Every Child Matters

Last week, our family, our province, our country, yes the entire world was rocked by the horrifying news of a mass grave of 215 Indigenous children found at a Kamloops residential school. Some were as young as three years old. We cannot even begin to comprehend the devastating loss of these children: they were sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, friends - and often their families never learned what had happened to them. The horrifying realities of the residential schools are not just a history lesson, but very real and very deep trauma that still reverberates through Indigenous families. This tragedy and all of the abuse perpetrated in these schools is a profoundly dark chapter in our country’s history, and our hearts break for the terrible and indelible scars left on Indigenous communities.

Words fail to express our horror, our sadness and sorrow. We farm right next to the Seabird band. These are our neighbours. They form our community. We farm on their traditional lands. Our hearts break for them and all Indigenous peoples.

It sounds trite to say that you - our neighbours, our community - are in our thoughts and prayers, but you are. We don’t pretend to know the right words, the right way to express our condolences and outrage. We hope that this terrible discovery will wake up people and government from apathy and bring about a commitment to real and affirmative action to help heal the wounds caused by the generational agony of residential schools.