Fort William First Nation honours Indian Residential School Survivors

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM — Fort William First Nation’s St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School Survivor Project held their fourth annual Honour Gathering on May 25 in memory of 215 potential burial sites at the Kelowna Indian Residential School and Indian Residential School (IRS) Survivors.

“It’s a good opportunity for us to come together and continue that acknowledgement of what has happened with the history of Residential School and acknowledging the Survivors that attended St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School here locally and particularly Fort William First Nation members that have attended the St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School,” says Fort William Chief Michele Solomon. “This event really brings together the Survivors and the community of Fort William First Nation in a fun way for kids to have some fun and be with the Survivors and the rest of the people in the community.”

Chief Solomon says the orange t-shirts that were handed out at the gathering featured an image of the sculpture of four Residential School children that was carved by Doug Little in 2024.

“They have it on the t-shirts and they had it on the sweatshirts that they had made for the Survivors gathering they had just a couple of months ago,” Chief Solomon says. “Doug has been doing carving for many years that I’m aware of and his partner (Liz Esquega) has been leading this work in our community with the Survivors, so it is a beautiful commemoration. I’m sure it’s one of more pieces that will be done to commemorate the Survivors and commemorate the experiences of Indian Residential School.”

Little says he carved the sculpture from a piece of cedar for the St. Joseph’s IRS Survivor Project.

“There’s four children’s faces and St. Joseph’s Residential School is on the front,” Little says. “It didn’t start out as that, but as I started working on it, it came to me that they needed something for their program and I tried to capture the children’s faces in it. A lot of the Elders have seen it, and they cried because it brought back memories — it’s just like a monument for them.”

Liz Esquega, Indian Residential School program coordinator at Fort William, says the gathering went fairly well with about 277 people registered at the last count.

“So it’s a combination of the Elders, Survivors, as well as the children,” Esquega says. “I think the majority of the people enjoyed it, you can tell by the children, look at their laughter, look at them still playing. It was an opportunity for parents to bring their children out to have something to eat, to play, and to acknowledge our Survivors at the same time.”

Belinda Robertson, a fourth generation Residential School Survivor who was taken to St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School, says she had just found out that her great grandmother had been taken to Residential School.

“So it’s quite interesting because now I’m learning about myself and how we were brought up in the boarding school,” Robertson says. “It’s quite painful, some of the things that I’m hearing especially from other Survivors out of town. I would really love for the kids and the teenagers to get to know all of this information that went on, and we don’t want it to ever happen again because it’s a sad thing that families were broken up.”

Myria Esquega, whose father was a Residential School Survivor, says she always looks forward to the gathering.

“We have a lot of people come out from Fort William to look, to listen, and to understand what’s happening so they know about the Residential School and what it did to the people because we have Survivors from here,” Myria says. “My family, to avoid [Residential School], they’d move our family from one reserve to the next and then back again just to keep us safe.”