Raise the Hammer

Join Kevin Annett for this special showing of his film, and a discussion:

Aboriginal Land Rights and Residential Schools

What’s the connection?

Come and hear Kevin Annett speak about his experience ministering in BC: the stories of people who survived the residential schools, the children who disappeared or died there, the land, and the churches and our governments.

See this award winning film

Unrepentant

Wednesday May 23 7 pm McMaster University Medical Centre Hamilton Rm 1A5 Tickets reserved in advance $5 grannysaga@gmail.com or 905-296-0396 At the door $10 (People with status free)

Breaking News ... May 12, 2007

Native People Occupy Government Office in Vancouver, Win Concessions

On Friday, May 11, 2007, thirty five native men and women, including residential school survivors, peacefully occupied the Vancouver offices of the federal government's “Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada” (IRSRC), and demanded from IRSRC officials a full disclosure about the fate and buried location of more than 50,000 children who died in residential schools across Canada.

“Your department claims there are no death records for these children, but we have copies with us, right here” stated Rob Morgan, a second generation residential school survivor from the Nishga-Gitksan Nation, and a spokesperson for the occupiers.

Morgan held up records from a 1909 report by Dr. Peter Bryce, showing that over half the children in Alberta residential schools had died in one year, saying,

“If the government and the churches don't start telling the truth about what happened to these children, and bring home their bodies, we will escalate this action and occupy churches and government offices across the country.”

Eyewitnesses to the burial of children at residential schools also spoke during the two hour long occupation, which was organized by The Friends of the Disappeared, a community group in Vancouver's downtown east side.

“I helped bury a little Inuit boy when I was at the Edmonton residential school, in 1961” declared Sylvester Green. “There's a big burial site right next to the site of the old school. Why hasn't the government ever cared about those kids who never came home?”