Soul's Notes (TL;DR): For the months of July, August, and September, Soulful Greetings will be donating 10% of all profits to Indspire, a national Indigenous registered charity that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for the long term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada.
I briefly alluded to Canada's dark past in one of my earlier blog posts, but learning of the discovery of 215 children's bodies at just one of hundreds of residential school grounds was a huge wake-up call and reality check for my otherwise unbridled patriotism.
The news of unmarked graves of innocent children in Kamloops, BC was one of the most gut-wrenching things I've ever had to read about. I attended a vigil the same week and bawled my eyes out hearing from residential school survivors and the incredible amount of abuse they endured in the name of assimilation and religion. I was visibly disturbed for days after. The Indigenous Peoples of Canada have been horribly mistreated and continue to be deprived of basic human rights like access to clean drinking water. This is not my Canada.
(Image source unknown, found circulating on social media.)