Our World: Season 3

Every Child Matters

Hey guys sorry if you thought this was an update trust me there is some upcoming stuff coming for this story but i just wanted to say something about this matter

so just a brief update on what this means a couple of months ago they found child grave sites at an abandoned Residential school in canada and that started a flood gate of checking other residential schools across canada and the US where they have more grave sites of children who never made it home and at this moment the number is 6509

Yes six thousand five hundred and nine children who were taken from their homes and brought to a place where they were abused and killed and there still many more schools that have yet to be searched it's really sad.

Now the reason i'm talking about this is because i am a Canadian Indigenous Women and my grandpa is a survivor of a residential school so if he hadn't have survived I wouldn't even be here my whole family wouldn't be.

In school you hear about all this stuff and you know you're a kid so you don't really pay attention I know for a fact that I didn't as much as I should have and honestly it's just words in a textbook at that age but to now seeing it in real life and see the truth come out.

It hurts like a lot that I never took this seriously nobody did. It still hurts that even after all of this they are still searching schools and finding more children and it's sad that it's not a big thing anymore Like wtf.

Growing up i was bullied for being native I was picked on daily I was called names like the ugly Pocahontas, fat Rez girl, I was told to go back to my teepee and stay there I know those aren't really good insults but kids are kids and when you are a kid words hurt a lot
I went through that for how many years in school and it broke me a lot and I hated who I was and my skin color.

I did manage to break out of that bubble they put me in and have become a stronger person due to finding a better place to be in and having a good support system.

Another thing that happened when I was a kid was that we didn't exactly do everything that an indigenous family should do we didn't go to powwows as much, we didn't learn to bead or how to use medicine and sadly I don't even know any Cree my language and I don't know any of it.
And it kind of makes sense to me now why we didn't do any of that because of what my grandpa went through he didn't want to do any of that stuff anymore so we didn't and I understand that now.

Today was the first new holiday called truth and reconciliation day and it is a day to honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools which is great my family decorated our car and we drove around my town and there was people who supported it but you know once the day is over and people put away their orange shirts doesn't mean this whole thing just goes away it never will and we need to keep supporting this please

So since this is about my only platform to use and speak out I'm using it thank you guys for taking the time to read this because this is some serious stuff and I would like more people to understand that a problem doesn't just go away we have listen and learn from past mistakes so we don't make the same ones.

Also if anyone has any of their stories to share or if you just want to express how this is affecting you or if you just want to show support or even ask questions I will try to answer as best I can please I welcome all of it to hear anything anyone wants to say you can leave a comment or if you want to message me privately go ahead please anything

Thank you guys for reading

EVERY CHILD MATTERS