“Can you imagine what it would have been like, when you were 5 years old, to be torn away from your parents and taken to a far-off place where they cut off all your hair, changed your name, forbid you to speak the only language you knew, and treated you like you were a ‘savage’?”

I spoke these words yesterday to a stranger yesterday on the eve of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. But let me back this up…

My friends and I were taking a green Uber to Animal Justice’s Canadian Animal Law Conference, I was in the front seat chatting with the driver when we passed a big banner for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

The driver, a sweet young man fairly new to Canada from India, asked me what this day was all about. I started to tell him that it’s a day when we recognize the terrible mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and the attempted destruction of their culture by the Canadian society over 100+ years.

I then started to talk about the residential schools, and he suddenly jumped in saying he had been hearing that the unmarked burial sites at residential schools were a big hoax. To my horror (and the horror of my friends in the backseat), he started parroting different conspiracy theories about there not actually being any bodies where First Nations communities had claimed there are.

My heart dropped… Here was a seemingly nice young guy, who obviously went down a rabbit hole of residential school denialists and was now spouting off their horrible narrative.

Before I could help myself, “Yeah, that’s bullshit”…came out of my mouth. It came out calmly and matter-of-factly, but I could feel the need to clobber that idea out of him instantly welling up in me.

Then, I looked at the fellow beside me, remembered that my first impression of him was that he seemed like a sweet person, and tuned into how much he was trying to connect.

And that’s when I softened and just started asking him questions like the one I started this post with…

“Can you imagine what it would have been like, when you were 5 years old, to be torn away from your parents and taken to a far-off place where they cut off all your hair, changed your name, forbid you to speak the only language you knew, and treated you like you were a ‘savage’?”

His eyes got wide and he said, “Oh no…that would be so terrible. Why would the parents have let them go there?!”

I told him children were forcibly removed from their families and communities…it was the law.

I then asked him, “Can you imagine how it would feel as a parent to have your child ripped away from you and sent far away where you weren’t allowed to see them and had no idea what was happening to them?”

I continued, “And imagine if that child never came home and you never found out exactly what had happened to them? And the people taking care of them didn’t even care enough about them to mark their grave with their name?”

This young man started to get visibly upset. He asked, “Why have these people not been found and punished?!”

That’s when my friends in the backseat who had been doing their best to stay patient and let the convo up front play out, both blurted out, “Because it was EVERYONE…the church, the government…the whole country!”

Our young Uber driver shook his head in disbelief.

Well, by the time this fella dropped us off, I believe he had a very different view of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Putting himself in the shoes of Indigenous children and parents in history managed to cut through the toxic programming he had been exposed to.

And that’s ONE way truth and reconciliation happens…one conversation at a time.

Today, let’s commit to listening, mourning, having conversations, and finding ways to take action to help in the hard work of healing.

Today and always, let’s consider how each of us, in our own way, can learn, amplify the voices of Indigenous folks, support their right to self-determination, and be in solidarity with them as they heal their communities and protect the land, air, waters, and non-human animals.

A powerful action you can take today is to DONATE to an Indigenous-led group to support their efforts in healing and empowering their communities.

Here are just a few suggestions:

Grassy Narrows – Support this community suffering the ongoing impact (including the early deaths of their young people) of mercury poisoning from a paper mill dumping 10 tonnes of mercury into Grassy Narrows’ English-Wabigoon River system: https://freegrassy.net/

Native Women’s Association of Canada – This org supports women and families of many Indigenous nations: https://nwac.ca/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation-campaign

Wet’suwet’en – Support Wet’suwet’en’s fight to uphold Indigenous sovereignty and stop resource extraction practices that threaten the lives of future generations: https://unistoten.camp/support-us/donate/

Thank-you for taking the time to read, my Friends.

Image credit: National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation