This is the way that I feel when my own children leave and go off at school in the morning. I miss them. When they went back to school after the Christmas break, I cried when they boarded the bus. Some parents might think me silly, but I love them and I want to be with them. Handing them over to any stranger for care is a complete act of trust.
I imagine it as only a very small and bitter taste of what it might have been like for so many aboriginal parents when their children were taken away to residential school. So many of them…never returned.
I’m so grateful that at the end of the day, my children come home to me.
This painting is available for acquisition.
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Educate yourself by reading more about the Residential School System in Canada, and the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings. Write your Member of Parliament. Be involved in your own country and the lives of those around you. Make a difference as an artist. You have a voice in so many different ways. Please use it to do good things with your gifts.
A Lost Heritage: Canada’s Residential Schools – a digital archive of the CBC
Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society
My friend, Bev Jacobs on the floor of the Canadian Parliament, responding to the National Apology for the residential school system:
