Open letter to
Niki Ashton
Carolyn Bennett
Marc Miller
Justin Trudeau
Humanity
Humility
Respect
Love
Please lower the flag over Parliament for 215 days to honour the 215 children discovered. Children, taken from their parents, with the promise of education, and acknowledge today that the children never went home again. The children were also community members, friends, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbours.
Canada needs to do better.
We cannot run from the past–we must turn and face it.
Take responsibility.
Honour the dead.
Their deaths should never have happened–we cannot even call them accidental deaths because they happened at the hands of the people in caretaking roles teachers, nuns, priests, adults, authority figures. It is a Human RIghts tragedy that children died in a place that promised to prepare them for life.
Canadians feel this loss deeply.
Your reactions and responses will live in the minds and hearts of Canadians for generations to come.
Please lower the flag, please offer resources to find out who these 215 children belonged to, please offer governmental support to protect the burial site as sacred, please authorize investigations of all previous Residential School sites.
You have the ability and finances to do so–Canada wants you to do so. Do you have the will? If the children were discovered in any other part of the world, Canada would call on that country to repatriate the bodies and honour the families. Will you hold yourself to the same standard that you would expect from leaders around the world?
How do you want to be remembered? Your career in politics will not go on forever. What will your legacy be? Choose humanity, humility, respect, love. Choose honour, truth, responsibility, human rights, kindness. The world is watching. Please set aside any politics and do the next right thing.
While you weren’t there personally when the deaths happened, you are here now and your response matters–just as every child matters.
How do you want to be remembered?
Sincerely and with a heavy heart,
Carie McIntosh
