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Letters: It’s not enough

Take a stand and invite your fellow cabinet members to join you
memorial take down
Ladner resident Erin Mawhorter Alger and a throng of volunteers were busy early Tuesday evening disassembling the Kamloops Residential School memorial on the steps of Delta City Hall.

The following letter was sent to Delta MP Carla Qualtrough and copied to the Delta Optimist.

I have just read the Delta Optimist June 3 edition where in you are quoted as saying “my thoughts are with the residential school survivors and with the families of the children whose lives were taken.”

While this may be a heartfelt expression of your grief, I’m sure you are slowly becoming aware that expressions of grief are not enough.

For too many years, even decades, federal governments have done everything in their power to thwart, obfuscate, deny and ignore the plight of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. While you are expressing heartfelt sympathy, your Liberal government is going to court to avoid paying compensation to Aboriginal “day students.”

Canadians are fed up waiting for your government to fulfill its promises - clean drinking water, reconciliation, scrapping the “Indian Act” and accepting the UN proclamation regarding Indigenous people to name a few.

Sympathy and apologies don’t get it done, concrete commitment and action do.

Take a stand and invite your fellow cabinet members to join you.

If you are not sure how to do this, I suggest you seek advice from a few elders, maybe Jim Sinclair or JWR.

You will not get my vote as long as you sit in your cabinet post and offer nothing more than useless platitudes.

T Townley Smith