06/01/2025
๐
When we gather like this and speak of the residential schools, we are not speaking only of sorrow โ we are speaking of strength.
Yes, many of our people were taken. The children were pulled from their homes, their languages stripped away, their braids cut, their ceremonies forbidden. Some of them never came back. Some returned, but carried a heavy burden. And yet โ they endured. They held on, even when the world tried to make them forget who they were.
And look around now. The fact that we sit here, in our languages, with our songs, with our teachings rising again โ that is the proof of their strength. We are the living prayers of those children. We are the ones they dreamed of when they held on through the long nights.
You see, they tried to break us โ but they could not. They tried to bury our ways โ but they forgot that we are like the seeds beneath the snow. When the sun returns, we rise again.
The last of those schools closed in 1996 โ not so long ago. But since then, the healing has begun. Our languages are returning. Our ceremonies are alive again. Our young ones are learning the songs that once were whispered in secret. Our elders are speaking truth, and the world is listening now.
We carry their stories not to be trapped in sadness, but to honor the love that never gave up. We carry their songs forward โ so that our childrenโs children will never again be taken from who they are.
This is not only a story of suffering. This is a story of survival. Of healing. Of rising.
And so we say to those little ones who went through those doors:
We hear you.
We carry you.
We honor you.
And we will never forget.
Because your spirit is alive โ in us.
โKanipawit Maskwa
John Gonzalez
Standing Bear Network