Truth and reconciliation? How about the truth first Canada...

I have purposely been staying quiet about what’s going on in this country because quite frankly I am disgusted with people who continuously think it is okay to have complete disregard for their fellow humans and spew their hate all over the place. This goes completely against what I stand for; love, acceptance and tolerance for each other. Compassion and kindness. Empathy. We all have a story, we ALL deserve to live a peaceful, fulfilling life. Everyone wants to be seen and heard, everyone... but y’all are making yourselves look like ignorant racist assholes that nobody wants to listen to. I honestly have no idea what is happening because it pains me to see the hate directed at the Indigenous people of this country and the lash back at the non-Indigenous people of this country ... I can’t even read an article or watch a video without seeing hundreds of racist slurs and ignorance toward each other ... so I don’t. On the surface it looks like it’s about a pipeline... when it’s about something much, much deeper than this but nobody cares to listen to one another and are too worried about being right and proving the other side wrong. You want to know how many times in my life have I heard that native people are drunks, natives are lazy, natives should just stay on their reserves or just be blown up and killed, natives need to get jobs and work and pay taxes like the rest of Canadians, native people have a free ride, get everything handed to them, blah blah... millions of times. You know how many times in my life I’ve been called a squaw, a redskin, Pocahontas, wagon burner, Squanto or a dirty little Indian? Thousands of times. I grew up ashamed of my skin colour and heritage because the natives I heard about were so intolerable by their fellow Canadians that I didn’t want to be one. I watched as fights would break out between the native kids and non native kids in school and the native kids stop coming to our school because of it. I have grown up in a privileged home and personally had no idea of the deeper issues that fed all of this hate but always felt so uncomfortably stuck in the middle. Have you ever thought to sit and listen to a story of your neighbor? And for one second stop thinking of yourself and actually listen to what they have been through? We all have a story. We all deserve love, kindness and compassion. All. Of. Us. My mother worked as a nurse for 40 years, my brothers and I all went to school and have jobs, my husband’s family all worked for a living, my husband owns a business, a lot of our cousins and aunts and uncles also have jobs. We are all Indigenous. We also all have had our share of struggles and challenges but we still move forward. We are still here despite this country wanting to rid themselves of the “Indian problem”. There are many more Indigenous families out there that are contributing to this country and there are many that still struggle from intergenerational trauma that need love and support and there are many that are simply trying to return to the way of their people that was taken away from them. Personally, my spirit guides have been pushing me in that direction as well. We don’t all know what we’re doing, we don’t know what we don’t know and it’s not us versus them... that’s an old way of thinking. We can change that within ourselves first and find some love, compassion and tolerance for one another before we can affect any change. I truly hope that my children don’t have to grow up listening to this garbage that I have had to listen to my whole life but it’s sad to say that we seem to be a ways off yet. There’s much to be done, but it starts with each one of us and our family unit and then our community. Return to the love... beneath all of the hurt, pain, trauma and suffering... the heart knows the way. Come on Canada, we can do better. Be kind.

I believe we can do better, I have to 🙏🏽❤️