Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, said George Santanyana in a speech before the House of Commons in Britain, in 1948, following Cicero’s quip that to be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. The gist of either is the sub-text of Douglas Farrow’s insightful take on the history of the residential school system, its tragedies, its failures, and who is responsible for what went wrong, not least the injustices done to children and their parents, and the state’s role in violating the sanctuary of the family, evils which the state is now, sadly, repeating in a different key. We must be clear and precise not only about history, but about morality, culpability, and, not least, our terminology.
And, on that note, for more specifics about the graves, see this helpful summary:
Six things the media got wrong about the graves found near Residential Schools