National Truth and Reconciliation Day
The high school I attended was where the rural indigenous teens were bused. Every day they had to get on a bus before 7am for a 40 minute ride to the school. Classes started at 9am but they had to come extra early because the bus driver had another route to attend to closer to the school. They also had to wait at the school as the bus drove the closer kids home and then picked them up around 4pm. This means their school day was roughly 7am to 5pm. In comparison my day was roughly 8am to 4pm. There was a part of the school that was “theirs”. No one but “the Indian kids”, as we ignorantly called them, went there before school, at lunch, or after school. And I mean NO ONE. The rest of us were either scared, anxious, or so unfamiliar with those kids that it never really occurred to us to go there. Don’t get me wrong, there was never any violence there. No “others” who may have inadvertently wandered into that part of the school were ever harmed or abused in any way. As I recall I walk