So, just FYI, up in Canada they uncovered the mass grave of 215 children. Repeating that. Children. As young as 3 and older. They were going to a government-funded school that basically figured if they couldn’t stand the education, maybe it was better they were in a hole in ground. And the people who went to that school? Well, nobody important enough would miss them.
That school closed in 1978.
That’s not a misprint. That would be when I was 10 years old. The Canadian system killed about 3% of the kids that went through it (not including the 215 above). The amount of rape, trauma, and physicial abuse was -staggering-. And known. Both to the community which the children were taken from and the administrators. The rest of the citizens just happily ignored it and paid their taxes and voted in the folks who put those administrators in charge.
Not just Canada
In case you think this is just a Canadian thing, they used to take kids from the San Fernando Valley in Northern L.A. and force them to go to a similar school in Riverside, CA. I don’t think any mass graves have been discovered, but I do know kids died and were raped and were traumatized there.
I also met two survivors of residential schools, one from near San Diego and one from Arizona.
If anyone chooses to tell you that the attempted genocide of the original people of the Americas was “ancient history”, make sure to let them know in no uncertain terms that they are flat wrong.
There is no way to compensate for this level of horror. But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done. Stop the blood quantum. Give land back. Uphold the treaties. Do something.
(edit: In the comments on this thread, there is a pdf with a call to action. Download it. Read it. Pass it along. And do it.)