Ancestral Whispers

A mass grave containing the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, was recently found on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential school, what was once Canada's largest Indigenous residential school. The Kamloops school operated between 1890 and 1969, when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978.

In the area now referred to as the United States, Native American boarding schools, also known as Indian Residential Schools, were established by Christian missionaries during the early 19th and mid 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Euro-American culture, destroying and vilifying Native American culture. These methods included being forced to have European-American style haircuts, being forbidden to speak their Indigenous languages, and having their real names replaced by European names to both "civilize" and "Christianize" them. The experience of the schools was usually harsh and sometimes deadly, especially for the younger children who were forcibly separated from their families. The children were forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures. Investigations have revealed many documented cases of sexual; manual; physical, sometimes deadly; and mental abuse occurring mostly in church-run schools. It doesn’t go past me that young Jesus would have not faired well in a Indian Residential School, being Indigenous and not speaking English.

Ancestral Whispers is dedicated to all the souls who lost their human bodies for being Indigenous at the hands of the colonizers running Indian Residential schools.