Acknowledge our dark past

Like most white Canadians I was ignorant of what was really happening at the residential schools. In the past when the subject of the schools came up, I admit that I briefly reflected on the trauma of being taken from family but never delved deeper into the issue. I was totally unaware of the abuses. The affects from those abuses are still strongly being felt in Indigenous families and communities today. All the protests and anger make more sense to me now.

The finger pointing has to stop. Apologies only go so far. Concrete change is urgently needed now. We need to look the dark past in the eye and acknowledge it. We also need to recognize that Canada still has serious moral issues. When an Indigenous woman is laughed at in hospital while dying, Blacks and Asians are bullied and beaten in the streets, and a young white male kills an Muslim family with a car, Canada is going morally astray. It needs to stop now.

How many generations more will go by before real action is taken? Let us start the change now. Education for all Canadians is needed to counter these issues. One first step is for the school curriculum to include facts about residential schools, and also about racism and how to stop it. Especially let us not lose the youngest generation to ignorance. With them real lasting change can occur.

Elizabeth Crouse, Hamilton