Write your MP to investigate Canada’s residential schools

Content warning: brief mentions of deaths, sexual and physical abuse, family separation

Last week, the remains of 215 children were discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School. Forensic evidence showed some of the children to be as young as three years old.

Canada has a brutal history with regards to the Indigenous communities whose land we occupy.

Residential schools were set up as a means to erase Indigenous languages, communities, and ways of life by seizing children and forcing them into institutions that separated families, cut their hair, brutally punished any signs of difference, assigned numbers and strict timetables to daily life, and were rampant grounds for rape and physical abuse.

The purpose of these “schools” were as a tool for a dual process of cultural assimilation and genocide. These “schools” were run by Christian (mostly Catholic) organizations that were in large part supported by the federal government, although some operated independently.

Finding the bodies of two hundred and fifteen children is a testament to the ruthless measures employed by these “schools” to subjugate whole peoples.

Cross Lake Indian Residential School, portrait of students, nuns, and priests, 1940. Credit: Library and Archives Canada (e011078116-v8)

Like many Canadians who feel at a loss as to how to respond to this massive event, I am wondering how to better listen to and support First Nations communities in these times of reckoning. While any process of truth and reconciliation is complex, one step that is available to me and many others is using our political voice to pressure our leaders to continue this investigation.

In this spirit, I wanted to share a letter I am writing to my MP to support the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations’ call to undertake further investigations in the 139 officially-operated residential schools (and others that were not officially sanctioned). Retired senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation committee Murray Sinclair notes that such an investigation should be overseen by the parliamentary committee to ensure transparency.

Please feel free to affix your signature to my letter and send it to your own MP. While sending any letter carries your point, it can be more effective to use your own words. In case you are new to writing your MP (as was I), I wanted to share a few tips that I used in drafting my own letter below.

Writing tips:

1. Have a clear call to action. This is not the place for subtext. Articulate a specific demand, and frame it prominently in the letter (usually at the beginning or end).
2. Use space wisely. Like us, MP’s and their assistants are not likely to faithfully read each word when faced by walls of text. Paragraph breaks ensure that your separate points are each given importance. Readers prefer paragraph breaks (which also means they are more likely to read your whole letter).
3. Moral arguments are appropriate. This is the place to express moral imperatives using the ethical measures you typically refer to. While your MP is technically your employee, hired or elected to serve their communities, your letter is also a rhetorical work designed to impart conviction. Your MP will want to heed their constituents to keep their job. But if you can also enhance their internal conviction in the rightness of your cause, it can drastically galvanize their further action.
4. Emotion words are valid. I struggled with this one, as a white-identified settler Canadian, my reactions are not the primary issue here. The chief issues are the lost lives, the grieving and healing of bereaved communities, and the suppressed colonial history and present of Canada. This is the time for people like me to listen, learn, and offer support. But at the same time, this brutal history and present implicates all Canadians. To engage fully in the process of truth and reconciliation, we need to acknowledge and appreciate the magnitude of these heinous acts.
5. Brevity can be effective (but also maybe not?) I also found myself struggling with this point. I ended up writing quite short letters, because I know there is a greater chance that they will be read in their entirety. But I also wrote briefly because I felt at a loss for words in front of these sobering issues. I want to educate myself more. If you are better informed, have a personal connection, have more ideas or simply more to say, use your voice in your letter!

I want to dedicate my platform to more of this ongoing work of truth and reconciliation in Canada’s colonialist legacy regarding First Nations peoples in the upcoming weeks and months. If you are also interested in this process, please feel free to share your ideas and resources in the comments, connect with me, use your voice.

Below is the letter I will be sending to my MP:

Dear (MP’s name),

After the horrific discovery of the bodies of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, I call on you as one of your constituents to support an independent investigation overseen by a parliamentary committee into the other residential school sites.

This investigation is essential to pay long-overdue respect to the victims of these crimes, to bring some measure of closure to their mourning families and communities, and to uncover more evidence of Canada’s genocide in the ongoing process of truth and reconciliation.

Please use your voice and your efforts to expedite this crucial work.

Thank you,

(signature)