I am a survivor of the colonial system.

I was born in Sioux Lookout Indian Hospital. The zone hospital was a segregated hospital for First Nations people. By the 1960s, there were 20 fully functioning Indian hospitals in Canada—places that delivered substandard care. It was a form of apartheid.

My parents raised me in the bush. My first language is Anishininiimowin, also known as Oji-Cree. We lived with the seasons, hunting, fishing and trapping. We lived peacefully on the land, taking only what we needed when we needed it.

When it came time to go to elementary school, I was sent to an Indian day school, one of over 600 Indian day schools run and funded by the federal government across Canada. I had no choice. I had to go.

Once I graduated, I attended an Indian residential school for high school. I attended Stirland Lake Indian residential school, or the Wahbon Bay Academy, just outside of Pickle Lake. Run by Mennonites, it opened in 1971 but didn’t close until the 1990s. I attended Stirland Lake in grades 9 and 10. I lived in a small house, a dorm for the boys. There were four boys in my room. I had a bunk bed and only one drawer in a chest of drawers for my clothes. We were constantly watched by staff. They censored our letters home to our parents, reading every word we wrote. The older boys used to be heavily punished, sometimes for no reason. They would be beaten, they would be strapped, until they were black and blue.

I have no memory of grade 10. I see my photo in the grade 10 yearbook. I can hardly believe it. It’s as if the entire year has disappeared from my life. The pictures in the yearbook say I was there, but I remember nothing.

There’s also a photograph of a convicted pedophile, Ralph Rowe, who used to fly to the school on his float plane to administer to the Anglican boys. He was a notorious sexual offender with upwards of 500 victims.

When I flip through the yearbook, many of my friends, the faces I see staring up at me, have died. They have left too young for the spirit world—violent deaths, suicides, addiction. Why have so many left us? Their spirits were broken. They could not carry on. Why? Because of Indian residential schools, because of the abuse, violence and their demons imposed on them. They did not ask to be born into this history, one of oppression, one of subjugation, but they were. All over Canada, we see the horrors of this history that this country has largely chosen to ignore.

We are searching for our children, for our families, our family members all over Turtle Island. They are in the shallow graves outside old churches, residential schools, on what is now private property, and they are buried in the lands surrounding old Indian hospitals, TB sanatoriums and asylums. Over 10,000 suspected remains of children have been discovered all over the place on Turtle Island. Yet still, people deny it is true. They deny that Indian residential schools were horrible places. These deniers have websites and post on social media what has become an acceptable form of hate: denying the truth of Indian residential schools. This must end.

Since the government of Ontario was a party to children being in residential schools in the first place, since they were part of the system, the government of Ontario must do its part to combat denialism. Where is the public advertisement campaign about Indian residential schools, admitting the harms, and fighting against those who deny our history? Where is the province of Ontario’s reformed education curriculum, one that makes it mandatory, not a choice, to teach all children in Ontario schools from kindergarten to grade 8 that Indian residential schools happened and that our children, our loved ones, never came home from these institutions? Why isn’t the truth of our treaties being taught?

Speaker, as I reflect on today, these are the things that occupy my mind.

Ontario, you can do your part. Awake from your slumber and open your eyes to our true history. Only then we can walk forward together.

Applause.