Truth and Reconciliation by Susan L.

  I celebrate the courage of the hundreds of Aboriginal men and women who have come forth to share their stories of horrific abuse and neglect at the hands of those running the Canadian Residential Schools. It's a black mark against every Canadian that so many children were forcibly removed from their homes over far too many decades beginning in 1876. They would never see their families again. The last one was closed in 1996 (!).
  Roughly 150,000, or 30%, of Aboriginal children were placed in these schools run by nuns and priests. These helpless little ones were subjected to grave and criminal maltreatment.
  The statistics are shocking. One in twenty-five would die from malnutrition, disease, and other mysterious reasons. The death rate for soldiers in WWI was one in twenty-six. Children as young as five were committing suicide to escape the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse. They were buried in unmarked graves. Their families never knew what happened to them. Such poor records were kept, I believe these statistics may fall short of the reality.
  It was an attempt to assimilate aboriginal children into European ways, to wipe out every last trace of their own rich cultural heritage and language. The phrase "cultural genocide" has been used.
  The Truth and Reconciliation report has opened the door so healing can begin. It has taken six years and countless testimonies from the men and women who survived to draw up ninety-five recommendations. I pray part of those will bring the perpetrators before the courts to stand trial for their atrocities and their silence.
  But then, every Canadian who knew about them and turned a blind eye is just as guilty. Myself included. May God forgive me.
  "Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days. In the day that the Lord binds up the bruise of His people and heals the stroke of their wound." Is 30:26