Bright orange shirts filled the Masset community hall for National Truth and Reconciliation Day on Monday, Sept. 30.
A mix of young families and elders, including several residential-school survivors, filled every seat in the Howard Phillips Community Hall to remember the 150,000 Indigenous children who were forced to attend Canada’s Indian residential schools from 1831 to 1996, including those who didn’t come home.
People wore orange shirts in honour of Phyllis Webstad, a Secwepemc woman who was stripped of an orange shirt made by her grandmother when she was a six-year-old arriving at St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School outside Williams Lake in 1973. Three years ago, the Canadian government followed a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by making the Orange Shirt Day Webstad started into a national holiday.
Marina Jones, a Haida elder and survivor, led a blessing before several people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, got up to speak about “reconcili-action” in their own lives. The event included fry bread and other treats, as well as films about recent archeological work at SGang Gwaay in Gwaii Haanas.
“Breathe hope into your children, breathe encouragement into your children, so that one day they will be a voice for another little child that’s still unborn,” said Jones as she gave an opening prayer.
Other speakers included Terry Carty, a councillor with the Village of Masset, who welcomed the B.C. government’s recent steps recognize the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as how Haida Gwaii’s local governments now meet regularly to work on common goals.
“There’s so much more to do, and so much of it is dependent on us right here,” Carty said.
Zachary Grosse, a CHN youth governance coordinator, said as an Indigenous man, it’s sometimes hard to believe in what is becoming the modern understanding of truth and reconciliation. The federal holiday is a good step, he said, but some people see it as just another long weekend.
“This can’t be a group project where we’re the smart kid, and the rest of the group just goes for a break,” Grosse said. “It needs equal work from everyone in this country to ensure the wrongs are righted and legislation and policies are created to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Andrew Hudson photos
