kelle marie

not me crying when i saw this piece. every child matters, but i think something that also gets lost sometimes is the fact that the children who weren’t killed in residential schools grew up. traumatized. that trauma was passed down. every child matters, but so does the rest of the indigenous community. my grandma was one of thirteen children. five died in residential schools. four died before they were fifty because of drugs or alcohol which they used to treat their trauma or at least cope with it. of the thirteen, only my grandma and her baby brother johnny avoided being sent to a residential school, and they NARROWLY avoided the sixties scoop. my grandmother is the only living child of her parents. some couldn’t handle to trauma and took their own lives, some never recovered. and most of our language is lost. i live in the city where the first 215 children were found. this affects everyone. when i asked my boss to go home the day the children were found, he asked how this is effecting me? how can i know it was my family who was found? i almost quit my job that day.