Thread by @sunnshiiny

This is a perfect example of disinformation and provocation.

Some truth, some gross exaggeration.

Residential schools are real.

Calling all deaths of indigenous children who attended murder is politicization.

We do not know what the causes of death were for any child in an unmarked grave.

This is why disinformation and provocation are so effective. It’s the combination of both.

Many may not realize they are amplifying disinformation and provocation.

Murder is a word loaded with meaning and inflammatory when used to describe every Residential School’s unmarked grave’s occupant’s cause of death.

Try to challenge the understanding or belief of people who are amplifying this disinformation and you’re likely to get your head bitten off or vilified by a mob of radicalized extremist activists.

That’s politicization of information.

That’s exploitation of indigenous issues for a political agenda when you combine fact & overt embellishment.

We do not know the causes of death of the children in the graves.

It is speculation & political spin to call every one murder.

What happened at residential schools was horrific. Children were abused physically, sexually, culturally and spiritually. But we do not know what caused the deaths of so many children unless we exhume remains and examine them.

And that has not happened.

No bodies have been exhumed.

The decision to exhume them or not will be made by the families whose children were taken and never returned. Not by privileged advocates.

Perhaps the public misunderstands reconciliation.

It is NOT a cudgel with which to punish and berate.

It’s our collective history that is being asked to acknowledge, incorporate, never forget, and not ever repeat.

How is each Canadian going to incorporate this information in what it means to be Canadian, what it means to be indigenous, and how dangerous moralizing and rationalization of abuse is so easy to do?

Not by claiming innocence and absence of shame by pointing fingers at others.

We are ALL guilty. We are all culpable. We have all benefitted from the system that attempted to annihilate indigenous people. Your advocacy now doesn’t assuage your responsibility.

Whether your relatives came here generations ago, or you arrived yesterday, you hold part of the collective responsibility for residential schools.

That’s every Canadian’s burden to bear.

No passes for advocacy or empathy.

That includes every Canadian. Every permanent resident and every temporary foreign worker. It includes thousands of European aristocrats who reaped the wealth of Canadian resources at the expense of the continent’s indigenous residents.

It includes every corporation that has benefitted from Canadians or the resources it contains.

We all hold a piece of that collective responsibility and complicity.

Especially those who benefitted most and those who ignored indigenous opposition to oppression.

Advocacy now doesn’t erase or excuse your past complicity with the systemic racism that was built into the imperialism and accompanying colonization through “legal” and “Christian” imposition of an apartheid state.

Your task is to make peace with that past. Not advocate.

Indigenous people can and have advocated for ourselves for generations. And finally people are hearing our reality. If you want to be an ally, learn about Canada’s past wrongs. Own your participation in those events. Negligence and ignorance is not a ticket to absolution.

We are all responsible.

How we move forward knowing this information is a collective decision as well.

It’s more important to understand than for allies to be understood.

We’ve literally skimmed the surface of atrocities committed.

This won’t be easy, comfortable, or quick. Reckonings never are. And that’s what reconciliation is. A reckoning. Indigenous people want Canadians to acknowledge how we’ve been treated.

It’s not revenge. It’s not reparations. At the moment it’s just understanding what happened.

Later we can look at who was responsible. No one alive is directly responsible for residential schools creation or the abuses that were designed to be part of assimilating indigenous children by indoctrinating them with Eurocentric values and Christian faith.

But there are people and political parties who support colonialist and imperialist beliefs and values today.

However, to determine who those are, we must first understand what happened, and then how it happened.

That’s essential information to making systemic change.

Systemic change can’t happen tomorrow. Because we have not completed the task of understanding what and how.

You want to be an advocate? Start learning about this nation’s political, economic and social history. Discuss that history and what it means.

Build awareness among those who aren’t buried in Twitter and Facebook advocacy groups.

Stop vilifying and dehumanizing those who are slower to reckon their past.

Healing doesn’t emerge from blame and shame.

Stop smugly placing yourself as superior to those still learning.

Debunking social hierarchies that exclude and oppress is kinda the whole point of reconciliation. Which not every indigenous person accepts or realizes.

If you want to be egalitarian, you must extend egalitarian beliefs and values to those who don’t share your knowledge.

We all deserve basic respect and compassion. We all have faults and deficits in knowledge. None of us is perfect. We are not superior if we hold more knowledge or skill. There will always be some who know more and know less. But our humanity is equal. No matter what we know.

You want to be an ally? Then start putting that into practice.

Be the change you want to see.

We all learn best in a welcoming, supportive and nurturing environment.

That’s the change I want to see as an indigenous person. I trust most progressives do as well.

I believe conservatives also prefer to not learn in a hostile environment, but one that meets them where their understanding of the situation is.

You’re blocking reconciliation if you’re exhibiting hostility. And only you are responsible to control your behaviour.