Remembering Indigenous children taken from their families and culture
** Trigger Warning: readers are advised that this article deals with the subject of Indian Residential Schools. If anyone is experiencing distress or pain as a result of this article or their residential school experience, please call the Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419, 24 hours a day.
By Kelly Anne Smith
NORTH BAY— Solemn songs were heard in the halls of North Bay’s Canadore College as students gathered to remember Indigenous children who were forcibly taken from their parents to attend Indian Residential Schools.
400 orange shirts were given to students, courtesy of the Canadore Student Council and the Canadore Aboriginal Student Association.
A student of Indigenous Wellness and Addictions Prevention at Canadore College, Bethany Williams belongs to the Ojibwe and the Potawatomi nations. Her grandfather attended Day School. She explains the importance of Orange Shirt Day.
“It is about honouring the survivors of Residential Schools and the ones that didn’t survive. It was a part of colonization to kill the Indian in the child,” she states. “The difference between Residential Schools was that students were allowed to go home at the end of the day but it still has the same effect. They weren’t allowed to speak their language and they were converted to Christianity. We are also recognizing how it still affects families today through intergenerational trauma.”
Mary Wabano wears an orange shirt on September 30. She is Canadore’s Associate Dean of Indigenous Studies and the Director of Canadore’s First Peoples’ Centre. A member of Attawapiskat First Nation, Wabano says it is time for Canadians to learn their own history.
“We have a lot of work left to do in early years, elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools. There are a lot of Canadians that are not aware of Canada’s history and its treatment of Indigenous People. If you are not aware, it’s time to make yourself aware. It’s 2019. It’s time to deal with the legacy issues,” expresses Wabano. “I think we talk about colonialism as something of the past without recognizing how ongoing policies and structural challenges continue to make life difficult for Indigenous People, for Indigenous learners in our schools.”
Wabano does think of some Indigenous students as blessed to continue to have their language and speak it in the classroom.
“Canadians don’t know how significant that is in 2019 that we have Indigenous people fluent in Cree or Ojibwe. It is a mark of resiliency, of strength that should be honoured in such a way that we are mindful of the past that we come from.”
Wabano describes her own grandmother, who only spoke Cree, as strong in so many ways.
“It wasn’t known to me that she was a Residential School Survivor because it wasn’t something we talked about in our families. Our parents didn’t speak to us in our own Cree language. Many of my siblings and cousins lost our language. We spoke it to a very minimal degree and so, we were not able to have a full conversation with our grandmother. I had to talk through a translator, my mother, to be able to hear my grandmother’s stories. She lived to be 111 years old.”
Kelsey Borgford, a citizen of Nipissing First Nation, is also a Canadore College student of Indigenous Wellness and Addictions Prevention and active with the Canadore Aboriginal Student Association. Borgford wears orange to honour her family members that were forced into Indian Residential Schools.
“A lot of my great aunts and uncles went. My grandmother didn’t attend but she felt the effects of it. I come from grandparents Earnest Couchie and Mary Ann Grand-Louis. They hid their kids to make sure they didn’t go through that. There were some of my family that did go through it though. They lost a lot of their language and their culture,” she explains. “My grandmother didn’t have her siblings to communicate with. She wasn’t able to practice the traditional ways. She kept her language but didn’t pass it along to my mother or me.”
About 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children and their families were impacted by the 139 Residential schools that operated from the 1800’s to 1996. Many of the children experienced horrific mental, physical and sexual abuse.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has revealed the names of 2,800 Indigenous children who died in residential schools. Another 1,600 children died but have not been identified.
Orange Shirt Day is held in the fall season as remembrance to when government agents would take children from their families and deliver them to Indian Residential Schools.
The orange shirt is reference to the new shiny orange shirt given to six-year-old Phyllis Webstad by her grandmother to wear on her first day at residential school in 1976. The shirt was immediately taken away. She never saw it again.