215
Yo, wiksas,
Art Credit: THE WITNESS BLANKET by Carey Newman
The truth is, there are seldom moments when something difficult isn’t happening. Getting up and moving on anyway, knowing the truth of our shared history, is what Indigenous people have done and will continue to do. We continue to educate ourselves in new ways and the old, educate others, care for our families, reconnect to family that has been taken from us and found their way back, go to work, love, engage in our ceremonies, mourn, make peace daily with our positions of knowing truths that others will not believe, laugh, work toward creating a better world that our next generations can thrive in.
This truth of the 215 that has now become undeniable is new to many but it isn’t new to us. It is still right to celebrate our connections made through our work with the opera sector at large. It is important to engage in ceremony to acknowledge the children lost and the families that have been missing them. It is also important to show that even though this is the reality we have lived with all along we have been here, and we continue to be here, to do the work.
Highlighting our relationships and work together is about acknowledging the importance of meaningful connection and friendship and sharing companies’ platforms with the First Nations, Métis and Inuit who deserve to be sharing that space. It is about listening to and taking the advice of those we have brought into the circle.
Acknowledging this latest truth and the importance of reading the reports and recommendations from the TRC and MMIW, in written form, could accompany the current plans. Calls to action #71 through #76 (posted below for reference) directly deal with the finding of and acknowledging the children that are yet to be found.
Gilakas’la,
Marion
Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action 71 to 76
71. We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
72. We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
73. We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
74. We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child's burial location, and to respond to families' wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
75. We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
76. We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies.
Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.
Art Credit: THE WITNESS BLANKET by Carey Newman