By Miriam Lafontaine Fay-Lisa Gagné, who hails from Muskowekwan First Nation in Saskatchewan, has complicated feelings about the word reconciliation. As a child she was placed into care with a francophone family in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, where she could only speak English. Her mother attended residential school, and her four siblings were lost to the 60s scoop — a period when governments in Canada oversaw the large-scale removal of Indigenous children from their homes to live with mostly with non-Indigenous caregivers. And today, Gagné said, Indigenous children in Canada continue to be overrepresented in the country’s child welfare systems. “We talk about reconciliation, but it’s hard to reconcile when you know about the politics of assimilation,” said Gagné, speaking from the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation gathering held in…
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