Thread by @KamloopsArchaeo

So the racist pieces of shit who did this are our Kamloops neighbours. Now what? #TRC #TruthBeforeReconciliation 1/

I heard @tult7 on CBC condemning this as “small minded hate crime”, saying he hopes this racism isn’t representative of Kamloops.

I don’t know if I can be as generous as Kukpi7 Ignace. The racism is real and everyday and ingrained. In Kamloops, and the rest of Canada too. 2/

I talk to community & business groups, educators & bureaucrats abt Indigenous history/rights/ all the time. It’s an *understatement* to say people are ignorant of Indigenous issues.

It’s better characterized as flat out denial. A preference for ignorance. And it fuels racism. 3/

Live a kilometre from one of the longest running residential schools in the province and don’t know about it? Really? 4/

Live in an apartheid municipality and didn’t know about it? Hadn’t thought about those lines that divide us? Really? 5/

Live on stolen land—not ceded, not sold, not treatied, but just plain stolen—and don’t know about it? Haven’t thought how that came to be? What it means for people? Really? 6/

Spent your life looking at a reserve to which people have been relegated in jurisdictional apartheid and don’t know about it?

Didn’t think that makes for inequities? Don’t think of that as structural racism? Really? 7/

Heard about abysmal graduation rates for Indigenous students and didn’t wonder why?

Read about outrageously rates of child apprehension and didn’t care why?

Hear about women and girls disappearing and don’t ask how that can continue? 8/

See disproportionate numbers of Indigenous people living homeless, wracked by substance abuse, subject to racial profiling (and related over policing/incarceration), and didn’t think about why that is? 9/

Live in a place that honours members of the federation clear on the other side of the continent and ignores the sovereignty of Indigenous people on whose land we have built our wealth? Ignores that we’re squatters in Secwepemculewc? 10/

If, in 2018, “regular folk” are ignorant of all that, and still regularly protest that “Indians get too much free stuff”, should “get over it”, or other gross misunderstandings of the colonial relationship, that fault lies with us.

TRUTH BEFORE RECONCILIATION, FOLKS. 11/

Canadians—in Kamloops and everywhere else—need to start taking responsibility for some of this learning, ffs.

And not just in schools- we CANNOT wait another whole generation to get informed. Grown ass adults need to get educated. 12/

Reconciliation can’t be just top down. Are we really sitting here waiting for Trudeau to hand us a done deal?

TRC calls on Canadians, at all levels to do this. Teach the truth.
Learn the truth.
Then lead with it.

THAT’S How we fight anti-Indigenous racism. #TRC57 13/13