Kamna,

Great art. I remember the stir it caused.

As a Canadian, I would like to think that I am more than aware of the transgenerational grief suffered by our Indigenous peoples.

But a couple of caveats are due.

One, in 1999, Canada finally finished its Gladue Commission: 23 years ago!

From it, many laws were enacted.

Since one of its focus was on the Indian Residential School Debacle and its sorry legacy, all of Canada's courts MUST admit what is called a Gladue submission, and mitigate the sentencing of an Indigenous cultured person who can trace their heritage back to an ancestor who suffered at the schools.

Currently, as of 2014, there are at least 14 tribal judiciaries, operating separately from The Crown. These courts have a variety of sentencing options.

More are on the way.

In 2006, The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement between Canada and approximately 86,000 Indigenous peoples was ratified. It was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history

The first payout was $1.6 billion plus an additional $3.1 Billion as of 2021.

Canada also fully funded an inquiry into Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women, close to $100 million.

A country wishing to deal with its past in such a fashion is not racist.

Do we have far to go? Of course.

As to the unmarked graves.

This is one of the tougher ones.

Most of the graves were in fact marked by simple white wooden crosses. Which of course over time rotted away.

It didn't help that the Catholic Church was ordered to compensate survivors and release all of its historical data: where are the graves, how many are there, what are their names.

The Church has not complied and has indeed spent a considerable amount of money fighting it.. Therefore, it is impossible to know how many graves were marked or unmarked...none were mass graves, as was originally claimed.

A cynic might opine that it's sensationalized in order to preserve the mantra that white people are all sociopathic colonizers.

As to the medical experiments and sterilization.

There is no excuse. Horrific when one considers that Canada fought against a regime in WWII which practiced such despicable atrocities on people.

Starving Northern Cree children in the early 50's as an experiment was as sociopathic as the CIA paying Canadian psychiatrists to test the effects of LSD on unwitting patients during the MK Ultra experiments.

It was sociopathic as countless doctors lobotomizing or sterilizing women with overactive libidos. Or infecting black men with syphilis.

IOW, systemic abuse, enabled by repressive legislation is not new and not just limited to Indigenous peoples.

My Irish mother suffered grievous psychological and physiological injury during her time in an English orphanage.

But it is true that Indigenous people on Reserves were not allowed to vote until 1960, before that they had to give up their Indian status.

However, most if not all of those who legislated or committed such despicable acts are dead.

I am against labelling a whole country as being racist when the vast majority of us still alive were and are not culpable.

HIstorical context is everything and not every conflict between an Indigenous person and the larger society is because of racism.

That has led to elevating victimhood above accountability and denying the resilience of many Indigenous people and ignoring those egalitarian white people who also fought to right a grievous wrong.

However, if we as a people were to do nothing about the sins of our country?

Then of course let the branding begin.