A lot of non-Indigenous people around the world are struggling to handle the information coming out of Canada about the residential school program.
Below is a list of resources for learning about the program and closely related topics.
While the unmarked graves may be a shock to many, that is because of the systemic erasure of Indigenous peoples and their voices. It is the intention of the social order to hide this information, and so incumbent on its members to educate themselves. The resources below are *first steps*. There is so much more to learn, and people are bringing new stories every day, because the ethnocide, and resistance against it, still continue each day.
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http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_4_Missing_Children_English_Web.pdf
https://legacyofhope.ca/wherearethechildren/stories/
https://newlinesmag.com/first-person/the-suffering-of-canadas-indigenous-people/
https://www.coursera.org/learn/indigenous-canada
http://www.groundworkforchange.org/
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/issues/view/september-october-2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFgNI1lfe0A
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
https://talonbooks.com/books/they-called-me-number-one
https://www.aupress.ca/books/120260-my-decade-at-old-sun-my-lifetime-of-hell/
https://www.aupress.ca/books/120260-my-decade-at-old-sun-my-lifetime-of-hell/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2201473X.2021.1935574
https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/education-resources/
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The work of non-Indigenous people now is to share these voices among yourselves (boost this post), and figure out your own relationships to these events. How does your life intersect with the foster care system, the prison complex, the theft of indigenous land? Those answers can't come from a book, but books can be great tools for finding them.
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Working to help settler-colonials educate themselves is labour, and doing it now feels extra heavy. Consider giving:
https://ko-fi.com/emsenn
https://cash.app/$emsenn0
(To those who have kept your recurring donations active even though I haven't been posting: thank you! That's been my grocery money as I get back on my feet after the recent displacement.)
