A List of Their Names

September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, commemorating children who were forced into Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

Today on Facebook I saw the list of 2,800 children who died in these schools. There are at least 1,600 more unnamed children who died. My chest feels heavy with grief. I remind myself to soften my shoulders. To keep breathing.

A 50-metre-long cloth with the names of Indigenous children who died within Canada’s residential school system was unveiled Monday during a ceremony at the Canadian Museum of History. I opened the list and made it part way through the letter A. These are not their true names. Indigenous children were not called Albert and Agnes and Alice.

I stopped. I could not just scroll through. Each name represents a child who died.

In the early 90’s, I participated in the Names Project. The AIDS crisis had been with us since the early 1980’s and I had been working at AIDS Calgary Awareness Association since 1987. There was such stigma and hate against gay men and many people with AIDS died in the closet. The Names Project consisted of quilts made to honor people who died of AIDS. There were quilts for famous people, like Rock Hudson. There were quilts for people I knew personally. We brought the Names Project to Calgary and laid them out on the square at City Hall. Knowing their names and seeing these…