Ghosts ~ A Poem On Residential Schools in Canada

Editor’s Note: This poem was written by past Defiant writer, Princess Asiedu.

We are ghosts that rest inside

the minds of the children who were deemed undignified.

Our memories haunt them to this day,

the belted beatings for having a say.

For decades, we had once been around,

dawned from a legacy that had been crowned.

We had separated families, claimed young lives,

stripped the culture that made them unique and alive.

The special languages they were gifted to speak,

we diminished in order to fit the white man’s critique.

Their identity swallowed by our bible

to “save your souls”, we said. “You are too tribal”.

“Take the Indian out of the child”. That was our goal.

By any means necessary, we destroyed what made them whole.

Our hallways overflowed with sobbing and screeching

from the children who now lie in the ground for refusing our teachings.

For years and years, we stood there proud,

never questioned, always disavowed.

And It seemed as though we would always be there.

Destroying a nation without any care.

Until one day, we were taken down,

our windows shattered, our ideologies, left to drown.

Though we are gone and no longer live in the world you see,

We haunt those very children, and the children who are yet to be.