Mr. Speaker, in the orange shirt story, Phyllis Webstad writes about the abuse she endured as a Secwpemc girl at a residential school, denied the ability to wear her favourite shirt, to speak her language, to practise her culture. After a year of abuse, the story concludes with a reunion with her granny, when Phyllis had “everything she needed” and she never went back to the residential school again, but not every child was as lucky as Phyllis.
The shocking truth of those words was laid bare when we learned from the Secwpemc about a mass grave of 215 indigenous kids, some as young as three, on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. That is both shocking and heartbreaking, speaking to the horrific legacy of a racist colonial policy of assimilation that took children's lives.
We cannot turn back the clock, but we must help with the healing. As a nation, we must determine the full scale of residential school deaths that took place across Canada. We must support survivors and properly mourn and memorialize those innocent souls taken. The memory of those who were not as lucky as Phyllis deserves nothing less.