September 30th 2023 is the second time Canada will mark a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It coincides with Orange Shirt Day, a grassroots commemoration marked by the wearing of Orange Shirts for children forced to leave their families and attend residential schools.
This reflection is designed to take approximately half an hour and we recommend that you take space to listen and reflect. You will be guided through the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about education with prayer and reflection prompts. Engage in this podcast in the way that allows you to fully immerse yourself in this material: find time in the day when you can walk in solitude and listen, or enjoy a beautiful drive while you reflect. Curl up in your favourite chair to draw and journal while you connect with this podcast.
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September 30th 2023 is the third time Canada will mark a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It was chosen to fall on Orange Shirt Day, a grassroots commemoration marked by the wearing of Orange Shirts remembering the children forced to leave their families and attend residential schools. (See Orange Shirt Day story by Phyliss Webstad).
The day, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a public remembering and lament of the colonial legacy of residential schools in Canada. It is a time of solemn reflection for all people in this land called Canada. The establishment of this day also fulfills Call to Action #80 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We recommend that you look for opportunities in your local area to participate in events, because reconciliation starts in people to people relationships often at the local level. Local Friendship Centres are a great place to inquire about public events.
We also offer you this opportunity to reflect on some of the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as Christians who believe in a God who reconciles us to himself and one another. TRC Calls to Action 59 and 60 guide the work of CRCNA’s Indigenous ministries educational efforts with churches. These calls to action ask churches to “ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.” If you would like to reflect further on this call to action you can listen to the Season 3 Bonus episode of the Do Justice podcast.
The following reflection on TRC Call to Action 80 is designed to take approximately a half hour and we recommend that you make space to listen and reflect. You will be guided through the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about education and will be invited into prayer and reflection. Engage in this podcast in the way that allows you to fully immerse yourself in this material: find time in the day when you can walk in solitude and listen, or enjoy a beautiful drive while you reflect. Curl up in your favourite chair to draw and journal while you connect with this podcast.
Let’s read the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action 80 together:
We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, to establish, as a statutory holiday, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour Survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.
Hi, I’m Adrian Jacobs the CRCNA’s Senior Leader for Indigenous Justice and Reconciliation.
We are about to share quotes from residential school survivors included in The Witness Blanket. A wellness caution for you. Please take care in listening to this story or the other stories available through the organization. If you are a residential school Survivor or family member in need of emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week at: 1-866-925-4419.
Having a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a great first step and represents the resilience of Indigenous peoples in Canada. And we believe you’re here, listening to this podcast, because you want to continue the journey for our collective healing. Today let’s do that by listening to bits of testimony from residential school survivors across Canada.
Torn From Family
Angeline Ayoungman was taken to Crowfoot Residential School in Cluny, Alberta and nearby Old Sun Residential School. “I was seven when I was brought here. And I didn’t want to be here,” she says. “There were nights when I used to look out and look way in the distance, wishing I was home,” she recalls. “For me, one of my memories is being so lonely, coming from a loving home and then to be placed here.”
Physical Abuse
“The first day they took our clothes,” says Mary Coon. “A little girl got beaten up with a towel. She didn't want to take her shower and she got beaten up.” Mary was taken to Bishop Horden Hall in Moose Factory, Ontario. She remembers a school supervisor beating her: “She would [sit] everybody down and said, ‘What did Mary do? What are we going to do with her? We're going to give her a strap!’” She says: “It was always like that. So I knew how to not talk, not feel. Even with the other little girls, I would be in danger.”
Hungry
“We starved here,” says Pauline Alfred, a Survivor of St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay, British Columbia. “We were hungry all the time.” She recalls that one desperate child ate animal feed and ended up in hospital, “because that’s how hungry we got.”
Disrespect for Culture
Harold Gatensby was taken to the Carcross Residential school as a child. He remembers being taught three things by the time he was 12: “I was stupid. I was ugly. And I was going to hell. Those three things I knew for sure.” He says: “That’s what residential school did to me. That’s the gift they left me with.”
Harold says: “It affects us, but it affects everybody, what happened to the native people in this country. And that’s got to be dealt with.” Learning the truth about residential schools is an important part of how “we learn to live together again,” he says.
Harold says that the schools would “rip them right out of their home” and that arriving at school was like suddenly being “in a foreign country where they can’t speak the language, they don’t know anybody.” Children were often punished, “not because of anything they did or didn’t do, but because they were who they are.”
Harold says, “People that went to this school raised their kids like they were residential school supervisors because they didn’t know what else to do. Now we’ve got a generation that doesn’t know.”
Harold points to the ongoing problems caused by the schools as evidence that they aren’t just ancient history. He worries about the “perception that we’re just about done with all this” when really, the “horrific story, that's still alive and well in our community.” Harold goes on to say that “we carry in our hearts the unfinished business of residential school.”
Children, like Harold, endured and survived. But Harold says that the process of healing and recovery takes a long time: “It’s not going to be short term. It’s going to be a way of life. We need to be able to embrace our little kids now, in that. And raise them up in it, in love, not institutional supervision.”
Now we turn to a time of reflection. Feel free to pause the recording after each question. At the end of our three questions there will be a song that will also give you space to reflect.
What emotions are you feeling right now? Some of you may want to sit in that emotion, paying attention to how it affects your body. Some of you may want to spend time journaling about your emotions, creating a prayer or a lament for the generational impact of residential schools, some of you may want to draw to express yourself. Perhaps you just want to pause and breathe. Take the space you need to connect with your feelings regarding the stories shared.
The church has been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:14-21). We are first reconciled to God and then to one another. God wants us to be friends with one another and Jesus died so this could happen. We must own our corporate sin that broke this friendship. The church must acknowledge its violation of good relationship in the horror of Indian Residential Schools that all churches are connected to through the Doctrine of Discovery. The Survivors wanted to tell their stories of this violation so that it would never happen again. Survivors wanted the church to repent and be reconciled with them and never violate friendship again. Grace is being offered. Is the church, are you, willing to accept?
How does this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation honour Indian Residential School survivors, their families, and communities? What is the benefit of remembering history, including bad experiences?
Michael Jacob’s song Welcome Home speaks about the restoration to community and culture that many Indigenous people, including Indian Residential School survivors, have experienced after being separated for years.
When you are ready, step into a space of action.
Is there one person that you can talk to about what you’ve reflected on today? What kinds of questions could you ask at the dinner table to get people close to you thinking about this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour Survivors, their families, and communities?
Are there action steps that you can think of in educating yourself further about the generational impact of residential schools? Do you know where the nearest Indian Residential School is? What do you know about it? When did it close?
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