For Monday’s class we had to read an article called The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack. This was a very sad and heartbreaking story. The article told the story of a twelve year old Ojibway boy named Chanie Wenjack who had been attending Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. The school was four hundred miles away from his home and Chanie became very lonely and homesick. As we know, many children tried to run away from boarding schools and almost all got caught or died before they could made it back home. Chanie decided he wanted to run away and go back to his father, but he never made it. He died from hunger and exposure less than a week after he left the school. This is just one heartbreaking tale of how so many Native children died at the hands of boarding schools.
It was also a very common occurrence for boarding schools to have cemeteries next to them. It is absurd that a school for children would need a place to bury the deceased beside it, but it was reality. Many children died from abuse, malnourishment (often accompanied by overwork), and disease. This took place in the United States just over a hundred years ago! This is a horrible crime committed by the U.S. government and the people in power. Native people deserve a sincere apology and heavy compensation for their losses at the hands of boarding schools.
Jonathan July 5, 2018
I completely agree with you Avery. I was especially applaud at the way the United States governments apologized to the Native American people. In the apology they made it sound like it was not a big deal, it was something that happened in the past. The United States government also did not really address about repairing the relationship between the Native Americans and the United States government. How do we know that the United States government has learned from their mistakes and will not do it again, especially if they don’t make it a big deal? The answer is we don’t know because of the lack of sincerity in the apology. Saying sorry just to say it with out the understanding and reasoning behind making the apology for does not make it an apology, but a meaning less gesture.