Thread by @dogwoodbc

Yesterday Premier John Horgan gave a speech in the B.C. legislature about what he called the “atrocities” committed at Indian Residential Schools. “This is not something that happened in the past. It is something that is going on right now,” Horgan said.

He’s right.

Content warning: this thread discusses the mass grave of children’s bodies uncovered in Kamloops, and ongoing acts of colonial violence. @IRSSurvivor offers counselling services and a 24-hour crisis line at 1-800-721-0066

There are more than 4,000 Indigenous children in the custody of the B.C. government today. Some were seized from their mothers as newborns, part of a dehumanizing practice called “birth alerts” that didn’t end until 2019. cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

Priests and nuns no longer force children to dig graves for their classmates, as many residential school survivors have described. But Indigenous kids are still hurt and die at disproportionate rates in group homes and foster care. cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

As Horgan acknowledged, the trauma of residential schools (where kids died at a higher rate than Canadian soldiers in WWII) still harms many B.C. families to this day. cbc.ca/news/indigenou…

his genocidal attack on Indigenous communities and cultures is still cutting people’s lives short, 25 years after the last residential school closed.

And the violence doesn’t end there.

As Wet’suwet’en writer, educator and land rights advocate Delee Nikal wrote on social media this weekend, “stripping and ripping our lands from us is connected to ripping us from our lands.” instagram.com/p/CPgCV_8sQtX/…

The truth is that John Horgan’s government is actively working to deny Indigenous rights, destroy Indigenous lands – and imprison Indigenous people who stand in the way.

That is why reserves and residential schools were created: to remove Indigenous people from their land so the Crown could steal it.

150 years later, that project is not just ongoing – it’s accelerating.

From the Peace River Valley to the last old-growth watersheds, from fracking wells to pipeline routes, our tax dollars subsidize more and more corporate resource theft and police enforcement on unceded lands.

Our campaigners and organizers will have lots more to say about B.C.’s modern colonial machine, and how citizens can put sand in the gears.

But first we need to come to terms with the reality that we live in a place that has mass graves for children.

The youngest victims in Kamloops were three years old.

Survivors have spoken for decades about other undocumented burial sites across the country. There are many children left to find and grieve.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued six calls to action relating to gravesites at residential schools. We encourage all Canadians to read them on pages 258-264 of the commission’s final report. ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/upl…

The TRC laid out a blueprint for a compassionate approach to gathering information, compiling records and providing some kind of closure to the victims’ surviving relatives.

Even this basic act of human decency, which would cost a few million dollars, has not been fully implemented by any level of government in the six years since the commission issued its report. Most of the TRC’s calls to action have not.

Speeches and symbolic gestures are not enough.

People who live in B.C. and Canada will have to organize and mobilize, to force our colonial institutions to atone for the past – and stop their ongoing attacks on Indigenous families, nations and land.