This week’s topic is a heavy one.

As I’m sure most if not all people reading this know, the bodies of 215 children were found at the site of a Residential School in Kamloops BC on the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation.

In an article on the CBC website, the First Nation stated they used ground-penetrating radar to find all the bodies and that the recovery was done in a culturally appropriate and respectful way.

That last part is important.

Respectfully.

Arguably the most ugly part of our history as a country resides around residential schools and what they did to Indigenous peoples.

The disrespectful part comes in when we don’t teach anyone about what those schools were created to do.

We need to learn from and understand just how horrific that time period was for Canada.

This is a subject that is so briefly touched on in high schools across the country.

These schools were created to assimilate Indigenous peoples and “take the Indian out of the child”.

It’s extremely alarming how little the subject of residential schools is taught to students today.

This is something that students should be taught in depth.

This history of our country isn’t something that should continue being marginalized and pushed down.

Canada needs to own the mistakes of the past and truly take responsibility for the wrongdoing that was done to so many people.

This also isn’t something that happened ages ago.

The final residential school was closed in 1996.

That a mere 25 years ago!

That’s one year before I was born.

This isn’t some ancient history that no one alive today was directly impacted by.

There are THOUSANDS of First Nations people who are still DIRECTLY impacted by these residential schools.

For me, the fact there wasn’t a national moment of mourning when these 215 children were discovered is sickening.

I’ve seen a lot of requests for flags to fly at half-mast across the country.

Is that really enough?

Would that satisfy your mourning?

I saw a post a couple days ago that said if Canada lowered its flag one day for each child who died in a residential school, the Canadian flag would not rise for 11 years.

11 YEARS!!

Does the height of our flag really make a difference for someone whose child was murdered?

This was genocide.

We need to do far more than lower flags.

How will we ever truly reconcile with everyone suffering due to this dark period if we never acknowledge or discuss the issues these schools caused?

We all have a part to play in finding the truth and reconciling with Indigenous peoples and since our country doesn’t seem to interested in doing so, we need to on our own.

This is a topic we shouldn’t be pushing aside.

It’s one we should be facing head on through learning more about not only what was done at these schools but also how we can move forward.

I encourage everyone to learn more and help towards truth and reconciliation.