Daily Herald Contributor
The Prince Albert Grand Council’s Health and Social Development Department put together activities to ensure that the 2024 Truth and Reconciliation Day was properly commemorated on Monday.
The event began at 10 a.m. with the “Wiping of Tears” ceremony which was open to everybody. This was to comfort the families of those whose relatives never came back from residential school, and others who have suffered pains in any way from the residential School experiences.
“Today we are here for the Orange Shirt Day or Truth and Reconciliation Day. We are here to honour the survivors of the residential school,” Shirley Woods, the Director of Health And Social Development, Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC) said. “We also want to acknowledged those who attended residential schools as well as their families and their communities as well as remember those who never made it home.”
Woods said the importance of this day cannot be overemphasized.
“Its the truth,” she said. “The ‘truth and reconciliation’ that we do has to recognize that there were residential schools and the residential schools were there to strip the identity of first nations people. We need to acknowledged what happened in the past before we can really move forward with reconciliation, and this is our means of doing that.”
Guest speakers at the event made various contributions, while victims narrated their experiences at the residential schools. The Premier Scott Moe, Prince Albert Northcote MLA Alana Ross, Police Chief Patrick Nogier were also present.
Canada’s Got Talent winner Rebecca Strong was on hand to perform a few songs during the ceremony. Later on, moments of silence was observed in honour of the departed.
“Just being able to acknowledged that it did happen, that in its self is a healing,” Wood said. “It’s a thing that was denied for many many years or was just not something that anybody talked about, but now we can talk about it. We can talk about what that did to us as a people and its an opportunity to learn from that, to heal and to move forward as a community.”
