Imagine that you’re six years old. Berber’s age. A stranger comes to your house and seizes you from your mother’s arms. 

Imagine he takes you hundreds of miles away to a place where white people cut off your hair, take away your clothes and even your name, giving you a number instead. 

Imagine that you’re always hungry and alone, being separated from your brothers and sisters. Imagine that you’re not allowed to speak your own language. They tell you that your own culture and traditions are evil and barbaric. 

Imagine being taught to hate yourself and your culture.

Imagine being the parent of this child….

This is what happened to 150,000 aboriginal Canadian children between 1883 and 1996 under a government policy to assimilate Indigenous people. The children were stolen from their warm homes and loving families because ‘the system wanted a Final Solution to the Indian problem’. 

They were taken to so called Residential schools ‘to kill the Indian in the child’. It wasn’t until 1996 that the last one of them in Canada was closed down. 

Over 6,000 children died during their period at the schools, mostly because of abuse, malnutrition and sickness. They never returned to their families, often buried in unmarked graves so their families could never find them. 

Can you imagine the scars this caused? 

Today we visited the site where St. Michaels Residential School stood from 1929 until 2015. The building was demolished in 2015, after a healing/cleansing ceremony, witnessed by hundreds of survivors and their relatives. 

Finally setting free the spirits of those who were still locked up inside those walls…

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If you want to read more about this horrible part of Canada’s past, click the link below to a transcript of the impressive speech by Marie Wilson, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at the release of their final report in 2015.