Most refused to listen then, more understand now

Opinion

An open letter, to the children:

It’s late September in Manitoba and the leaves are turning golden. Autumns are beautiful on this land. I hope that, wherever you were, you were able to enjoy it. I hope that there were moments, and maybe more than moments, where you were able to leap face-down in the fallen leaves, to gather them to your nose, to breathe their earthy perfume of red and orange.

There is more orange in Winnipeg now. I wish you could see it. The signs and flags, dotted around the city, staked into lawns and hung over doors and posted as stickers in shop windows. That orange means people care about you and they remember. Even those who didn’t know you, because you lived your whole lives before we were born.

Some of those lives were long, some far too short, and most were somewhere in the middle. Some found joy, whether in spite or because of everything that happened. Some were imprisoned by the pain, haunted by the memories and the grief for what was taken away. There, too, perhaps most were somewhere in the middle.

You don’t need to worry about that yet. You were only children.

Maybe you were scared when they took you. Maybe you didn’t understand. Maybe, in the silence of those long nights away, you ached for your family, your language, your home on the land. I know you did the best you could. It shouldn’t have been your job to be so brave, to find your own ways to adapt.

“Times were different then.” That is what we sometimes tell ourselves about the residential schools, the policies that enabled them and the motivations of the people who built them. It’s a thought that serves as comfort and absolution; it opens up the distance between now and then, us and them — or us and you.

We are not so far apart. Maybe times were different then; but in every time, children are the same. They deserve to be loved, cherished and protected. They deserve to be kept with their families, in their communities. They deserve to be in the care of those who are determined to keep them safe.

Still, it’s true that much has changed and that those of you who came long before may not recognize the Manitoba of today. If you were here now, you might gaze in wonder at a premier who looks like you; at a city that is dotted by more of your art, your words and places for your ceremonies.

Maybe none of that change would have happened were it not for you.

What I mean is this: many of you spoke, and kept speaking, and in time, people began to listen. It took a very long time and whole lifetimes passed in the waiting. But you were as brave then as you always had been, brave to hold the truth, even when few people really wanted to believe it.

You told us about your lives before. About the songs your parents sang to you, about growing up on the land, surrounded by the stars and the trees and eating wild game over the fire. Many of you told us you remember how it felt free to be out in the world, learning how to fish and hunt and build canoes, soaking in the stories of your people.

For some, the damage to your family and community had already sunk too deep to have many happy memories of childhood.

Not all of you had that kind of life before, though many of you did. For some, the damage to your family and community had already sunk too deep to have many happy memories of childhood. You were a survivor from the moment you came into this world and so you remained.

You told us about the fear, the loneliness and the dislocation. You told us about the abuse, about the things the adults did to you that left scars where no one can see. You did not deserve those things. No child does. They were not your fault; they were the fault of those who put you in the path of harm and looked away when they should have kept you safe.

You told us about how you returned to a community where you could no longer communicate with your elders. The words that once danced on your tongue now no longer came — forgotten or, rather, erased. This was among the many things that belonged to you, and should not have been taken.

It’s OK if you were not able to hold onto these things. It was not your job to hold on. You were only children.

And you also told us about warm memories, though these were fewer and farther between. You told us about teachers who changed your lives, skills you learned, the friends you made and kept for the rest of your years. I hope you had joys such as that, because every child deserves them.

But for too many of you, those bright spots never came.

Most of you never had the chance to tell your stories or, at least, not to those who most needed to listen. Some of you could never tell them of the pain; I’m sorry you never found a place safe enough to hold them. Others tried and discovered with frustration that the rest of us weren’t ready to hear them, and for that, too, I am sorry.

There are still some who don’t want to listen.

We collected your stories, as many as we could, and created a centre at the University of Manitoba to hold them safe for all the next generations.

But those of you who could speak, and those of us who heard you — we are trying to do better. We’re trying to move forward together, understanding the price paid for the chance to make change.

It isn’t an easy process. It is a long journey that has been, and will always be, deeply imperfect.

We collected your stories, as many as we could, and created a centre at the University of Manitoba to hold them safe for all the next generations. We read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action and thought about how we can bring them to life in our small part of the world.

We thought about how the struggles of children today are connected by a straight line to the struggles of those before; how every generation is shaped by the trials and tribulations of the last. We thought about how striving for a healthier future is the only way to honour the most painful lessons of the past.

And every year, on Sept. 30, we pause for a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. A day of ceremonies and events; a day to wear orange, because it’s brightness speaks to the light of your spirits. A day of reflection, a day of learning.

A day to remember that every child matters.

You do. And you always did.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca