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A story for #OrangeShirtDay: One Friday morning in September 2014, @NDP MPs were asked not to return to their ridings in order to force debate on #MMIWG, with @RomeoSaganash taking the lead.
You can watch the whole thing here starting at about 12:47 https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20140919/-1/13745
You can watch the whole thing here starting at about 12:47 https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20140919/-1/13745
Context: Harper was 3 years into a majority and dismissing calls for a #MMIWG inquiry. I worked for the House Leader so I had a front-row seat to confused and angry Conservatives watching 100 NDP MPs show up to vote on a dead Friday sitting. It was exciting and a rare win.
After forcing the vote, @RomeoSaganash started to speak. Never heard the lobby quieter. Pages hushed another, attendants stopped clearing mugs, everyone just watched. This part, Jonish's story, broke that silence when several of us started crying. #OrangeShirtDay
I was 28 and had never heard a residential school survivor tell their story until that day. The Ottawa public schools I attended covered 'les autochtones' in the same unit as 'les coureurs de bois' and then never again. That wasn't an omission, it was colonialism. #OrangeShirtDay
Similarly, residential schools weren't an accident, they were a strategy hatched by a system built on oppression and racism. That system still uses the state to oppress and silence Indigenous people, just with new strategies, none of which are accidental either. #OrangeShirtDay
Six years have passed and I think @RomeoSaganash's speech has stuck with me because I got to see a crack in that system. A Cree residential school survivor-turned-lawyer-turned-MP forced it to shut up and listen, if only for a moment. It still gives me hope. #OrangeShirtDay
