Amber Bracken took this photo on June 19, 2021, on Tk’emlups te Secwepemc land along Highway 5 in Britich Columbia.  These crosses bear children’s clothing, to commemorate the loss of so many children’s lives while in the care of the Residential School systems.  It was a raw time for many as it brought so many emotions and questions for us all.  Amber Bracken is from Edmonton Alberta and has been working as a freelance photojournalist for The Narwal.  It was at the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota protests that Amber won her first award about the oil pipeline, winning The World Press top honours in 2017.

This photo struck me by its incredible beauty, but also how this brought me to where I am today.  It was after the detection of as many as 215 graves in Kamloops British Columbia, that we as Canadians began to reflect on what this discovery meant.  It was my children, Blain and Brooke that were especially affected by this.  I felt like I needed to know more, to help them understand, to see if I can bring understanding.

My daughter Brooke posted this on her Instagram on June 24^th, 2021.  She was impacted on discovering how our people were treated, how so many children could have died, and that parents and families never knew what happened to their children.  It is no wonder why the Indigenous community is fractured throughout so many generations of trauma.

We all want to know where we were born, what were our ancestors like, what is the cuisine of where you are from.  Can you imagine that the very ground that you have lived on for more than 10,000 + years was taken from you and then all your children were taken in hopes of colonialization of the Indigenous community.  The Indigenous community were told that their children must assimilate to survive in this new world and give their children up to go to the residential schools. 

I reflect to listening to an elder explain her family’s description of those times.  She asked,” Can you imagine coming home from work and all the children were gone.  No little ones playing outside, laughing voices, and the games being played as they explored.  All gone and the air was silenced.”

This journey will involve a lot of reading and researching.  I will continue to write while highlighting stories and trying to understand the pain of so many of the Sixties Scoop who lived a life of not only abuse, but also loss of culture and language.