Indigenous Youth Colonialism

When indigenous youth see their stories, history and traditions ignored, they feel that they are not important in the Canadian fabric. The school system needs to begin to understand the damage they are causing Indigenous children and be willing to change the curriculum to reflect the stories of colonization and its impacts on Aboriginal peoples. Reconciliation needs to be addressed among educators of primary school and they must share the information of the federal and Provincial’s governments role in the history of genocide towards indigenous people, their culture, language and communities. Many children, cannot comprehend the effects of intergenerational trauma passed down from generations before. Nevertheless, it still needs to be addressed …show more content…
The residential schools in Canada were designed to “kill the Indian in the child”, assimilate Indigenous culture and way of life. The sixties scoop was designed to take children away from their families and put them into non-indigenous homes. Now Indigenous children are still being taken away and put into the foster system. Ever since contact children have been stolen and put into the dominate society because Indigenous perspectives are not respected.
The heavy impact of assimilation has led to building resiliency in reclaiming what was taken from Indigenous peoples and culture. To overlook and become educated in their ways of life through their elders, community, and language. Understanding life before westernized contact and how to heal with spiritualty and natural medicine. Indigenous traditional ways of knowing is seen as rituals and magic because there is no English term that translates. Educators need to understand the different connection to the world that Indigenous people …show more content…
The governments control over Indigenous children have been thriving since residential schools, structural violence is what caused the Indigenous crises in the first place. There are high rates of suicide, alcohol, drug abuse, unplanned pregnancy, sexual abuse, poverty and the list goes on. The situation of Indigenous people living in North America (Turtle island) needs to be recognized and understood by putting our past into history books Most importantly the governments institutions need to identify Indigenous people’s unique needs, as it was their lack of understanding our importance of our culture-traditions to be carried on to future generations that caused a lot of challenges that Indigenous people face