Our hearts hurt.

As people who work in an organization whose purpose is to respond to the impact of poverty and brokenness across the global south. Drought, conflict, war, rape, displaced people, poverty and hunger. We try to bring hope, and new opportunities. And we believe we are making a difference.

Yet right in our own backyards, in this country we call home, evidence of genocide comes to light again. 215 children found in mass graves behind a government sponsored, Church run residential school. As Christians, and as Canadians… It’s so ironic, and painful. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded that Residential Schools were “a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.”

Lets call it what it was – genocide.

May God forgive us. May we choose to live differently. Thank you my aboriginal friends for allowing me to listen to your stories, and your pain.

– Wayne Johnson, Executive Director of Tearfund Canada