Txa'nii K'abatgüüłga Łikłut'iksit - Every Child Matters

About this campaign

At federal Indian boarding schools across North America, thousands of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and the only homes they had ever known. They were beaten and brutalized, abused and starved, and many never made it home. “Kill the Indian, save the man” was a policy meant to break our spirit in order to separate us from our lands and from one another. Many of the survivors of that sadistic policy no longer speak our languages or practice our culture. Those were our grandmothers and grandfathers and they carry that shame and trauma to this day. And so do we. Like all of you, we were shaken by recent headlines of the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves in Canada and the United States. The Haayk Foundation is dedicated to saving the language that was torn from our grandparents’ mouths at those federal schools. We feel called to support this 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), and their efforts in Alaska. NABS was created to develop and implement a national strategy that increases public awareness and cultivates healing for the profound trauma experienced by individuals, families, communities, American Indian and Alaska Native Nations resulting from the U.S. adoption and implementation of the Boarding School Policy of 1869. This t-shirt sale is a special online fundraiser. Every penny raised will go directly to NABS. The design, created by Ts'msyen artist David Robert Boxley, represents the generations of children taken away to these boarding schools, the murdered and missing, the survivors, and their descendants. The Sm'algyax (Ts'msyen Language) says, Txa'nii K'abatgüüłga Łikłut'iksit - Every Child Matters. We cannot turn away from these horrors. The souls of our lost children need peace, our families need healing, and the Western Nations need to take responsibility for these atrocities. If you are moved like we are, please take part in this fundraiser by purchasing t-shirts, making donations, and sharing it with your community. We will overcome our shared trauma and we will demand Truth & Reconciliation. We will reclaim our language, our culture, and our power. For only love can heal what hatred has broken. Wayi wah.