Truth and Reconciliation Day

 

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, originally and still colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day, is a Canadian day of memorial to recognize the atrocities and generational impact caused by the Canadian Indian residential school system.

Residential schools were created by Christian churches and the Canadian government as an attempt to both educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society.  However, the abuse that was allowed by the Catholic, Anglican and United churches will never be forgotten.  

I was reading Facebook and found this very interesting from a residential school survivor:

As an indigenous woman, who has delt with many issues including my Kookom being a Residential School survivor and the insane amount of racism that comes with growing up in Alberta.

I have to say I don't want anything from the church more than to recognize and support. It's crazy to think that people that exist now who had nothing to do with the horrors that occur to pay for the actions of others.

I understand that what is done is done, and all we can do is spread awareness. What do you expect for a whole religion that has been around for 2000 years to just stop existing.

What can really be done? And why is it up to people who had nothing to do with what happened. This is a COMMUNITY and County issues not the church, this is something that needs to be resolved by understand the generational trauma that exists within the body's and minds of indigenous peoples today. But to call the church out like this, when there is not al lot they can even do.

Churches could donate money to help support the mental and physical rehabilitation of indigenous people, but this isn't going to heal the wounds between peoples. This is just monetary...

What needs to happen is people putting down the hate for each other, sit in a room together and learn from one another in a loving way. To be curious about each other's thoughts and feeling and to hold them with a open and loving heart. But this would need to happen on a mass collective scale.

But I think to call the church out like this feels hateful and wrong, not coming from the right place of an open heart.

May everyone here be blessed by the creator and to love and be open with each other in a good way.