Today we marked one week since learning of the #215children found in a mass grave at the Kamloops IRS.  For survivors and their loved ones it has been a week of grieving, a week of supporting each other, and a week of ceremony.  For each of you, signatories to this petition, you paused to ask the government to call a National Day of Mourning for the Lost Children of Residential Schools.  As we reach closer to 200,000 signatures, your comments, your reasons for signing have been read by survivors and it warmed their hearts.  One survivor, a sister who attended residential school with her three sisters told me "it so helps, knowing people understand why we are the way we are, some of us are so called survivors, and some have been lost for so long".  Your signatures made a difference.  

This week I listened to stories, it is part of our teachings to sit and listen to stories, to learn and hear so we can pass on the knowledge.  I heard the story of a father trying to answer the questions his 6 year old child was asking him after learning about the #215 Indigenous children.  The child asked his father why the children were taken and would he be taken and die too?  The pain of such a question rests with each of us.  I listened to the story of sisters torn apart by residential school, separated for decades, still unable to speak of the horrors of what they experienced to each other, each alone in the reliving and pain.  I listened to the story of a young boy of 5, now a man, who never left the residential school for one day until the age of 15.  All those years not allowed to leave, a prisoner for his whole childhood, his language and spirit beaten out of him.  Each time I listened to a story I knew I was hearing it for a reason, and that reason was to be able to share what I heard with others, with you, the person that took the time to pause and sign this petition.

And tonight I watched as a canoe family held aloft a carved racing canoe, carrying it across the fields of the Kamloops Residential School, a racing canoe beautifully carved with enough seats for so many little ones, singing ceremonial songs, they carried it to call their little ones home, to a place where children race canoes, sing and laugh together with their families, the way it should have been.