The Highway of Tears: Canada’s Genocide is Not Distant History
It’s a fair question, and it’s one I hear often when the topic of genocide comes up. People wonder why we ‘social justice warriors’ are so focused on things that happened hundreds of years ago, that aren’t relevant now. I’ve read stories about how Canada is a beacon of hope in a world gone mad. A shining example of democracy and love, full of joy and compassion for our fellow man. All the bad stuff, you know, that was so long ago that people don’t need to think about it! But that simply is not the case. It only displays an ignorance of our country’s history. I remember having this conversation with a family member only a few years ago when they used the ‘why should I feel guilty’ line with me. After all, it was their great-grandparents’ generation that did it. I looked at them in surprise and told them that some of Canada’s worst crimes happened not only in their lifetime but in mine. They were startled. I’m only 29. But it’s the honest truth. If you know anything about Canada’s history, you know that our national shame is not in the far-off distant past.I was two years old when the last Residential School in Canada closed its doors. I was a walking, talking toddler. My mother was in her 20s, having unknowingly lived through a genocide committed against the First Nations peoples of Canada. She was born in the midst of the Sixties Scoop, the period between the 1960s to 1980s wherein the RCMP carried out the brutal practice of forcibly removing infants and young children from First Nations families and giving them to white families to raise. To this day, there’s an overrepresentation of First Nations and other minorities in the foster care system due to an…
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