Hey Divas,
Today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as, Orange Shirt Day. Every year on September 30th, we honor the children, survivors, families and communities impacted by Indian boarding schools. We wear orange to honor the children who didn't make it back home.
Residential schools were specifically created to isolate Indigenous children from their families and culture in order to force the colonial religious views onto them. This is how the colonizers forcefully assimilated Indigenous children and communities. They would forcefully remove Indigenous children from their homes and take them to these schools to erase any cultural identity they had. A quote that would forever stick with me is "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man" -Captain Richard Henry Pratt. This shows how they viewed Indigenous people and how they wanted to erase their cultural identity and "save the man". So many lives were taken and affected at the cost of this ideology.
Indigenous people everywhere are still affected by this because these boarding schools caused thousands of tribal culture and language to be forgotten and the trauma to get passed down. These schools were traumatic and abusive for Indigenous people because your child was taken and some didn't even make it back home because of the abuse. Today, they are still finding children's bones that were left at these schools and honoring them and sending them back home if they can.
This day of remembrance and honor is for all the lives lost and survivors of this devastating part of history.
xoxo,
Indigenous Diva
