When the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., Darcele Carroll watched her father, who had also attended residential school, experience survivors’ guilt.
“I was sitting here crying and asking myself as part of the new generation what can I do?” said Carroll.
That’s when Carroll decided to walk to Ottawa to raise awareness about the vast disenfranchisement that Indigenous people in Canada experience and to protest the Indian Act, a treaty that in the past has led to the colonization and harm of the Indigenous people.
The Healing Generations of Walkers march is set to begin on Sept. 1 at 8 a.m., starting at the Healing of Seven Generations office on Frederick Street in Kitchener and ending at Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. All proceeds of the march will go to the Healing of Seven Generations, an organization in Waterloo Region that assists survivors of the residential school system.
Canada’s history is interwoven with the disenfranchisement of Indigenous people from the Indian Act to the hundreds of murdered and missing Indigenous women that have still yet to be found, says Carroll.
James Young, Carroll’s husband and co-organizer of the Healing Generations of Walkers says that despite some of the perceived benefits of the Indian Act, it’s an unnecessary document that does more harm than good.
“It doesn’t actually protect us from anything it is giving,” Young said. “It’s supposed to protect anybody from getting Indian status that shouldn’t. Well, the simple fact is Indian status is just giving Indigenous people another number, like residential schools or the Holocaust in Germany. You know anybody who wanted to get through safe and sound had to show their number from the Holocaust,” said Young referring to the tattooed number concentration camp prisoners would get during the Holocaust.
“We have to show a paper that says we’re Native and that we do have rights to this land,” said Young. “We’re just another number to the government.”
Carroll says that having Indigenous people be seen as fully human is part of her goal in doing this walk. “Indigenous people are still not treated as people, how can Canada pride itself on diversity when there’s a population that you don’t care about,” said Carroll.
Less than a month away from a federal election, Carroll says that she is disappointed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not addressing Indigenous issues, calling his past remarks insincere.
“Jagmeet Singh is the only politician asking, ‘what can we do?’ said Carroll “He’s the one bringing up issues about clean drinking water that the majority of Indigenous people don’t have access to.”
Carroll says that she wants to see the government uniting people instead of pitting people against each other. “I want our government to stop trying to pit races against each other because in the end it’s not about the colour of your skin,” said Carroll. “There’s only one race, the human race, and we all bleed the same blood.
“We can make Canada amazing if we learn from our past, and admit to our past,” Caroll said. “Yes we have a dark history in Canada, but we can grow from it.
“I’m just one person with my husband trying to just bring hindsight to things that we can fix in Canada. Because I love Canada, I love my culture and I love my heritage, but we have so much we need to fix.”
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