The Lost Boys
(and Girls).
How could such innocent ones be so poorly mistreated, right here in Canada?
So just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. That was the famous line attributed to the movie “Jaws”. The residence of Providence were just beginning to feel that the monster shark threat was gone forever. Old wounds were starting to heal, and life was good, again.
Well for the survivors of Canada’s infamous Residential Schools life was never good to begin with. Perhaps life was good when the children were still at home with their natural parents on or off reserves. Things certainly turned ugly the day the Government agreed with the Priests and school boards that the “Natives” needed to have the “Indian” taught out of them. In the very first place “Indian” was a derogatory reference to the proud First Nations Peoples of this land, but that is another entirely dedicated topic to be blogged about another time. For now I want to express my grief and shame over the latest chapter of the neglected and badly abused children who were pulled yelling and screaming from their natural parents homes and hauled off to far away remote residential school buildings that would scar them for life.
So much has been said and written on the topic, and I cannot even scratch the surface with my blog, but just when we thought we had heard the worst, just when after years of waiting the Government of Canada finally gave the seemingly sincere apology, we now are learning about a deepening and further element to the tragedy.
I’m watching my regular late night news cast that rhymes with the BBC, and the lead story is about how it has come to light that children from the residential schools who were malnourished were elected as candidates for the experimentation of vitamins and treatments by Government and big pharma labs.
Look, lets think about this: You wake up early in the morning and help your wife, or visa versa to feed the kids breakfast and get them off to school. You have a bite to eat yourself and then you hop into your car and drive on down the highway to your Government office where you are on a team of scientists who are developing new vitamin to help children who are in need of nutritional intervention. Oh, there’s one small catch here, your job involves using Aboriginal children on that Residential school house out on the outskirts of town, using them as your lab rats. Oh that’s ok, those children have no feelings, nor do they have hearts and minds like your own white children. For some reason you have learned to discount their little lives and bodies as being non human. Or have you? How is it possible that you have become so numb to the effects of your ignorance and pain inflicted on these poor young children caused by your own hand? How is it possible that you can come home to your own children at night and not feel shame for what you have done all day?
I am reminded of the Nazi monsters who used young Jewish children in even worse ways within the death camps, some of those monsters lived with their families in homes attached to the outer walls of the death camps. Living true Doctor Jeckle and Mr Hyde lives every day.
Today in our society there are living amongst us Nazi Monsters whose identities are forgotten or well hidden. We are angry and sickened by them but some how we allow them to walk as free men. The same can be said for the monsters who either designed, allowed or even implemented the use of experiments on the already neglected bodies of the children of OUR residential schools. Ours because OUR Government set the wheels in motion for such shame. I say with finger firmly shaking in the air, SHAME on you! Shame on your Government, Shame on you doctors, shame on you teachers employed within the walls of the buildings of such pain, and more than any SHAME on you who implemented the terrible treatments that have scared those young lives, many of whom are alive (barely) and having to live with the memory of you and what you did to them. To you who participated in the implementation of such tragedy, you have only God to answer to and your own conscience.
My mother once said that when there is an person with substance abuse issues there is probly a person within them who has great trauma they cannot deal with. Many Aboriginals live on our streets and under our bridges because their lives have become victim to the pattern of abuse which was so badly inflicted on them by our leaders and teachers and persons of supposed respectable titles in days gone by. For me I choose not to look down on the out casts of the First Nations, I choose to look to them with support and love, and compassion. I extend from my heart to theirs the feather of peace and healing. God never intended for them to be hurt. I am certain beyond a doubt that God’s own heart is broken over the use of his own name to further the pain of those little children.
May we as Canadians have compassion. May we offer broken hearts to those surviving victims. May we offer hope with the promise never to allow such things to ever happen again within our borders.
May there be no more Lost Boys or girls again.
May God help us.
RM
Read more about this:
http://www.robertmcaffee.com/aboriginal-residential-schools.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/editorials/Shameful+research+starving+First+Nations+communities/8676588/story.html
(and Girls).
How could such innocent ones be so poorly mistreated, right here in Canada?
So just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. That was the famous line attributed to the movie “Jaws”. The residence of Providence were just beginning to feel that the monster shark threat was gone forever. Old wounds were starting to heal, and life was good, again.
Well for the survivors of Canada’s infamous Residential Schools life was never good to begin with. Perhaps life was good when the children were still at home with their natural parents on or off reserves. Things certainly turned ugly the day the Government agreed with the Priests and school boards that the “Natives” needed to have the “Indian” taught out of them. In the very first place “Indian” was a derogatory reference to the proud First Nations Peoples of this land, but that is another entirely dedicated topic to be blogged about another time. For now I want to express my grief and shame over the latest chapter of the neglected and badly abused children who were pulled yelling and screaming from their natural parents homes and hauled off to far away remote residential school buildings that would scar them for life.
So much has been said and written on the topic, and I cannot even scratch the surface with my blog, but just when we thought we had heard the worst, just when after years of waiting the Government of Canada finally gave the seemingly sincere apology, we now are learning about a deepening and further element to the tragedy.
I’m watching my regular late night news cast that rhymes with the BBC, and the lead story is about how it has come to light that children from the residential schools who were malnourished were elected as candidates for the experimentation of vitamins and treatments by Government and big pharma labs.
Look, lets think about this: You wake up early in the morning and help your wife, or visa versa to feed the kids breakfast and get them off to school. You have a bite to eat yourself and then you hop into your car and drive on down the highway to your Government office where you are on a team of scientists who are developing new vitamin to help children who are in need of nutritional intervention. Oh, there’s one small catch here, your job involves using Aboriginal children on that Residential school house out on the outskirts of town, using them as your lab rats. Oh that’s ok, those children have no feelings, nor do they have hearts and minds like your own white children. For some reason you have learned to discount their little lives and bodies as being non human. Or have you? How is it possible that you have become so numb to the effects of your ignorance and pain inflicted on these poor young children caused by your own hand? How is it possible that you can come home to your own children at night and not feel shame for what you have done all day?
I am reminded of the Nazi monsters who used young Jewish children in even worse ways within the death camps, some of those monsters lived with their families in homes attached to the outer walls of the death camps. Living true Doctor Jeckle and Mr Hyde lives every day.
Today in our society there are living amongst us Nazi Monsters whose identities are forgotten or well hidden. We are angry and sickened by them but some how we allow them to walk as free men. The same can be said for the monsters who either designed, allowed or even implemented the use of experiments on the already neglected bodies of the children of OUR residential schools. Ours because OUR Government set the wheels in motion for such shame. I say with finger firmly shaking in the air, SHAME on you! Shame on your Government, Shame on you doctors, shame on you teachers employed within the walls of the buildings of such pain, and more than any SHAME on you who implemented the terrible treatments that have scared those young lives, many of whom are alive (barely) and having to live with the memory of you and what you did to them. To you who participated in the implementation of such tragedy, you have only God to answer to and your own conscience.
My mother once said that when there is an person with substance abuse issues there is probly a person within them who has great trauma they cannot deal with. Many Aboriginals live on our streets and under our bridges because their lives have become victim to the pattern of abuse which was so badly inflicted on them by our leaders and teachers and persons of supposed respectable titles in days gone by. For me I choose not to look down on the out casts of the First Nations, I choose to look to them with support and love, and compassion. I extend from my heart to theirs the feather of peace and healing. God never intended for them to be hurt. I am certain beyond a doubt that God’s own heart is broken over the use of his own name to further the pain of those little children.
May we as Canadians have compassion. May we offer broken hearts to those surviving victims. May we offer hope with the promise never to allow such things to ever happen again within our borders.
May there be no more Lost Boys or girls again.
May God help us.
RM
Read more about this:
http://www.robertmcaffee.com/aboriginal-residential-schools.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/editorials/Shameful+research+starving+First+Nations+communities/8676588/story.html
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