September 30^th—Orange Shirt Day, or National Day for Truth and Reconciliation—is an important time in Canada to stop and consider past forms of colonialism, especially in terms of the residential institutions (or “schools”) that Indigenous children, especially First Nations and Inuit, were forced to attend, as well as to reflect and resolve to decolonize and walk side by side.

Later today, I plan to post a more substantial reflection on the intersection of this commemoration with the Season of Creation. Indigenous voices have not left the two issues unrelated.

But for this morning, I want to give a sober reminder of the reality and legacy of government and church-led attempts to “kill the Indian in the child,” as one now-infamous letter from a government minister put it.

For me, perhaps one of the most powerful testimonies here—though they are countless—is a spoken-word, piano-and-orchestra piece by Samian, a member of Abitibiwinni First Nation who has often borne the burden of being dubbed Canada’s first Indigenous rapper.

Although Samian performs trilingually (Algonquian, French, English), the following music video is in French with English subtitles. As photographic documentation, memories, fill the screen, Samian delivers a meditative spoken-word poem by Jonathan Tobin.

Everything is translated in subtitles—except the title. Certainly this is deliberate. The title is nearly impossible to convey in English. It is a clever, impassioned, terrifying play on words: blanc de mémoire. But if I, as a native speaker of English fluent in French, try to move this phrase from one language register to another, what I’d say is white space in my memory: the horrible double meaning of the empty space, the everyday French term for a memory blank, something forgotten for whatever reason, a commonplace phrase; and the simultaneous second valence of blanc—white, a space made white in the psyche, in this context an obvious but arresting connotation of frankly and deliberately killing the Indigeneity in the child. Blanc de mémoire.