Native people have suffered like this for centuries. Beginning in 1894, every Indigenous child in Canada was required to attend one of the country’s 139 Indian residential schools — segregated assimilationist institutions designed, in the words of one of their architects, to “get rid of the Indian problem.” My father, a proud problem, was born at one of those schools, St. Joseph’s Mission, in Western Canada; he was found just minutes after entering the world in the school’s trash incinerator by the night watchman.