Indigenous youth honour Indian Residential School Survivors and the children who never made it home with memorial of orange flowers

Trigger warning: readers may be triggered by the recount of Indian Residential Schools. To access a 24-hour National Crisis Line, call: 1-866-925-4419.

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — A group of Indigenous youth recently planted a memorial of orange flowers to commemorate the 215 children found at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site at AlterEden’s Minogin Gitigaanehs — Gardens Growing Well project in Thunder Bay.

“It is important to me that we’re planting these orange flowers in our garden to honour all of the children who never got to go home and to the survivors of residential schools,” says Myla Jacob, Indigenous youth peer ambassador at the Minogin Gitigaanehs — Gardens Growing Well project and McDowell Lake citizen, in an e-mail comment. “My hope for these orange flowers is that they’ll bring more awareness to residential schools and symbolize resistance that this is something that can’t just be forgotten.”

Gillian Leitch, designer and director at AlterEden, says the memorial of orange flowers will become a permanent part of the Minogin Gitigaanehs complex, which includes two greenhouses and a garden with a variety of boreal forest plants at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School (DFC) in Thunder Bay.

“As the youth were generally gardening, this news of the 215 children, some as young as three years old, was something they were aware of so they wanted to pour their grief of that into a memorial through flowers,” Leitch says. “Also, it’s going to be built into the seed libraries — in fact, we are already assembling seed libraries for several other communities that are going to have this orange flower component with an explanation of why.”

Jacob and eight other youth are involved this year with the Minogin Gitigaanehs project, which was developed about three years ago as a memorial garden for First Nations high school students who died while pursuing their education in the city.

“The importance of being able to work on the Minogin Gitigaanehs — Gardens Growing Well project, to me, is that I’m part of helping the environment while being able to practice leadership and expressing my ideas,” Jacob says. “This program has not only taught me new skills related to gardening but also has taught me to use my voice in which I think is very important for my future as an Indigenous youth.”

Leitch says the youth, who have been involved with the Minogin Gitigaanehs project for four years, took on “a whole bunch of initiatives” this year.

“They started many different species of Indigenous food plants over the early spring,” Leitch says. “And then they took a lot of initiative to get the greenhouses and garden complex weeded and cleaned up, cut the grass and planted the greenhouses with their food plants and sourced some of the plants also from garden centres in Thunder Bay.”

Verlin James, program director at AlterEden and McDowell Lake citizen, says the Minogin Gitigaanehs project was originally funded through the Steelworkers Humanity Fund and the Anglican Healing Fund. It is currently being funded through the Canada Services Corps, a national movement to build a culture of volunteer service that empowers young Canadians to make an impact.

“The goal of the program is to create and develop volunteer service opportunities within the community,” James says, noting that the youth acquire about 120 service hours per year through the Minogin Gitigaanehs project. “My emphasis at this point is to get the youth to develop their own voice and their capacity to essentially express themselves. The one way it has been going on so far this year and the way it will carry on is they’ve been developing their own projects. For example, the orange flower memorial was a concept developed by the youth.”

Information about the Minogin Gitigaanehs project is posted online.