Silenced

Indigenous children were ripped from their families, their cries for home silenced as they were forced into the cold, unforgiving walls of residential schools. Government agents and religious authorities stormed into communities, taking children from their mothers’ arms, from the safety of their elders, from the only world they had ever known. The anguish of parents, powerless to protect their children, echoed through the land, but their pleas were ignored.

Inside those schools, the children faced a nightmare. Their languages were beaten out of them, their traditions crushed under the weight of a system that sought to erase their very identity. They were taught to hate who they were, told that their culture was worthless, their existence a sin. The warmth of their homes was replaced with cold dormitories, the embrace of their families with the harsh hands of strangers. Many endured unimaginable suffering, abuse, starvation, and sickness. Far too many never made it home.

The scars of these atrocities run deep, carried in the hearts of survivors and the generations that followed. The grief of those stolen children and the families left behind still hangs heavy in the air. It is a wound that refuses to heal, a history that demands to be remembered, even as communities continue to search for justice, truth, and the spirits of those lost children who never returned.