Thread by @AdamPOlsen

Today I stood to mark the one year anniversary of British Columbians and Canadians being awoken with the reality of the fate of thousands of Indigenous children who disappeared and never came home from residential schools. 1/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

To all our relatives, all our elders, all our residential and day school survivors, to the generations of survivors of these genocidal acts perpetrated by this and other Crown governments, I raise my hands to you…
2/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

...for your strength, for your resilience, for your patience, for your long-suffering, for your willingness to share your traumatic, tragic, and heartbreaking stories. 3/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

To the children whose names have been lost, misplaced, or hidden, in the archives of gov't & churches, whose shame motivates them to hide you. You have not been forgotten by your descendants. We remember you. We love you. 4/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

It's not easy sitting in the Legislature & listening to people state that they intend to reconcile this reprehensible history and yet when I account for reconciliatory actions, my heart is broken again and again. 5/ #bcpoli

This year, like last year, I was told that it was too difficult to recognize Indigenous names on official government documentation. I was told it is very complex, government is working on it, there is more to do. 6/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

Last week, we heard this gov't reward a museum that has been identified as an unsafe place for Indigenous People, a place that has proven unable to mend its broken relationship with Indigenous People, with $800 million dollars. 7/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters #IndigenousPeoples

This new and massive temple will store items of cultural significance, our sacred items, our technologies, and our innovations, while a few Indigenous Nations will be tempted with $30,000 to facilitate the repatriation of items we want to bring home. 8/ #bcpoli #EveryChildMatters

On the floor of this Chamber a deep ignorance is exposed. An unwillingness to acknowledge the truth, that many, or most, of those items locked away in museum basements were collected through grave robberies. 9/ #bcpoli #Reconciliation #EveryChildMatters

Many more were collected by further exploiting destitute Indigenous Peoples ravaged by a fatal virus. This was all happening in BC at the same time as the residential schools such as Kamloops, were being designed to assimilate the Indigenous children. 10/ #bcpoli #Reconciliation

Just as this Crown institution was stealing our cultural items, our innovations, and technologies, stealing the bones & the caskets of our ancestors, they were creating the institutions charged with stealing our children, our languages. Stripping us of our identity & culture. 11/

Now in 2022 we get told it’s too difficult to be called by our names, that our foods and medicines are pests - sprayed with poison to increase timber harvest - and get paltry sums for the deforestation and destruction of our lands. 12/ #bcpoli #Reconciliation

But #IndigenousPeoples are resilient. We are proud. We are powerful. No matter what this Crown institution does to us. We stand here today. Gathering strength, our life-force given to us by our creator, brought to life through our relationship with our relatives. 13/13 #bcpoli