ST. PAUL - Those that never it made it home were remembered and the stories of residential school survivors shared during a gathering at the St. Paul UFO Landing Pad July 1.
The rally provided the opportunity for Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the area to come together to share in both grief and to speak their truth on Canada Day.
Pat Makokis, a well-known Indigenous educator, encouraged non-Indigenous members of the community to educate themselves in respect to not only residential schools but also the daily challenges faced by Indigenous people in Canada.
“White fragility occurs when our white relatives have a hard time to hear some of these things. We are not being disrespectful when we are talking about these things because every day, we are experiencing them,” Makokis said.
“How do you become an ally to Indigenous people? How do you become an ally to the people from all the nations and all the settlements in this area?” she asked. “I think the first thing that can happen is people need to read to Calls to Action - It’s a tiny little book and it has 94 calls to action.”
Calls to Action was produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada with an aim to create a vision for reconciliation.
Makokis shared a quote attributed to Justice Murray Sinclair, someone she holds in high regard, made during an interview with Windspeaker - “A white supremist history in public school education taught so long, so hard and so well that it has resulted in a belief on the part of non-Indigenous students believing in this superiority of their existence, superiority of their people, superiority of their ancestors versus the inferiority of Indigenous people in this country.”
She said the discovery of unmarked graves of hundreds of children who were the victims of the residential school system “has triggered us because we think about our families. Those of us who have grandchildren, great-grandchildren never want to see that happen again. The only way that is going to change is when we come together. This place should be filled with St. Paul people, it needs to be filled with St. Paul people because economically we drive the economics of this area,” she said of the gathering.
She described St. Paul Mayor Maureen Miller as being “courageous” for stepping up to lead by example. The Town of St. Paul cancelled a planned Canada Day fireworks display as a gesture of respect in light of the residential school discoveries.
“Those types of people we need with us because they are the ones that need to call out their own people because when we call them out, we’re called troublemakers. We are truthtellers, we are not troublemakers.”
Jim White, of the Mannawanis Friendship Centre, described those gathered for the rally – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – as the “difference-makers.”
White said his story was no different than others that have been told through the generations of the residential school experience. His father and three brothers all spent time in residential school.
“I ask you to help me sing my prayer so we can release these children back to their creator and in this way we can celebrate their finding, recovery. In this way, we could help the families that lost their children when they were so young,” Melvin John of Kehewin Cree Nation said to the participants.
He then shared his own experience at residential school, ending with a song composed in memory of that experience and his lost time with those he loved.
“There was one time a loving family of 10. We lived together with our parents. One summer day like this one, we were outside, we were cooking bannock over a fire on a stick. We were just dreaming of that bannock because we had some jam and we were just watching that bannock rise and brown, and then all of a sudden my elder sister said ‘Run! Run!’ I didn’t understand... we ran into the bush... We almost made it.”
Ordered from their hiding place by a policeman with a promise of ice cream, the children emerged.
“We filled three vehicles and we never returned home for two years. Ten of us. That was the beginning of our ordeal.”
