Across the country a parade of orange shirts took to streets to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation or Orange Shirt Day. There were speeches everywhere, marches, new statues or memorials unveiled. It was 16 years ago that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to Indigenous people, and the country for the horrors of residential schools forced on Indigenous children. Horrors that spanned generations. For almost one hundred years between 1867 and 1996, Indigenous children were taken from their homes, from their families. The Canadian state abducted more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their parents and forced them into these schools as part of a campaign of forced assimilation. They were subject to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and the official register says 3,213 died. But it didn’t…
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