Wanuskewin Gift Shop is launching a new design from Ookus D. for National Truth and Reconciliation Day Orange t-shirts.
“Every Child Matter is never really a fun topic,” said Ookus, who hails from Buffalo River Dene Nation in northern Saskatchewan. “It hurts, but it’s important.”
Ookus and her family moved to Prince Albert in 2009 from Buffalo River, where she graduated in 2012. She went on to get her 3D Animation degree and visual media arts certificate in Ontario, before returning to Saskatchewan, where she landed in Saskatoon. Ookus began working at Wanuskewin Gift Shop in October of 2025, where she returned to making art, and her managers took notice.
In an interview with the Herald, Ookus spoke about how looking into her family history over the past two years brought up challenging feelings, which partly inspired her to create the design.
“I always knew I had an uncle who lost his life at a residential school, but nothing ever more than that,” explained Ookus. “Then when I was doing that family research, I found him and his little cousin Octavia, (and) that they had passed in the 1937 Beauval Epidemic. I took a lot of that feeling for the image and I tried to represent the kids holding hands.”
In the winter of 1936-1937, Beauval Indian Residential School suffered from an outbreak of the influenza and measles, with around 60 deaths in the area, before moving further north into the communities of Ile-a-la-Crosse, Buffalo River and Portage La Loche.
“It was really hard because they were only seven or eight years old when they passed away,” said Ookus.
She mentioned that Octavia was sent to a hospital, and the doctor treating her noted how bad he felt for her because of how serious her illness was.
During her family research, she had been looking at the list of names on the Truth and Reconciliation website for her other family members, which also helped to guide aspects of the design into the final copy.
“Looking at a lot of the names, a lot of those kids were from my reserve and surrounding reserves, and I wanted it to be in remembrance and in hope for a future,” Ookus said.
The artist briefly described elements of the design with specific meanings, such as the floral border, which was created as a homage to her grandmothers in the north.
The constellation shown in the design was based on a Blackfoot story called the Seven Brothers, where seven brothers were being mistreated, and they decided to leave their community and turn into stars. The element of the children looking into the stars is meant to signify them not only in the afterlife or spirit world, but also looking towards a better future for children.
Ookus mentioned the recent situation with Ashley Callingbull and Miss Universe Canada, and how some negative responses to the situation have been affecting her.
“I’ve been reading comments on some of those posts, and some of them are really ugly and hurtful and ignorant,” said Ookus. “It just makes you see that we still have a lot of work to do, and to not repeat the same mistakes. It brings up a lot of ugly feelings.”
Moving forward, she hopes that there will be more understanding about Indigenous history and Indigenous peoples’ place in the future. She mentioned how sometimes she feels that Truth and Reconciliation is treated as a trend, but it is extremely important to the Indigenous community, and people cannot forget about the hurt and pain suffered by Indigenous children and residential school survivors.
“You can only go forward, and I want to be hopeful,” Ookus said. “The only way to have change is to make change, and try not to hold on to the ugly feelings because you’re not going to make anything positive with that.”
One hundred percent of the proceeds from the Orange T-Shirts with Ookus’ design will go towards Canadian Residential Schools Survivors. Wanuskewin Gift Shop has not yet released a launch date for the shirts, but the design can be found on Wanuskewin Collective’s Instagram at @wanuskewingiftshop.
