WINNIPEG (MANITOBA, CANADA)
CBC News
February 16, 2018
Residential school survivor Mary Jane McCallum pens open letter to controversial Ontario colleague
[Includes a PDF of McCallum’s letter.]
The senator from Barren Lands First Nation, Man., is taking Ontario colleague Lynn Beyak to task over her controversial defence of Canada’s residential school system, and her refusal to strip letters supporting that stance from her Senate website.
“No amount of good times can ever override the bad times in the institution, especially if it involves sexual abuse,” Sen. Mary Jane McCallum wrote in an open letter to Beyak shared online on Thursday.
“No amount of good memories can override the negative experiences I have gone through in the past sixty years due to the ‘teachings’ of residential school.”
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‘Telling our stories is one way of taking back our power and spirit. Through voicing our stories we are telling Canada our hearts had been broken.’
– Sen. Mary Jane McCallum
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In the letter McCallum equates her 11-year experience in residential schools with “spiritual genocide” and being imprisoned, and suggests the Ontario senator’s apologetic stance on the system has “inflamed attitudes against Indigenous citizens.”
She also writes of the importance of letting Indigenous survivors lead the discussion on residential schools.
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