‘Where’s our Alan Kurdi?’ asks Angus, advocate for indigenous people
Perhaps you have heard the story of how Rosa Parks helped start the civil rights movement. Well, we are the children who have been sitting at the back of the school bus our whole lives. And we don’t want to stay there anymore.
— Chelsea Edwards, 14, Attawapiskat First Nation
Charlie Angus, New Democrat MP and advocate for First Nations people, visited Kitchener and Waterloo this week, where he eloquently reminded us about the tragic stain on our country’s face.
By every measure, First Nations people in Canada have been treated with brutality, denied their basic human rights, living in substandard conditions, struggling with shame and suicide, while provincial and federal levels of government delay and disagree about whose problem it is.
It’s a Canada many of us don’t recognize.
Angus’s book, “Children of the Broken Treaty” details the struggles at the Attawapiskat First Nation, which is part of his riding of Timmins-James Bay.
At University of Waterloo on Thursday, he broke down and almost wept as he spoke about some of the brave teenagers who fought for a school: Chelsea, and the late Shannen Koostachin, who died in a car accident at age 15.
Shannen became a national figure when, at 13, she confronted the government and spoke on Parliament Hill about the elementary school in Attawapiskat.
Both young women, raised in the poverty of that remote reserve, had spoken out powerfully for their right — a basic human right as defined by the United Nations — to get a decent education in their own community.
Elementary students at Attawapiskat were going to school in portable classrooms because the elementary school was full of contaminants and mould.
But those temporary buildings shifted in the ground. The windows let in freezing cold air, and the toilets were right in the middle of the classroom. There were no funds for computers or libraries.
But the powerful movement from Attawapiskat forced the government to build a new school, Angus said.
“She said, if young people stood together, they could make a difference.”
The new school was finally built. Earlier this year it closed again, when a sprinkler broke and it flooded. It’s awaiting repairs.
Angus said he has great faith in Canada’s youth. His visit to this area was prompted by letters he received from students at Queensmount Public School in Kitchener. The students had heard about his role in Shannen’s story, and invited him to visit.
“The young generation — wow! They get it,” he said.
But there is still so much entrenched colonialism in the existing system.
For example, a two-year-old First Nations boy with hearing problems who lives in northwestern Ontario was given a referral to an audiologist.
But a bureaucrat had to approve that medical visit. And it was denied on grounds it was “not necessary,” Angus said.
Imagine if our kids had to get approval from Ottawa every time they needed to see a pediatrician. It’s unthinkable.
Angus noted that when Canadians saw Alan Kurdi, the drowned boy whose photo galvanized the world to care about Syrians fleeing war, they did something. This country welcomed a huge wave of more than 25,000 refugees from Syria last year.
“Where’s our Alan Kurdi?” Angus asked.