Orange Shirt Day honours survivors of dark chapter of Canada’s history

By Kelly Anne Smith

NORTH BAY—Mary Wabano, the Director of The First People’s Centre at Canadore College and Associate Dean Indigenous Studies, shared her story during an Orange Shirt Day gathering in the main foyer of Canadore College Friday, September 28.

“In my immediate family, my grandmother was a Residential School Survivor. Her name was Margarite Wabano. She was on the floor of the House of Commons when then Prime Minister Steven Harper gave the apology for Residential Schools,” Wabano recalls. “Both my parents are Residential School Survivors. I have older siblings that are Residential School Survivors. And a nephew that attended the last Residential School here in Canada. That school closed its doors in 1996.”

Wabano continued to recount the intergenerational trauma in her family.

“So, in my family, we are four generations of Residential School Warriors who went through Residential Schools in both Northern Ontario as well as in Saskatchewan…The impacts of Residential Schools I know only too well as a result of being first generation survivor myself. I won’t go into any of those details, but I know there has been a lot of other stories shared by Residential School Survivors themselves and their families. We continue to heal from these impacts as individuals, families and communities.”

“The Orange Shirt Day is just one of many ways in which we honour and recognize a very horrific and dark chapter in Canadian history, certainly in our lives of Indigenous people and First Nations people.”

“So it’s important for me to make other people aware—to understand—why the conditions are the way they are in our families and in our communities and to recognize the ongoing disparities that continue to exist in education, in health care, and the justice system and many other systems across Canada.”

“It really boils down to access to our lands—what’s little left of our lands and resources. And if you think what’s happening globally, although Indigenous people make up perhaps four percent of the world’s population, we are the ones fighting for the rights of water, for land rights, and for the rights of animals. These are things all of us need to survive on this planet.”