[ad_1]
Upon studying Sydney Brownstone’s piece on Northern State Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, I couldn’t assist however understand that our historical past of erasure has an extended legacy and one which continues right now [“Lost patients,” July 16, A1].
The marginalized and disenfranchised individuals of the twentieth century have been routinely warehoused in establishments like Northern State. Upon their dying, their existence was largely denied. Parallels will be drawn between the insurance policies of sequestering Native People and Indigenous Canadians in residential boarding faculties to purge them of their tradition. The data of the fates of those Native youth have been equally withheld from public view with the intention to decrease legal responsibility and embarrassment in regards to the deplorable therapy they have been subjected to.
Right now, we’re opening a brand new chapter of erasure with the rising epidemic of denial of the document of institutional racism. The tradition wars and denial of racial historical past try for a similar obfuscation that may in the end go away our populace with no information of the civil rights wrestle. This nation’s historical past of slavery will finally be categorised as a “conspiracy idea” by those that limit our faculties from instructing factual historical past.
Jeffrey Pollack, Kingston
[ad_2]
Source link
