09/30/2021
People can get defensive when they hear the word privilege, I used to be one of them. I don't want to take today to make it about my white experience and viewpoint, but I do think using my voice to help other people deconstruct their privilege is how I can use my voice for change. A turning point for me was realizing that having privilege didn't mean that I didn't deserve the things I had worked hard for, it meant I was lucky. Lucky to not suffer through and I did nothing more to deserve escaping that horror than be born with white skin. It was my privilege to only have to learn about racism and not experience it.
Ms Phyllis Webstad, the woman behind π§‘Orange Shirt Day, is only 54 years old today. Proof that these horrors are not as long in our past as we like to believe, or that we were taught. This past year has truly brought a glaring light to damages done in these concentration camps. Let's be honest about what they were, they weren't schools, they were the text book definition of a concentration camp. That isn't hyperbole. Indigenous children were prisoners confined to a facility, no freedom to come and go, inadequate resources, and a persecuted minority. I do not want to co-opt terms from other atrocities, this definition applies even though we normally associated that title with WW2. To the Indigenous community that is what Residential Schools were, and they had just as poor a chance of returning home as Canadian soldiers did returning home from war. Learn more
demands we acknowledge those truths. Reconciliation demands we don't downplay the suffering and reality people who lived through those atrocities. Reconciliation demands we accept responsibility to right the wrongs of a system we participate in today. True justice was never provided to families who lost their children, true justice would provide appropriate means to help heal and move on from the victimization of such crimes.