Michael Bentley

I'm prepared to go to jail over this. My grandmother Rita Pete went to St. Mary's Indian Residential School. She experienced terrible abuse. As a consequence, she struggled with alcohol use most of her life. My mother was born with FASD as a consequence of her using alcohol to cope with her trauma. I am Chief of my community Chawathil First Nation. I am working to address the longstanding impacts of these past policies through renovating homes, building new homes, creating childcare, and growing businesses through economic development. I have interviewed people who went to Indian Residential Schools. I have interviewed people who believe Indian Residential Schools were awful, horrible schools, meant to remove the Indian from the child. I've also interviewed people who believe they were well intended, generous investments by Canadian taxpayers meant to assimilate a society and had shortcomings. Like with many things, the history is dark, complicated, and with any policy that existed for a long time, across a whole country - there were different experiences. No one story tells us everything. No report shares the full experience of the individuals who went. No commentator today can disprove someone's lived experience with statistics. The path forward is not to criminalize speech, questions, or debate. The path forward is empathy for past attendees. The path forward is truth based on facts. The path forward is real conversations. The path forward is to lean into complexity. If the government criminalizes this, then I will be a criminal for having these conversations. If I am a criminal by the laws definition, then I am committed to going to jail over this.