Quote:
Originally Posted by Yamer
This is, sadly, just the start. The one here in Red Deer was notorious, so I'm bracing myself for what they discover.
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Oh, we are definitely just getting started, we very well could end up with 10,000 or more.
From the top to the bottom, there were people who should have known better, and done something - anything - to stop the evil that was happening. The Government, the regional church bodies, the local churches/organizations, and the people actually there actually running the residential schools. How could kids be dying at a rate much higher than the background rate (which was still very high compared to what we are used to now), and no one say anything, fight for change, do anything about it.
There also is an element of schools, especially rural ones, being quite poorly run. My dad went to rural day school in southern Manitoba, and was punished for speaking the only language he knew at the time. My mom was perhaps more lucky, as she was the youngest child, and her siblings are enough older than her that they would have had English introduced at home already. Knowing some of that, I can attribute some of the whole issue to people in those schools who were trying their best with the extremely underfunding that they had. But that doesn’t excuse indignity, nor not attempting to force change.
But that’s why it’s called systemic racism, the whole system down from the top leads to even people who may care down at the bottom not being able to do enough. The not caring at the top trickles down to the bottom, front line people too, over time.
I hope I can learn, and have the empathy needed to help do what is required fir this country to heal.