowledge commemorations like this. It normalizes things like this and makes it more significant for us native people
Something I’d like to see is the addition of regional FN languages to the school curriculum for each province. I’m a languages nerd so I’m biased, but I think that would help (not to mention also help preserve the language of those particular nations)
Genocide: Wrong then, wrong today.
We took so much pride in stopping the nazis yet we weren’t any better back home.
Plenty of pride about fighting Nazis, but not a lot of interest in helping Jews.
I remember our high school history teacher beginning our lesson on WWII. A few days into the lesson (explaining the Holocaust and such) We thought we all knew about it already. Then she asked us how many Jewish refugees Canada as a country took in?
We made guesses. A million, one hundred thousand? Canada is a welcoming multicultural country afterall, as we’ve been taught, so we must have taken a lot!
And then she said Canada took less than a couple thousand Jewish people in. That was quite a shock. The room was silent when she said it. She explained the anti Jewish sentiments of the time. We didn’t want them because they weren’t Christian. It was so strange to us at the time. Why wouldn’t we take them? They needed help. Definitely a strong teaching moment, I’ve remembered it to this day.
Looked it up and this is the official number I guess: Between 1933 and 1948, less than 5,000 Jewish refugees were allowed into Canada - the smallest number of any Allied nation.
Pitiful.
Now that the day is past, today I saw in the news what each candidate was doing yesterday. What’s the story behind Á’a:líya Warbus being a Conservative candidate in Chilliwack?
I’m not surprised to occasionally see LGBTQ+ folks joining hands with conservatives because there’s one thing that usually threads the needle there: class warfare. I can also understand the poor working class that votes conservative: rugged individualism and “traditional values”. But I still can’t understand indigenous voters going conservative… Rustad is clearly an enemy!? 🤷♂️
That’s the thing about native politics … we are just as susceptible to propaganda, media spin and outright lies as much as anyone else.
I know plenty of Native people in my circle of family and friends who all banter around the mantra ‘Fuck Trudeau’ and say how much they hate Trudeau but can’t really point to any specific reason why other than to repeat whatever stupidity they read on social media.
Not everyone is politically literate, educated or even moderately informed about most things that happen in the world … it’s a normal part of society in the world … and it’s the same with Native people.
As a non-FN person, I never really know what to do on this day. Remembrance Day for example has the usual ceremonies around 11am.
The fact you acknowledge the day and think about this history is enough.
Remember this history, share it on this day with others around you. It’s not a celebration, or even a ceremony, it’s a commemoration.
Remembering also shouldn’t be all negative, it’s an affirmation that you stand and support those who suffered in the past and are suffering now and wish that it will never happen again to any group of people any where.
