
Over the past few months, the conversations around the Residential schools in North America have slowly died down, despite the thousands of remains that have been found. The outrage that grew within Canada and the United States has dissipated when coverage on the news is needed more than ever.
According to various sources, over 5000 remains have now been found near former Residential school sites around North America, and people were upset about the first few hundred. What exactly happened to these conversations and why is no one talking about this tragedy anymore?
Searching online, it’s difficult to find any new information about these recent discoveries and what is being done about them. The Canadian government has yet to make any concrete changes, the Catholic Church has yet to apologize and Indigenous communities are still struggling with the news. Support and coverage is so important right now, so please read, share and speak about this!
Many Indigenous creators online have been speaking out about the findings of the remains of the children who attended these institutions, and a problem right now within the online world is the way that creators are silenced. Their posts are taken down, they are banned from platforms and are not able to share the information that they want to spread for others. With the limited information from sources online, it’s crucial that people are fully able to talk about this situation in its entirety without being subject to their content being taken down time and time again.
Where can I look for information?
I would like to preface this by saying that all of the information in this article is from Indigenous creators online and their accounts and pages will be linked at the end!
It is so important right now to get your information from Indigenous people, especially since there are little to no actual news sites that are posting about this, and there haven’t been for well over a month at this point. Make sure to always be reading from Indigenous people in these situations.
A few stories you may not have known.
According to @wetsuweten_chechpoint on Instagram and the National Post as well as Global News, there have been a few discoveries before this year, going back to the 1970’s when 72 graves were found. There were also 34 children discovered in 2001 and 15 discovered just a few years ago in 2019. It is estimated that more than 6000 children had died on the sites of Residential schools, but there will never be an exact number and not all of those children will be accounted for since the government stopped recording the deaths around 1920.
It is not a coincidence that these were not broadcast on the news, and that the government kept these stories hidden for the most part. Accountability has been a serious issue when it comes to the damages that both the government and Catholic Church have caused.
Sources and ways you can stay up to date.
There are a few accounts I follow to stay up to date with accurate information provided by Indigenous people that will list below:
@wetsuweten_checkpoint on Instagram posts lots of informational content daily! @indigenousrising also posts a lot of current issues as well as information.
@decolonizemyself is another great account with tons of posts to learn from! This account also has tons of podcast.
These are just a few of the many creators out there who work every day to keep us up to date on the current news and events going on within Indigenous communities and how we can help. Spread awareness about this with friends and family!