Probably my most unpopular opinion

[sabotabby]

World War I killed 20 million people.

The Great Influenza epidemic killed between 17 million and 100 million during and immediately after.

The odds of a soldier dying in WWII were 1 in 26.

The odds of a kidnapped Indigenous child dying in a residential school at the same time was 1 in 25.

As a culture, the choices we make around whose deaths are mourned and whose are forgotten are significant. 

Comments

[lokifan]

100%. I was at a vigil two years ago for refugees who've died trying to make it here, through Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, and the most memorable speech talked about Remembrance Day as a day of forgetting, ignoring the people currently dying from war (and many, maybe most, of those who've died in war in the past).

[sabotabby]

I don't want to go into too much detail about what happens in schools generally but I've been in situations more often than not when it's some white teacher droning about how kids today have no gratitude to the soldiers who died in war for freedom with kids in the room who have actually experienced war firsthand.