Pulling kids from parents at border too familiar

Dear editor: As the days go by, I am becoming more and more incensed by what is happening at the border between the United States and Mexico. There is a terrible parallel between what is happening now and the actions of the Canadian government when it mandated residential schools for Indigenous children.

The results of the traumas inflicted on little children several generations ago—being forcibly separated from their parents and then often abused in the mostly churchrelated residential schools—are still being felt in Canadian society, not just in the small communities from which they were taken.

This action is now being called “lateral violence” because the pain and suffering inflicted on helpless children had no end; it was and is passed down from generation to generation.

An attempt to rectify some of the damage is what the Truth and Reconciliation process is about in Canada. Indigenous people are finally being listened to; their stories are heart-and-soul rending. Check out the movie Indian Horse; there you will also see extreme abuse and little children in cages.

In today’s world, the little ones at the U.S. border have already experienced more trauma and violence than children should ever have to endure. To that cruelty is the added trauma of being separated, sometimes forcibly, from their parents, held in cages and some being sent far across the country to live with strangers. It may be months, or years, before they are returned to their families.

As a psychotherapist, I know the effects of the traumas are being inflicted now will never be erased. Trump’s policy of children and parent separation can be seen as psychologically damaging or even a “wiping out” of an entire generation of children and families.

Can it be called psychological genocide— the wiping out of the innocence of a child and replacing it with endless pain, fear and anger?

Geneva Ensign-Langin, West Kelowna