merelygifted:

The children’s graves at residential schools in Canada evoke the massacres of Indigenous Australians | William Pengarte Tilmouth | The Guardian

First Nations people across Australia are mourning with Canadian First Nations families as evidence mounts of hundreds of deaths of children at residential schools.

We are standing with our Canadian First Nations brothers and sisters on these recent horrific discoveries.

The massacres, forced assimilation and cultural genocide in Australia is something this country has yet to face up to. My own experience of being removed from my family and taken thousands of kilometres away to a mission home is part of that history.

The massacres, removal of children, poisonings and atrocities inflicted on Australia’s First Nations peoples were designed to exterminate us, to erase the entire race of my people on this planet.

I think about the day I was taken every day. The process was a continuing act of colonisation and assimilation and the aims of it was akin to being buried alive. That is how I feel every day. …

… Open your eyes, your heart, and your chance to change how we treat each other, and how we treat our First Nations people, and honour our history, our truth.

As an Arrernte Elder, I and my family and community have a strong obligation to stand together in times of discoveries like these. To stand in solidarity, in truth telling, in solemnity, and mark the time this situation occurred.

It was the aspiration of the assimilation policy and programs to allow us to die a thousand deaths every day. Telling my story every time is perpetual grief. There is no respite. There is no relief. There is no respect, and no recompense.