I have been a Canadian since 2024. I did not live this history, nor did I shape it. I inherited it. Whoever takes on a country also takes on its archive of history.
So I read. Indian Act, 1876. A law that administers people who had been here much longer already. The inventory of the Indigenous. What takes long finally becomes law.
“Kill the Indian in the child.”
That was the unspoken goal to be read between the lines of the Indigenous residential schools. Some 150,000 children were affected. The last school closed in 1996. I write that year twice, because I can barely believe it myself.
I first heard about these atrocities when my late friend Phil Pendry spoke of them. He made more than fourteen documentaries with and about the Indigenous peoples of Canada. At 97, he was working on another project about one of these schools. Sadly, he never got to complete that film.
My knowledge is patchy and very limited. I had no one from the Indigenous community I could ask. So there are many gaps in this story. They remain open.
Then came the Sixties Scoop.
Indigenous children, mostly First Nations and Inuit, were torn from their families and placed with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive families. The children lost not only their Indigenous language, but also their culture and their identity. The Scoop, that program, is said to have run between 1965 and 1984.
Ottawa announced a settlement of 800 million dollars, 750 million of it for individuals and 50 million for reconciliation initiatives. The Ontario class action concerned some 16,000 children. I could find no figures for how many children were affected in all the other provinces. By the way, “Scoop” refers to the very act of collecting these children up.
Reading about the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, these stories reminded me of Switzerland, with a similar pattern. The Verdingkinder — the children of the road.
Does Switzerland actually have a national day of truth and reconciliation, or is one still coming?
The former Swiss of back then becomes a present-day Canadian who wants to understand the dark history of both countries.
Former Prime Minister Harper apologized in 2008. The Pope followed in 2022. Why the Pope? Well, the schools in question were run by the Catholic Church.
Two dates, fourteen years apart. What came of them in terms of actual action, I will not list. I don’t know myself, not exactly.
Orange is the new remembering. Today is September 30. And many wear the orange shirt for remembrance. For truth. And for reconciliation.
The shirt, the orange one, no longer fits.
Not because it’s too small.
Because I want to, and must, grow into it.
Thank you. I found this piece very moving.