How are the children?
Listening to the stories of genocide, savagery, the incomprehensible behavior of whites that litter through history.
Last week, the children listened to the news detailing the research in Kamloops/Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc that revealed that 215 children were buried in a mass grave.
That wasn’t a school. It was a prison.
That wasn’t a residential school. It was an assimilation hall.
A few days prior to the stories out of British Columbia, I had picked up:
- I Am Not a Number (Second Story Press, 2016)
- Little Bird #1, by Darcy van Poelgeest (Image Comics, 2019)
The week prior, we were exposed to the language of lies wrapped inside a tone of cunning deception that qualified the officials who kidnapped and stole indigenous children as “nice” and the act of forcibly relocating children as “tricked” with stories of nourishing meals.
Lies perpetuated through decades and centuries, repeated in news accounts, embellished in children’s books upholding the sanctity of white colonizers, refraining from mentioning the horrors of abusers and authorities.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 