JULY 1ST AND THE LOST CHILDREN

? THIS JULY FIRST OUGHT TO BE A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE AND REFLECTION ON THE UNIVERSAL RIGHT TO DIGNITY. I asked my Niece, Natalie, for her thoughts regarding the discovery of the Kamloops’s and Saskatchewan’s lost children. Natalie is a member of the urban Indigenous Anishinaabe Kwe and member of Shawanaga First Nation.??She is a wise, thoughtful and respected in her community.??She wrote, “When we lose a child they take with them a part of our bodies, our energy, our spirits. Without them, we would be less of who we are and less of who we could have become. Now imagine this on a grander scale across family members, across communities, across nations, across the country, and across time. Each life isn’t just one life taken - it sweeps like a bush fire that effects everyone who was close to them. That effect ripples outward, and through generations, to relatives who just know them by stories and the trauma that was inherited. Replanting a forest after a bush fire seems like an insurmountable task. That’s where we are now - a people in mourning trying to regrow what was taken from us, something that will never be exactly the same, while the perpetrators keep lighting fires and calling it reconciliation."

The bush fire analogy is fitting, if we look beyond the immediate moral impact of these forced removals. Modern science tells us that an entire population for now and future generations can be damaged.?

Family is essential for the development of healthy humans. It provides the love, training, and support??for??childhood growth. Breaking the family unit destroys identity. People become commodities -- Inuit were identified by numbers.??Modern psychology speaks about separation anxiety and other illnesses.??If untreated, they??lead to a number of issues such as anxiety, depression and various character disturbances.??Without family or therapy a person is left alone, unaware of the cause of their stress.??They often seek self-medication like drugs, alcohol and even suicide.??Epi-Genetics suggests that early life trauma may alter genetic make-up, transferring the condition to future generations.??Natalie noted that: by banning??long hair, they introduced gender roles that weren’t part our societies; by banning our clothing, they banned how we chose to present ourselves to the Creator; By banning language, we lost our oral history; By banning our interrelationships, our knowledge of parenting and how we saw ourselves within nature that was fundamental to our survival was lost.??Our traditional rules were based on honour, ancestors, sharing,??dignity and grace.”??They respected their surroundings and the spirits of animals and forests for their gifts of food and shelter.???The land within tribal territories was for all; unlike the Europeans whose rights were based on property ownership.??Their world was one, in harmony with nature. Only now, we appreciate our??duty to protect ‘Mother Earth’

We took advantage of their traditions of trust.???We saw them as naive. We failed our promise of land, clean water and health care.???Without them in the War of 1812, we all would be waking up under the Stars and Stripes.??While they trusted us, we were deceitful and treated their families as a commodity without name, courtesy or explanation.??In law, a concept of Unjust Enrichment suggests you may be indebted to someone?if you were enriched at the expense of the other without any good legal reason permitting you to keep that enrichment for yourself.??If you took unfair advantage and?continue?to profit from the other person, the other party may be entitled to damages – we may still owe the First Peoples.

The last school closed 25 years ago.??Natalie is entitled to rage, yet, she reflects hope and writes “While our communities are still recovering from the effects of these and other initiatives to eradicate and to assimilate us, we??call out to each other from across powwow grounds,??social media, and nations. We celebrate our resilience. We are community-builders, even in spaces that formerly wouldn’t have accepted us. We are reclaiming our??spirit teachings and with universal support, not ‘colonial direction’, with dignity not patronage, we can grow together.??Re-planting a forest after a bush fire seems like an insurmountable task but if you have faith in the forest, you??know that Bush Fires release nutrients; provide exposure to more sunlight, and prompt certain trees to bare seeds. It takes time to regrow, and it will never be the same forest, but it will regrow.??Just stop lighting fires”.?

We owe everyone dignity. We are unable to move into the future without coming to grips with our past. We owe everyone Justice, not just monuments to honour those forgotten.??We need a forensic investigation into the circumstances of these deaths.??There are no time limitations here.

I WANT TO THANK NATALIE BUDZINSKY FOR HER HELP AND HER DRAWING OF "A MOTHER HUGGING CHILD"