Kaanada Giisaadendamookaazo
A voice is heard
in the Mtigwaki,
full of mourning
and great weeping,
the Nii’ina-ikwe
weeping for our children
and refusing to be comforted,
because our children are no more.
No more by their thousands.
Robbed of family,
and identity,
and language,
and heart,
and innocence.
Lives torn, uprooted,
displaced,
beaten,
and raped,
and abused.
Disencultured,
assimilated to the grave,
yet living,
hollow.
And the Prime Minister pretends
to say “Sorry”
to Canada’s First Peoples
for one hundred years
of geneocide.
Author notes
On June 12, 2008 the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ‘officially’ apologised for more than a century of abuses suffered by Canadian natives at residential schools set up to assimilate indigenous peoples. Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly removed from their families and enrolled in distant boarding schools. Many of the social problems experienced among First Peoples today are traced to this era of disenculturation.
Anishnaabe words:
Mtigwaki: Land of the woods
Nii’ina-ikwe: Native women
Nagadawaso: Child neglect
Giisaadendamookaazo: pretend to be sorry
Kaanada: Canada
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