Statement from ARAWG Co-Convenors: Kamloops, BC Residential School

On the weekend of May 30, 2021 news was released that the bodies of 215 children were found in unmarked graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School. While this may have been news to the settler population of Canada, this news was common knowledge within First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities. Amid an unearthing of the 215 bodies, our collective words seem weak and useless. Our grief cannot bring back those lives. We need to act. We need to do differently. First Nations, Metis and Inuit historic relations with a colonial and white supremacist government has been fraught with disposition and oppression, with a clear intent to assimilate. As a result, genocide was and continues to be committed towards First Nations, Metis, and Inuit within Canada. As you take a moment of silence to mourn the loss of 215 young lives at the hands of a colonial and white supremacist structure, we ask that you take the next moment to determine a course of action. While truths continue to be told and evidence begins to mount outside of the oral traditions of First Nations, Metis and Inuit, we invite you to engage in an individual and collective course of action. Individually, increase your knowledge base of legislation and the colonial systems that imposed oppression. Read the entire Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, not just the Action Items. Collectively, review and revise your own systems of oppression to encourage more diversity and equity. Today, as the Anti Racism Advisory Working Group tasked by Regional Council, we call on the Region of Waterloo and Regional officials to take remedial action. Make it your mandate to establish an allocation of funds to address Indigenous realities in our Region that are grounded in oppression and inequity. Make it your mandate to seek a more intentional working relationship between regional services and Indigenous peoples and groups. Today, as the Anti-Racism Advisory Working Group of the Waterloo Region, we ask you, as individuals across our Region, to take account of the ways in which your actions or your inactions, your silence, or your words, have implicated you in injustice. Today we ask you to pause for a moment and listen to the voices of lives lost at the hands of a colonial and racist system and then do differently. We need both individual and collective action in order to realize meaningful change for all nations across Turtle Island (Canada).

ARAWG Co-Convenors

Kathy Hogarth

Donna Dubie