Reconciliation, decolonizing, truth – some of the words that we hear in connection with Sept. 30 annually – declared Orange Shirt Day in 2021, and is now a holiday in some places and named – National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
It is a day set aside to honour the survivors and those children who did not get home from the Residential schools.
As a young person working in a volunteer position with a church, I was in three different Residential Schools over a one-and-a-half-year period.
One visit was on my first date with a guy, going to deliver groceries to a Residential school; he would become my husband soon after. How bizarre is that?
I began to wonder and question about these schools. Of course, when you asked questions, you were ignored.
I heard different conversations amongst the people I worked with, some accepted the schools, others were troubled by them.
One overseas person voiced her point of view, saying she thought no one should try to change anyone else’s religious beliefs/points of view.
As I came from a large family connection on my mother’s side from Quebec; I had learned not to talk about religion, because there was a lot of different perspectives there.
Truth is hard to hear sometimes. The truth about the Residential schools, what happened in them, how and why they were set up in the first place, and so much more, needs to be spoken and heard, I believe.
For more than half a century, I have heard stories both from and about children who were forced to spend months at a time over many years in the schools. I met some of them at the time they were young students.
Others, I heard their stories when they were adults.
I am honoured that people have felt comfortable enough to share their stories with me or include me in the listening to stories. It breaks your heart to listen and hear the stories. It’s a necessary heartbreak, if this country is going to have any chance of actually facing the truth.
There are always the few, most of them are either direct survivors of the Residential schools or their descendants. That number is growing, I think.
We have moved along a bit, particularly with the initiation of Orange Shirt Day, which has become a week or month in some areas.
It is NOT a holiday to just go joyriding somewhere. It IS a day to listen, experience and learn about the experiences, history, reality of Canada and its relationship with Indigenous people.
It’s tough to hear, learn about, whatever one can do to face the truth.
A day, week, month is not enough for much of the country to learn about the genocide and all it encompasses.
It’s something we all need to learn about and live with daily, even hourly, to really come to gain some understanding.
We need that to even begin to make the changes that are needed to begin to make this whole nightmare turn around.
In that practice, we may then learn some of the beautiful things about the Indigenous people who have inhabited this area for millennia, their languages, cultures, spirituality and understanding of the world.
I suspect once we gain some of that knowledge and understanding, we can come more closely to learning how to look after the creation and environment of our Mother Earth. Our very survival may depend on it.
