Residential school survivors along with their families, friends and supporters came togeather at the PNE grounds in Vancouver on Sept. 18. They are there for a week of sharing, learning, healing and moving forward from the legacy of Canada’s Indian residential schools. Photos at the end of this report.
The event started with an early morning lighting of the Sacred Fire and morning prayers, followed by a survivor walk from the Sacred Fire to the Pacific Coliseum.
Opening ceremonies included a traditional welcome to the territories of Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam and Squamish Nations.
Outside the darkness of the coliseum, the PNE grounds were buzzing with activity.
Hundreds of survivors lined up at the registration tents and some were offered travel assistance to attend the event.
Golf carts ferried Elders to the various events spread out over the vast PNE grounds.
The smell of sage wafted through the air as dozens of healing support workers offered assistance to anyone needing it.
Privacy tents were set up throughout the grounds, allowing survivors to make recorded statements about their experiences, feelings or whatever they wished to share about their residential school experience.
The recording will become part of the national record to be stored and shared with future generations so that they will understand what happened and, hopefully, prevent it from happening again to anyone.
At the Agrodome, kiosks and table were set up. Visitors could get information about how and why residential schools were created or they could buy goods from the artisans and small businesses selling everything from clothing to jewellery to toys.
In two of the corners large tables were set up. One for the Catholic Church and one for the United Church. Each had photo albums filled with archived photos of the children who attended. They gave copies of the photos to people who recognized themselves in the images. They also used the occasion to confirm identities and record information to be stored in their archives.
There was a panel discussion at the Coliseum called Reconciliation Dialogue, Be the Change which featured young people of different ethnicities but who share a similar legacy; racist oppressing policies inflicted by the government of Canada.
The panellists were young adults and featured a Japanese man, a Chinese woman, a Jewish man and an Aboriginal woman. They talked about the intergenerational impacts of human rights violations.
Kim, the young Chilcotin woman, said that her grandmother had 13 children and almost all of them were taken away to residential school.
That generation, the one that included her mother, aunts and uncles, suffered the loss of language, culture and their value system.
“They grew up not knowing how to be a family; this was purposefully taken away,” she said. One effect that she believes has been passed down is the anxiety she feels when she’s away from family. But, she says, she’s working on it.
Each of the panellists, no matter which culture they come from, talked about losing language and being sad that they couldn’t talk to their grandmothers in their mother tongue.
The Chinese woman said she started to reject her Chinese ways, and because, she thought, in order to succeed you had to be as Caucasian as possible. “I became a ‘banana’,” she said, a reference to having yellow Asian skin but white inside.
She told the story of an incident that an older family member experienced that still affects her to this day. The older relative had gone to a public swimming pool where there was a sign that read, “No dog, No chinks.”
She said her parents never talked about their experiences because they just wanted to move on.
Kim said that reconciliation is about finding the truth and reconciling it. She says when she hears her people being asked, ‘why don’t you just get over it?’ she thinks it is an unfair thing to say.
The oppression of one segment of the population by the other is a shared experience, therefore it is everyone’s responsibility to get educated about what happened and be part of the reconciliation.
“Reconciliation is a verb and it will take action from everyone to achieve it,” she said.
Jamie, the Jewish man suggested Canada should have a national day of reconciliation to be held during the school year. And he believes children need to learn about these human injustices in school.
“I might have seen one page about residential schools when I was in high school,” he said. Another of the panellists joked, “I think we were all on the same page of the text book.”
“Canada was a safe place for my people,” said Jamie. “But it also has its warts, not so proud moments but we should be able to revisit it and never forget what happened,” he continued.
